Sunday, March 3, 2024

Mise en Scene


The setting of my film is important, as it correlates to the character's journey through the film. In my genre statement, I said that one of the themes of the movie is isolation. This is depicted through the setting, which is mainly the character's bedroom, so it was important to make the setting feel almost detached in a way like how the character feels.

Because of the isolation theme and the main set being the bedroom, the first 2 minutes of the film had to be in the bedroom with the characters by themselves. And the mise en scene had to be in a specific way.

The first two minutes take part in a tiny section of the room where there’s a corner that has a door that leads to it. This section is part of my house and was one of the influencing factors for the story. It even influenced me for the bug film that I was working on with my prior group. I have always looked at it as the weird part of the room as it wasn’t supposed to be there just a consequence of building in a old house. How I decorate it influences the mise en scene as usually it's covered with pictures and posters everywhere but in the beginning, had only some posters and it was unsettling almost like it was half done. I hated it as it felt like such a detached corner of the room, and I got the idea of what if it could be something.

What if I could use the section of my room that I don’t like for being isolated, detached, and eerie for that same reason? And so, I decided that I would go with that idea for the mise en scene. Having paintings or decorations hung in an awkward manner where there is no rhyme or reason and it is all in one place yet it feels like something is missing would be the set design.

Before doing my solo project, I had pitched this idea to the group film that I worked on. In my figuring out the details blogs I had sketches of what I pictured scenes of the bug movie, and one of my ideas was a taxidermy wall. A quick way to showcase a character's likes and hobbies. This wasn’t possible because of the resources but I liked the idea and I felt like I could get all the possible props for it if it was with painting instead. And that’s where most of the colors come from in the scene.

My room is naturally painted with warm and pastel colors, and I wanted to contrast that. A big thing was that I added a rug to my floor to keep in mind the paler color scheme I was trying to achieve as the flooring contrasted too much.

The character wears black bottoms, and a white shirt along with her black her it sandwiches the colors together. She wears messy clothing with her hair in a lopsided bun to show her struggle with her physical appearance. Throughout the shots, I put the access in the center or close to one of the walls to showcase that she feels trapped and isolated. The fact that she is so centered is unsettling.

Setting up all of this took a long time to do especially with moving things around in my room. My room still hasn’t recovered from the mess I created. But it was worth it to fulfill what I envisioned.

The mise en scene  of my film, plus a dog

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