Visions in the Frame

James Walters is Professor of Screen Aesthetics and Criticism at the University of Birmingham, United Kingdom. His previous books include Television and Repetition and Fantasy Film.

"James Walters' careful attention to mise-en-scène as visual style across film and television is refreshingly open-minded. Looking into the history of critical approaches to these media, he develops new ways of approaching and understanding everything from high drama to cooking shows. An indispensable guide for students and teachers." — Adrian Martin, author of Mise en scène and Film Style"This book offers an account of how a single aspect of the moving image and a single focus of moving image criticism—mise-en-scène—has developed in film and television studies respectively. Its extraordinary range and depth of inquiry into the history of these disciplines is rendered with deftness and clarity, and it offers a powerful invitation for mise-en-scène criticism to be accepted more broadly within television studies." — Elliott Logan, author of Breaking Bad and Dignity: Unity and Fragmentation in the Serial Television Drama"Visions in the Frame makes a compelling case that mise-en-scène has been foundational to the development of film studies, yet remains far less central—and differently articulated—within television studies. With elegance and critical precision, James Walters maps this disciplinary disparity and shows what becomes newly visible when we attend to style across both media. A vital contribution to contemporary screen scholarship, and a persuasive reminder of why close analysis still matters." — Sérgio Dias Branco, University of Coimbra"Rich in both critical history and attentive close analysis, Visions in the Frame offers a compelling account of why mise-en-scène matters in the study of both film and television, and ultimately, the value of attending to the image and its composition for a range of approaches and perspectives in both disciplines. Walters shows great sensitivity in his rigorous tracing of attentions to (and away from) mise-en-scène, drawing together an insightful picture of how, and crucially why, investment in mise-en-scène has and hasn’t developed across disciplinary developments; this is a story told through an engaging understanding of the connections and tensions between people, through their critical, ethical, and even prosaic concerns of writing about and teaching film and television. Modestly presented as a series of starting points, passages of mise-en-scène analysis deepen the argument, modelling readily and elegantly the critical rewards of engaging with the visual richness of television in all its variety as a medium." — Lucy Fife Donaldson, University of St Andrews

• List of Illustrations Preface Acknowledgments Introduction Part 1: Film Studies and the Persistence of Mise-en-scène 1. Screen Education 2. Using Images 3. "The Spatial Disposition of People" 4. Framing the World 5. Valuing Mise-en-scène 6. Beyond Words 7. Theory, Distance, and Distortion 8. Tear It Down, Make It Count 9. Nothing Special 10. Branching Out Part 2: Television Studies and the Ambiguity of Mise-en-scène 11. Finding the Screen 12. Early Moves 13. Working Around Authorship 14. "Little Instants of Sought-For Revelation" 15. Cultural Sounds and Visions 16. "Judgements Are Being Made..." 17. The Aesthetic Turn 18. Bigger on the Inside Part 3: Television Mise-en-scène 19. Where Are We Now? 20. The Surface of Power 21. Finding the Frame 22. The Play of Shadow and Light 23. Audience of One 24. The Shock of the Blue 25. Meanings in Motion 26. Eight by Two Inches 27. Blank Expression 28. Late Finds 29. Pieces of Television Conclusion Appendix Notes Works Cited Index