Setting
Where and when. The symbolic code that answers the first question a frame gets asked.
- setting
- reference
- symbolic-code
The time and place of the story world — geography, era, weather, architecture — and the meanings they import before a character says a word. Setting is distinct from Mise en scène: setting is where we are; mise en scène is what has been arranged in front of the camera once we're there.
What to look for
Real location or built set? Period accuracy or stylisation? What does the setting let the audience assume about class, safety, possibility?
Canonical cases
The Bates house looming over the flat modern motel in Psycho (1960) — two eras of America stacked on a hill. And the deliberately fake Monterey of Alice — the prologue, where the setting's artifice is the entire point: see The $85,000 backdrop.
Sources
Bordwell & Thompson — Film Art on setting within mise en scène.