Preliminary Exercise 4: Analyzing Setting for National Lampoon's European Vacation

 Setting in film is described as the time and place of a particular film. The key characteristics of film can include the following: narrative, cinematography, mise en scene, editing, and sound. Some of the characteristics I would say can be considered predominant in film would probably be editing. This is mainly because of the fact that with poor editing, a film would just look poor quality and unfinished. As for the least significant, I personally believe is none. I think in order to have a successful film, all elements matter, and they all play a significant role. Linking back to setting, however, I think mise en scene is an important element because it helps express a film’s mood using the space in time which is very helpful in film.

 The objective of this exercise was to, again, inform us on the specifics of one of the main elements in film. As for the media product me and my teammate have decided to create, we possibly may choose to create a social media product. We also analyzed this particular media product in this exercise. Some of what we analyzed was: Extinction was about a man’s recurring dreams of a extraterrestrial power destroying the planet & him wanting to find a way to save his wife and daughter when it becomes reality. 

 The media text created in this case was a movie. It is meant to engage audiences by using Sci-Fi elements in that thrill the viewers. Hence, those interested in Sci-Fi Thrillers would enjoy this movie. We were assigned a lot in this lesson, but what I would consider to be the main point of this assignment was to describe the elements of mise en scene once again.