Settings in film

A setting is a time and a place in a moment of film. This could be anything from a shipwreck at the bottom of the ocean, to someone's bedroom. I believe that setting is incredibly important to making a successful film because it helps to set the scene for the audience. A poor or fake setting would make a story less believable.

Stereotypical settings in the common genres:

Genre	Typical Setting
Comedy	In my opinion, comedy is the only genre in which the setting options are not limited. This is because a setting can be chosen for the characters, mise-en-scene, or to create comedy itself. From the comedies that I have seen, the most common setting is one that is familiar, whether this be a school or a small town. This will be a common setting because it allows a connection between the characters and the audience.
Horror	Haunted houses, the woods, a familiar place (used to scare the audience, cause them to feel unsafe and unsure), or a very unfamiliar place (to make the audience feel lost and scared with the characters).
Romance	In teen romances, the most commonly used setting is probably schools and small towns. This is because it is a relatable setting for the typical audience, which will be teens and young adults. For older romance stories, the setting could be anything as it may be telling the tale of new love at an old age or how young love has aged over a couple’s life together. I think a suitable setting for this could be a small town during the build-up or end of a world war. This is because the war will be a very powerful equilibrium that could be used to separate or bring together the couple, and an older audience could relate to this story and setting.
Drama	In a period drama, the setting is very easy to depict and decide upon, as it has to be sensible and suit the time period. This could be a manor, a small town, or a city. Other dramas will often use normal settings that suit the time period such as a modern day city. This, such as in with many other genres, is done to create a connection between character and audience.
Documentary	The setting for a documentary is often easy to predict if given the focus of the documentary. This is because they use real footage, so the setting will be focused around the subject. For example, in a wildlife documentary, the setting during real footage would be a habitat dependent upon the species being filmed. Or for another example, a documentary on drug users would have a setting based around their homes and the streets in which they live.

Settings within our area options:

• In a kids TV show, the typical kind of setting that we would expect to see is a school. This is because it is a relatable setting to a very large majority of the target audience, which makes it more enjoyable for them to watch. While this is true for many kids TV shows, some will still try and break conventions by choosing a far more abstract setting.
• In a music video, there is not very often a common setting throughout, however most music videos will use the setting of a recording studio/stage for part/all of their video. This setting, when used, is usually used for the lip synchronization parts of the video, in which we will see the band/artist performing. The rest of the setting will usually be part of a story that may follow one or more members of the band. For our music video, we plan to use just a story and no live performance. This is because the song is only 3 minutes and we would prefer to use this short time to tell the story and show some brilliant cinematography.
• In a short film, there are an infinite possibility of settings, and these will depend upon the genre of the film. This makes genre a very important part of setting, because if you do not successfully match the setting to the genre, it can be difficult to know which genre you are trying to achieve. For example, in a horror short film, you would expect to see settings such as haunted houses or dark alleys, so if you were to create a horror film with a light and 'happy' setting, this would not work for the genre, and the film would appear to be mocking a traditional horror film. However, as I have said in previous posts before, conventions can be broken, and it may be that the setting of a film is changed to shock the audience.

With regards to the mise-en-scene, setting is very important as it allows the characters, props, costumes etc. to work together in an environment that helps to portray the time period in which it is based. For example, a Victorian style film with Victorian costumes, props, and character names would be unfinished without a fitting Victorian era setting.