Away for the Holiday :)

I will be away for the festive period so i will not be blogging from the 28/12/10 till the 03/01/11

Looking for Music

As we now know what our thriller film is about we are looking for music to feature in our film. We must use sites which allow us access to unsigned, non copyright music and be absolutely sure they give us 100% permission to use the music.
We are using a website called mobygratis.com to find this music as it is a site full of unsigned music. The site is dedicated to projects like mine where people can use the music for free, on their projects and have the permission of the artists as the music is unsigned.

Mise En Scene: Positioning of Characters & Objects

Positioning of Characters & Objects

Film makers can use positioning within a frame in a variety of ways:

• if the character or object is in the foreground of a image we know as a audience that we should attach some sort of significance/ importance to this character/object, and vise versa 
• A moving body/object placed against a stationary background will immediately draw our attention as it would in real life. 
• Characters/objects positioned evely within a frame will give a balance feel to the shot. if they are all at one end of the frame, it would create an inbalance for the eye by making the shot feel heavy on one side. This can be used to make the audience feel settles or unsettled , thus involving them in the action.
• The positioning of characters can indicate relationships. If two people were very close to each other, huggin, we would asume they are friends, possibly lovers,

        if they are on either side of the frame then we would assume they are very distant with each other.

Mise En Scene: Lighting & Colour

Lighting


Like i have spoke about before, lighting can be used to give a particular scene a realistic, or dramatic look.
It can be used in a variety of ways, including

• to highlight important characters or objects within the frame by drawing attention towards them with a bright light source (often in chiaroscuro) 
• to make a character look mysterious by shading sections of the face/ body
• to reflect a characters confused state of mind suggested by altering bright and dark light quickly, in a strobe effect

Colour

As discussed in a earlier entry, colour carries a very significant importance and influence to a mood or feeling a character needs to portray. The way which we associate certain colours with certain feelings, we associate certain colours with certain genres particularly with reference to film posters and publicity materials which rely on the public quickly being able to identify with a film even from a distance. 

Mise En Scene: Facial Expression & Body Language

Facial Expressions

In cinema the camera can be at a range of distances to portray the actor in a extreme close up, or as a dot in the distance through the use of a long shot.

This range of possible distances means that different emphasis's will be placed on facial expressions and body language to accurately convey the correct type of shot.

If someone was happy they would be smiling

If they were sad they would be frowning or crying

Depending on what the film maker wants to portray will effect the facial expression of the character.

Body Language

The way in which we hold and move our bodies also indicates how we feel and think. Not everyone portray the same body language but things which we will normally recognise are things such as curling up into a ball to protect ourselves.

Some films call for realistic types of behavior, although films from the music genre will contain types of behaviour that wouldn't usually happen in real life, for instance when the characters burst into a song.

Mise En Scene: Setting & Props

Setting

The setting of a film is more important and significant than the setting of a theatre and is ALMOST ALWAYS more detailed. In the initial stages of making a film the objective would be to find a location which already exists. This location will then be altered to reflect exactly what the filmmaker is trying to portray. A setting can be used for much more than simply telling us where something is happening. It can be used to manipulate the audience into building certain expectations.

In these different genre's our expectatons of mise en scene change, along with what we should take away form the shot.

 For example if we saw a image of a hill side...

... we would begin to think the setting is quite, peacefull, very agricultural. 

If we saw a image of a crowded city on the other hand, our interpretations change.

We would think of lots of people, a busy , lively setting.

Props


Props is the term given to objects that are present in the setting which lay a part in the action, instead of being a background object. This would be a gun for example in someone's hand.

Mise En Scene: Costume Hair & Make - up

The costume, hair and make up of a character plays a huge part in the mise en scene as it can be used in such a variety of ways to indicate to us a characters personality, social stats and job.
We can tell if the character is in the present day or past,

Their culture,

a clue as to the part the character plays in a film,

We can clearly see this person is a police officer via her costume.

and also the genre of the film.

With the use of this cape, w can assume that this film is of a thriller/horror genre.

Make Up

Make up in the early days of cinema was fundamental to highlight certain facial features as the black and white film stock couldn't register detail very well.