This is a video about the Mis en scene we used in our thriller ‘Blank Canvas’. We thought about it a lot frequently as a group and it was a massive part of our thriller developing process.
- Costume - For our costumes we wanted to keep them simple as we had a simple scene going on. The mis en scene of costume used in our piece was also thoroughly thought through. The choice of the painter being in a typical jumpsuit that you would wear as a uniform for a job shows that maybe his job is involved with blood and as there is a dead body maybe he is a hit man of some sort. The bodies costume also was a key point in expressing that he is the innocent one as the body was dresses in white which connotes a sense of innocence and by the painters jumpsuit being darkly coloured we wanted to show a stark contrast of good and bad.
- Lightning - The lighting in our piece we wanted to be quite sterile and simple. The use of high lighting on the painters face showed that he was the dominant man in the situation. We wanted to subvert the typical stereotype of the girl being tied up by the kidnaping man though that you would stereotypically see in most movies.
- Props - Our props again were very basic. They all wre pivotal to the scene as well as being simple for example there would be no blank canvas without the prop of the canvas and this really added to the mis en scene of props to our video.
- location/set design, - Our location/ set again was very simple. It was supposed to be a small dark room with minimal furniture for example it was just an easel a table and a slab with the body on it and this was so simple so that the audience could focus on just the most important things in the room.
- Costume & Make-up, - Costume and makeup were deifinitely huge factors in our thriller. This was because we had a dead body so the makeup was all down to fake blood and making the dead body look dead.
- Performance (i.e. positioning and facial expressions) We wanted the body to be shivering so we made sure that Ollie was shivering and in fact on the day he was quite cold so it added to the effect. His positinoning was of course just to look limp and we wanted our psychopath tom to always be stood away from ollie and not touch him.
- Why have you made these choices? Think about genre, genre conventions and your audience. We have made these choices to convey the genre of thriller. Every aspect of our Mis en scene build up a suspense/mystery which creates tension within the audience and tension is a huge convention of the thriller genre.
- What do your props, costume etc. suggest about your characters, narrative. What hints do they give towards the rest of your plot as an opening sequence? We have made sure that the simple contrast of the psychopath being in dark and the victim being in white shows who is good and who is bad (dark is bad, light is good). This will give a clear insight to the audience from the outset and show a clue about what is going to happen throughout the sequence we hope.
- What problems can you foresee with your decisions. Did this happen on the shoot day, and if so what did you do? At the moment I don’t see any problems with these decision as we have such a simple piece/idea, the only thing that could go wrong is we could make it to obvious in our editing and the whole suspense and tension build up could not work as well as we want it to.
