Mise En Scene

 

Watched: The Dropout, S1 E1 "I'm in a Hurry"

The episode that I watched was the introduction of this series, called The Dropout, that talks about a woman named Elizabeth Holmes and her company. This biographical drama shows a lot of good components of mine-en-scene. 

Throughout the episode, we see quite a lot of good costume design, particularly with the dated clothes that everyone is wearing. For most of the episode, we are set in the early 2000s, and it is clearly shown by the clothes worn by Holmes and other people in the series. Costume, in this context, is also used to show the progression of Holmes' career. In the scene where she's first allowed into the graduates research lab group, we see everyone wearing lab coats except her, which conveys to the audience that she is an outcast. When she proves herself to be worthy of joining the group, her professor tells one of his students to get her a lab coat, signifying that she was being accepted by some sort of community.

The locations this episode uses very well show the privilege that Elizabeth had throughout her life. The most prominent time we see this is when we are first shown her home, which shows the nice 2-story home she lived in and the nice neighborhood her home is in. This is then contrasted when she's first seen in Beijing, which shows her sharing a small room with a few other girls her age. The other girls' beds are seen to be colorful and decorative, but Holmes' lacks creativity, which could show that she's sort of an outcast compared to other people her age.

When it comes to the formatting of the show, it gives a great insight with flash-forwards. The scenes throughout this first episode show Holmes in an interrogative-style recording and context to everything that led up to that moment. The constant flashes from her past back to the interrogation give a really interesting way of story telling, with it also showing irony, since the audience can see the inconsistencies with the story she's telling the police and what had actually happened in the past.

With the lighting and colors, we can clearly see a theme throughout this episode: hospitals. There is a clear symbolism with the color white throughout the episode:

• white lab coats
• bright white lighting in the 'theranos' company building
• lights being shone in her face

When white is not being used, there are a good amount of shots that use low key lighting, mostly when Elizabeth is depressed or frustrated. 

Overall, this episode gives a lot of good examples of how mine-en-scene can be conveyed through subtle details. In most of this first episode, we can see how Elizabeth grew up into the person she wanted to be and how her dreams had started from very young. I honestly enjoyed watching this; what mostly kept me engaged was the transitions from the past and the present, it felt like it kept me on my toes. With only watching this first episode, I truly understand why others would enjoy this show.