Mise-en-scene Choices Explained

During our shoot day we used mise-en-scene to enhance our thriller sequence. Throughout the first scene in the bedroom we placed a wrinkled up vest on the floor, an iPhone on the nightstand and we used to the nightstand lamp to add powerful yellow tones to the frame. Placing the phone on the nightstand allowed us to begin of our thriller with a pleasant panning shot. Subsequently the yellow tones from the lamp created fantastic contrasts during our second shot, and finally placing the vest on the floor allowed us to capture a beautiful shot of our main character picking up the vest and putting it on. All together the following placement of props allowed our group to coordinate a successful scene with denotations to be made by the audience about the husband character. Throughout our next scene we made sure that the kitchen was clean and provided a cutting board and knife for our female actress.

Additionally we told our female actor that we’d like her to act fragile, whilst we told our male actor we wanted him to act dominating. The purpose of all of the following aspects of mise-en-scene was to create a certain portrayal of the character in our sequence. Creating this portrayal allowed for us to film a successful twist ending later on during the shooting day. Continuing we gave our female actress a knife and cutting board to use throughout the sequence that served as tension builders at one point in our thriller introduction. Lastly we also had the door blinds closed during our zooming shot towards the door to create a sense of suspense. Overall we were able to utilize most of the mise-en-scene to create a gradually changing portrayal of character whilst also supplying tension and suspense, as well as one jump scare.