ABSTRACT
In film theory, 'the discovery that resemblance is coded and therefore learned was a tremendous hard-won victory for semiotics over the upholding a notion of naïve perception in cinema.' This chapter overviews of the underlying methodologies which will help make sense of the more design specific theories. If there are only a few histories dedicated to surveying film design, fewer look at television set design with the only significant work forming parts of other studies or being noted in passing in other histories of the form. Mise-en-scene is a concept which film scholars use to describe the visual aspects of film style and aesthetics and all its complexities. Mise-en-scene takes an understanding of the semiotics of the image and allows it to change through time and movement in film. Cinemetrics was developed by Brian McGrath and Jean Gardner as a way of designing around the human perception of matter-flux, the relationships and movements of figures in three-dimensional space and time.
