Most of Robert Wiene’s success in “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari’s Cabinet” lies within his ability to incorporate all of the essentials for a perfect mise-en-scene [ all of the elements placed in front of the camera to be photographed: the settings and props, lighting, costumes, and makeup, and figure behavior.] With that being established, Wiene made it a point to exaggerate and distort these elements, causing it to fall within the guidelines of a classic Expressionist film and allowing the audience to view the storyline through the eyes of a mad scientist and a fearful town.
The exaggerated setting and background throughout "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari's Cabinet" definitely deserves recognition for serving as an inspiration to Tim Burton films such as "Edward Scissorhands" and "The Nightmare Before Christmas".
establishing shot - a shot, usually involving a distant framing, that shows the spatial relations among the important figures, objects, and setting in a scene.
screen direction - the right- left relationships in a scene, set up in an establishing shot and determined by the position of characters and objects in the frame, by the directions of movement, and by the characters' eyelines. Continuity editing will attempt to keep screen directions consistent between shots.
match on action - a continuity cut that splices two different views of the same action together at the same moment in the movement, making it seem to continue uninterrupted.
cut-in - an instantaneous shift a distant framing to a closer view of some portion of the same place.
crosscutting - editing that alternates shots of two or more lines of action occurring in different places, usually simultaneously.
eyeline match - a cut obeying the axis of action principle, in which the first shot shows a person looking off in one direction and the second shows a nearby space containing what he or she sees. If the person looks left, the following shot should imply that the looker is offscreen right.
shot/reverse shot - two or more shots edited together that alternate characters, typically in a conversation situation. In continuity editing, characters in one framing usually look left, in the other framing, right.
mise-en-scene - all of the elements placed in front of the camera to be photographed: the settings and props, lighting, costumes, and makeup, and figure behavior.
