Earlier I saw a film twitter tweet snarking about Rogue One and how we all need to remember that cinematography is not just about creating images for screensavers. I was going to let it go but no, I can't, I can't do it. That's not cinematography, my dude. That's mise-en-scene

— Becca Harrison (@BeccaEHarrison) October 27, 2019

I love film geeks. I’m a film geek, too, and she’s right: mise-en-scène is the arrangement of elements in frame. While I think one could argue that cinematography contributes to the desirability (or not) of the resulting series of images, primarily this dude (without knowing about it) was talking about mise-en-scène.

Cinematographers are in charge of cameras, composition, lighting, and camera motion, not anything actually in the frame. In other words, they decide how to photograph. Others (director, set designer) decide what is in the frame to photograph. This “what is in the frame” is mise-en-scène.

Along with the editor, the cinematographer (or director of photography) is one of the more unheralded roles that makes a huge difference to how a film feels and even what a scene means.