On wednesday, Professor Kahan invited a guest speaker to our class to discuss cinema and the aspects of putting a movie together. Our guest speaker was Professor Diaz and she teaches Cinema at CSI. Since I do not watch a lot of movies, I did not think I was going to enjoy the discussion. However, everything that Professor Diaz taught us was extremely interesting. There were even some aspects about movie making that I never knew existed.

The main theme of Professor Diaz’s discussion was based on the idea of mis-en-scene, the arrangement of people, places, and objects in a movie.  One part of the movie Manhattan where the mis-en-scene was very interesting was when Isaac and Mary were in Isaac’s apartment. Professor Diaz described that the wall barriers between Isaac and Mary was a form of mis-en-scene to foreshadow their separation due to their weak relationship. I thought it was really creative for the directors to use mis-en-scene in such a sneaky way.

Professor Diaz also showed the class various youtube videos on the creation of different sounds for movies. This truly amazed me. I never knew the different creative ways people made audio for the movie. One example shown in the video was how the dinosaur eggs cracked in the movie Jurassic Park. They used an ice cream cone to make the sound of the egg cracking and they also mushed a cantaloupe to make the sound of the substance inside the egg. It sounded perfectly! This was so cool to watch!

I actually really enjoyed Professor Diaz’s discussion. She helped me realize all of the work that is put into a movie to make it a great form of entertainment. Now, whenever I watch a movie, I will pay close attention to the small details that I never payed attention to before.