Mise en Scène

Definition
Is an expression used to describe the design aspects of a theatre or film production, which essentially means "visual theme" or "telling a story"—both in visually artful ways through storyboarding, cinematography and stage design. When applied to the cinema genre, Mise en scene refers to everything that is in view of the camera, along with its arrangement, such as composition, props, sets, actors and lighting.


 The visual theme of our opening will include elements of standard life, whilst maintaining an eerie feel about it, following the trend of the thriller films we have looked at for inspiration in our project. We will tailor our opening so that the potential audience would have an idea of what is to be expected in our movie, along with future scenes that could take place. 


How we will incorporate Mise en Scene into our Opening:


Set Design:
We require props such as mirrors within our opening, as such we shall be filming a portion of our opening within suitable environments which are also easily accessible. Our opening will be shot inside through most, if not the entire scene.


Actors: We aren't going to use additional actors from outside of the group or project, mainly due to the fact we only need a key actor to play our 'lead' character, with the exception of another character or so for interactions within the opening. This decision allows us to avoid any complications with our filming, enabling us to complete the filming process with ease.


Costumes: Our thriller opening isn't overly dramatic, as such we don't have a massive need for costumes to enhance the actor's roles, it's a modern day thriller also, meaning that the use of 'normal' clothes would incorporate effectively into the clip. This is another factor that helps ease our filming time, as it eliminates the cost and difficulty in finding specialised costumes.


Composition: The last key component of Mise en Scene is composition. In order to effectively piece together our opening, we have ensured there are certain contrasts that blend into the opening clip as a whole. An example being the colour of clothing used on our main character, where when the mental 'switchover' occurs, the audience would have something to go by as the colour of clothing changes along with the mood of the scene. Considering we mainly have one character on a frame at a time, the task is also relatively easy in getting the scene to feel realistic.