Topic 3: Mise-en-scène

Jamie Horton

Professor Saphire

COM 126.01

23 October 2020

Sword fighting duels are a trilling addition to any film. From The Princess Bride, to Die Another Day, seeing the main protagonist engaged in an all out sword fight with another, equally as skilled opponent is thrilling. Mise-en-scène, the term for everything that the audience sees on the screen, colloquially known as stage design and arrangement of actors in scenes for a theatre or film production allows the director to show the world of the characters in a movie. The famous Final duel of Jedi Obi Wan Kenobi and Qui-Gon Jinn against the evil sith Darth Maul from the movie Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace, uses design of each area in the scene, the lighting throughout the duel, and the insanely well choreographed kinesis of the three men to show Director George Lucas’ skill of presenting a world through the screen.

The entire setting of the fight is set up to create tension. Set in a cramped, tight room with a large, bottomless pit in the center creates an immediate form of tension, knowing how easy it can be for either character to fall into the center. Characters get knocked to the ground, and run away from each other for brief moments, yet the threat of the looming pit is always in the audience’s mind. This is especially stressful when Obi-Wan falls into the pit, holding on for his life. Pipes and tubes around them are sliced by their weapons, releasing smoke and sparks into the air, another danger to the duelers. The advanced weaponry and setting, with its laser doors confining the fighters creates an immediate sense that this fight is happening in the far future, with technologies far beyond our current one. The most unsettling thing viewers will see on Maul as he enters the room at the start of the scene is the bright red face, with black war paint streaking down his face. The crown-like appearance of horns growing out of his head, almost looking like Satan himself, with his bright yellow eyes piercing the audience’s eyes. Everything about Maul’s appearance is designed to strike fear into his enemies, and the audience. Concentrated with the two other men, who appear to be human, and viewers can feel a shift in power through his looks. His design, a black robe, similar to the ones worn by the other Jedi men, showing he has experience in the same advanced fighting styles as the men we’ve been watching use throughout the movie, warning us that this man is not to be messed with, and our main characters are about to face their greatest challenge yet.

The lighting used in the duel mostly uses three point lighting for its main characters, with little more than that used in this duel. The majority of the lighting used in the background is studio light, with bright lights from the background. Each scene’s shift from a lighter color to a darker one, from light blues and yellows to darker reds, show the gradual change of who has control of the fight, lighter colors for our heroes initial advantage, and getting darker and more red as Maul takes control over the fight, and eliminating one of the foes. For the characters themselves, soft lighting, where the low contrast of the light causes little to no shadows on the person it is hitting, is used for many of the close ups of the camera on our two protagonists, when they are by themselves for a brief moment of the fight, as they are already established to the be the heroes of the film, and used for showing their heroism to the the audience, friendly and helpful. Maul is shown in close ups using hard light, showing shadows across his face. The shadows in the side of this face attribute to the darkness of his smile, and his evil intentions. Yet the soft lighting often is unnoticeable against the most eye-catching element of this fight. The laser swords they use to duel, (or lightsabers as they are called in the film), that they use to fight. These swords flash with white light as they connect and clash, and they provide hard lighting in front of the face of each character when held in front of them. While soft light is used, the use of hard light when the swords spark and flash in front of each one's faces creates tension that at any moment a character could be killed. 

The sudden jolts of close ups of the men fighting to far away distanced shots create stress for the viewer. The movement of each men, mostly in the center of the frame throughout the fight create a jarring sense of confusion when they are placed distantly from the center, showing their small bodies, almost insinuating that their fighting is nothing more than pawns for a greater threat to come, almost as our protagonists are fighting a small aspect of a greater evil to come. While Qui-Gon is still alive, fighting two-on-one alongside Obi-Wan, the way they are able to surround Maul on both sides, keeping Maul confined to either side of the screen while he attempts to deal with his two adversaries. When Qui-Gon is killed however, both remaining men dance around the center of the screen taking an equal amount of space. Conveying to the audience that Obi-Wan has lost his advantage. The use of deep space composition is striking when Obi-Wan hangs for his life in the pit, with blurred edges against an in focus background, creating a jarring sense of worry for the audience, wondering how he can escape such a dangerous moment. This is combined with symmetrical shot-reverse-shots of Obi-Wan when he is hanging, staring up at Maul, who stares at him in a similar pose, awaiting his potential demise. Both characters are centered with their heads facing directly into the camera, their eyes saying all as they stare. When Maul is killed, he is centered in a similar fashion, with his corpse flying symmetrically down the middle of the pit, his two halves splitting into the right and left sides of the screen. Cut back to a shot of Obi-Wan, with a farther away shot, of him staring down into the center. As opposed to Maul focusing down on him earlier, the camera shows Qui-Gon’s body sitting to the side, pulling the audience’s attention away from Obi-Wan’s victory, as there are other matters to attend to. 

Each actor's skill is immediately shown through their fighting styles, Maul playing much more aggressively and battering the two with his double edged lightsaber. The two men fighting him attempt to fight in a much more defensive pattern. Maul uses spin moves, flying through the air like a helicopter, causing Obi-Wan to back off is stupendously shot, showing how Maul is truly the more powerful warrior. The audience learns so much from his villainous fighting, seeing that he is able to outlast him, and could overpower him in this fight, almost killing him several times. Obi-Wan is shown to be scared, fighting a foe unknown =, seeing his mentor and friend die in front of his eyes shows him to be more aggressive but anxious, yet he is unable to match Maul’s pure skill, relying on kicks, flips and outplaying him. The way that the fight is blocked around the entrance to the room, barely moving from the same ten feet of space, creates fear in the audience. In front of our hero is the villain, to his side are walls to the room that can kill if he gets too close, and to his right is a long way down. The way that the camera catches this tense fight, blocked with expert movement from each of the actors portrays Director George Lucas’ expertise with shooting action films, and how he creates tension in scenes like these. 

The protagonists in most films often face unwinnable fights, and the camera wants to show the viewer every aspect of it. Each director’s understanding of mise-en-scene combines setting, how each character moves and fights, and shows that even the lights present in each room are used in combination to create an eye-catching masterpiece of a scene, in the same way that Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace shows the audience a masterpiece of a space duel.