Mise en Scene - Last King of Scotland

In yesterday's lesson we looked at a short clip from 'The Last King of Scotland'. The extract contained a lot of techniques that trick the eye and show contrast between two places. The clip starts at a mission where the principal character lives and ends at the President's house. As the film ran, the humble, rural setting of the peasant village made the shots dark with the browns and deep yellows of the trees and drying straw, but then as the characters travelled further out of the countryside and into the city, all of a sudden the screen is white with tall buildings and paved roads. The scene ends in a blue room which is supposed to shock the mind as blue isn't featured in the clip much at all before. By doing this the director was able to show how much of a different place the President's home is compared to that of the farming people who live near the mission. The director used a 'montage' of different locations to create the illusion that each of them are actually connected on the same route. By doing this they could also exclude expanses of blue more easily so the ending of the scene had more impact.