Dissecting "Marvel's Agent Carter"

In the first five minutes of the Marvel Studio film, "Agent Carter" it showcases all four of the film's foundational elements: composure, mise-en-scene, camera angles, and editing. All of these aspects come together in a visual collage that helps drive both the emotional core of the narrative and cinematic mood around it.



The importance of Mise-en-scene is that it makes that narrative created by the picture seem more realistic and believable to the viewer. In other words, it makes the story feel that it could happen within the audience's reality. Mise-en-scene is used in Agent Carter in the staging of characters, clothing, and the lighting is all there in making the audience feel a certain mood. For example, the fairly neat and clean clothing of the characters helps the viewer feel the setting of the 1940's. Another use of Mise-en-scene would be the absence of any modern technology like phones, computers, smart watches, etc. in order for the audience to further identify with the time period.



The composure of a shot and camera angles helps provide new information, context, and differing perspectives to the audience in a purely visual way. In Agent Carter, one of the best uses of the technique would be the establishing shot that is shown immediately after the cutaway of Captain America. Through this establishing shot it gives the audience a heads up on the environment and atmosphere the next couple of scenes will be placed in. The aforementioned scene establishes the City that Carter works in. This is crucial to the narrative because without that scene the audience's understanding of the setting would be so restricted that it could cause confusion.



The sound design in the narrative is mainly used in very quiet and subtle ways. With it's main use being to just set the mood; for instance, the establishing shot previously noted had an alarm effect overdubbed into that shot with the blinking red flash. This decision was made with the intent to show that the agents had a mission and that it was cloaked in uncertainty. Later on in the narrative the same device is used again in the style of leitmotif. This mainly used to communicate a sense of urgency to the viewer.



All of the visual aspects really come together in the edit of the picture. In the film editing is used for a wide plethora of visual communications whether it be the inclusion of sound both diegetic and non diegetic, or just color grading the entire frame for consistency's sake. In more standout cases one can see how color-correction is used to give that narrative a warmer almost nostalgic feeling to help the mood. This warm fuzzy perception of the past transferred through the color grading also helps improve the mise-en-scene employed by the director previously. Another use of editing would be the contrast demonstrated by showing a peaceful nonchalant city and then cutting directly to a blaming alarm. This edit helps build a scene of uncertainty, tension, and shock amongst the viewers.