The understanding and interpretation of pollution has stretch in to many disciplines. People are beginning to understand and experience the pollution in all human creations. I seem as if when ever man creates something it also produces waste… pollution. Throughout history from Ancient Greece to Andalusia, Ancient China, central Europe during the Renaissance until today, philosophers ranging from Aristotle, Al-Farabi, Al-Ghazali, Averroes, Buddha, Confucius, Dante, Hegel, Avicenna, Lao Tse, Maimonedes, Montesquieu, Nussbaum, Plato, Socrates and Sun Tzu wrote about the pollution of the body as well as the mind and soul.

Pollutionis the introduction of contaminants into an environment that causesinstability, disorder, harm or discomfort to the physical systems orliving organisms they are in. ( Definition from the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary)

Sometimesthe term pollution is extended to include any substance when it occurs at such unnaturally high concentration within a system that it endangers the stability of that system. An example is the potential of excessive noise to induce imbalance in a person's mental state, resulting in malfunction and psychosis; this has been used as a weapon in warfare.

This leads us to the concept of visual pollution. Visual pollution is anaesthetic issue, referring to the impacts of pollution that impair one's ability to enjoy a vista or view. The term is used broadly to cover visibility, limits on the ability to view distant objects, as well as the more subjective issue of visual clutter, structures that intrude upon otherwise "pretty" scenes, as well as graffiti and other visual defacement. Commonly cited examples are advertisements, billboards, houses, automobiles, traffic signs, roadsigns, highways, roadways, litter, graffiti, overhead powerlines, utility poles, contrails, skywriting, buildings and weeds.

Mise-en-scène is a French term and originates in the theater. It means, literally, "put in the scene." For film, it has a broader meaning, and refers to almost everything that goes into the composition of the shot, including the composition itself: framing, movement of the camera and characters, lighting, set design and general visual environment, even sound as it helps elaborate the composition. Mise-en-scène can be defined as the articulation of cinematic space, and it is precisely space that it is about. Cutting is about time; the shot is about what occurs in a defined area of space, bordered by the frame of the movie screen and determined by what the camera has been made to record. That space, the mise-en-scène, can be unique, closed off by the frame, or open, providing the illusion of more space around it. (Robert Kolker, Film Form and Culture)

When the filmmaker creates mise-en-scène, sometimes we experience pollution between the shot and the cut. And this pollutes the mise-en-scène itself. I like to identify this presence of pollutants in a movie as mise-en-pollution. We can find the mise-en-pollution in a movie in different forms and sizes. The pollutant that creates mise-en-pollutioncan vary from a badly composed shot to a repulsive product placement –an un-timed cut, bad color correction, out-of-place background music, mistreated costumes and makeup, unsynchronized acting/choreography –and it can be either one or more - combination of the above or many more that haven’t been mentioned.

The beads for pollution(pollutants) sometimes are in the script, or maybe in the concept or the plot. But even if there is a presence of pollution in the script, a better director can make it in to a good movie. On the other hand evena best script can end up as a subject to mise-en-pollutionin the hands of a lesser filmmaker. This scenario of unintentional pollutants can affect the quality of the film text and the appreciation level of the audience.

There are cases where mise-en-pollutionis created purposefully for financial, social or political gains (these types of movies more often than not are hidden agendas with various objectives that have nothing to do with creative or industrial aspects of filmmaking). In this sense such intentional pollution can do calculated and strategic harm to the unsuspecting audience.

Whether the pollution is intentional or unintentional it can have a negative effect on art. The viewers with less movie literacy may even see it as art. Worst such audience might develop a taste for the pollution and make it a marketable commodity creating a following of mass. When pollutants become marketable it generates a demand form investors and marketers to use pollutants to carry their message to the respective markets making mise-en-pollution an integral part of movie making.    

But mise-en-pollution should not be mistaken as product placement. Even though in some cases product placement can be categorized as mise-en-pollution, not all product placements can be identified as mise-en-pollution. A well placed product that synchronizes with the movie will not pollute the text or the context of the film.

 “ Aba ” out of synchronization

Aba is the most expensive film made in Sri Lanka. This makes it a film that should do well at the box-office. If it does the industry will attract more, high budget investors, and will create an atmosphere where more and more people become unafraid to make their investments on high budget movies. But with such investment Aba had the potential and financial background to become a better film than what we saw on screen.

The film has three distinguish acting styles. The acting of Aba consists of a realistic component, a theatrical component and a musical component. It adds glamour and color to popular cinema when it has such variations in acting. It supposed to be a good thing for the film. But the problem is that Aba has neither synchronized nor tuned these acting styles when creating the mise-en-scène.This lack of synchronization can be identified both with in the shot where different actors play different style at different levels and also in the scene or sequence when the characters change the acting styles in-between cuts (eg: from realistic to musical). This is just one of the many flounders in the movie. 

As such when the acting is out of synchronization, the phenomenon of being out of synchronization act as a pollutant coursing the pollution in mise-en-scène.But the spectator with less cinema literacy will not recognize this phenomenon as pollution. They appreciate the film and will develop a taste for it and will produce an emotional response. In the process the spectator develops a taste for polluted mise-en-scène. So we can conclude that acting out of synchronization produces mise-en-pollution.