Buffy Analysis

The first scene that I wanted to discuss was because of the complexities that I saw and I wanted to try mise-en-scene here. At the 12:27 mark of the show there are two men sitting in a room, one tied to a chair the other falling asleep in bed. The set seems to be a small room, stairs in the background as well as a bookshelf. There is a bed with dark blue blankets and next to it is a red chair in which a man is tied. The room is quite dark, with only a few things being in focus. The only real bright color in the frame is the blood red chair. The light comes in from the right side, slightly above center as if coming through a window at night. This gives the idea of a full moon at night, something that has long been associated with superstition and horror. Going to sleep in bed is a normal looking man, but the other who is tied to a chair is white haired, light white skin and sunken cheekbones. The room spreads out behind the two men, but light falls away not hitting anything of importance it seems outside of these two men. It makes it clear that they are the focus of the story, and the rest of the setting enhances their connection.

At the 19:55 mark of the show the difference between diegetic and non-diegetic can be heard. To begin with no one in the scene is talking, they are writing to each other. In order to get the girls attention the boy snaps his fingers and points to the television. He turns it up as they listen to the man on the television speak. Here the sound is all diegetic, because as the noise of snapping fingers occurs the source is clearly in frame. The same is true of the sound from the television. Even when the camera comes back to only see the group of people and not the television, it is still diegetic because the sound is coming from inside the frame. What happens next is there is introduced to this scene an ominous deep overtone that is non-diegetic. The sound is used to create a sense of suspense and possible pending doom, but the noise comes from outside the story or the frame therefore it is non-diegetic.