Mise-En-Scene Miss Georgiou

Mise-En-Scene

In this blog I will be discussing five different mise-en-scene elements that are religiously seen within a thriller. These features include Setting and Iconography, Costume, hair & Make up, Facial Expressions/Body Language, Lighting and colour, Positioning of  characters and/or objects. The clip of which I have chosen takes place in the film 'Fatal Attraction'. I decided to analyse this particular clip because 'Fatal Attraction' is a very well known thriller that contains a lot of conventions and therefore will give me some inspiration to my own clip that I will soon be creating.

To begin with the clip, there is low-key lighting present within the shot as well as a mid-shot. The lack of vibrant colours within the scene creates an eery effect on the audience and therefore is connotational to a typical thriller film because it creates a sense of forbodding. Because it is a mid shot, it shows the most expressive part of body language and allows you to get a sense of what the character is feeling. This is typical in a thriller because it gives you a sense of mystery and unknowing. After this shot. a close up of the boiler is shown because it is the main focus of what is currently going on, and adds to the eery background.

Another often seen connotation of a thriller is body language. Body Language helps convince the audience that the situation is very much real because body lanuage shows how a character is feeling. If the audience feel as if the character is tense and uncomfortable, aswell as in distress... the audience feels inclined to mimic the body language in the sense of feeling uptight and unnerved. This is conventional to a thriller film because it gives the audience an insight as to how the character is feeling, and what they feel about the situation. 

Lets look at another part of mise-en-scene... the location. The location in thriller film is key because it sets the background and often the mood. This particular scene is set in a house. The location of a house is widely used throughout thrillers because homes are meant to be a sense of security and so by an activity which disturbs the peace within a home is going to disturb the audience to an extent because it makes them feel as if the situation could happen to them, therefore releasing a sense of reality. This is conventional to a thriller film because it shows a great element of shock, suspense and surprise.

As part of mise-en-scene, facial expressions is key. Facial expressions are very important in films, particularly in thrillers because it helps capture how each specific character is feeling and in this case, this character looks to be somehow deranged, which is con notational to a thriller because it's something you associate with it. Also, the character looks scared, as well as angry. This could be used to emphasize not only how the character is feeling, but how the audience may have felt throughout the film.

 

Something that also plays a big part of mise-en-scene is costumer, hair and make-up. In this clip, if we look at this female character with the blonde, curly hair we can say that her hair is a metaphor for her personality because if you pull on a spring so it's straight, and let go.. it aggressively bounces back to it's original shape... in this clip you can see that the 'villan' is very much like that, which despite taking some of the mystery that comes with a thriller away, it shows a sense of realism and actually works to engage the audience.

A lot of different things add together to create mise-en-scene. Another thing is the colours used. Throughout the clip, the colours of black and white are used. The reason for this is because in thrillers, it is often typical that low key lighting is used, or just dull colours amongst bright light. The reason that low key lighting is used in this,with only the basic colours such as black and white is because it could represent the difference between life and death. The reason for this is because the colour white is often associated with life and innocence, where as the colour black can often be interpreted to be seen as evil and death. The contrast within the colours gives a misleading view and combination of the two, as it shows that there will be a survivor, and that one will be dead.

Iconography us also used in the film. If we look at this screen shot above, it shows the drowning victim holding a knife. A knife is more often than not seen in thriller films because it is not only a deffensive weapon, but it's also widely used for attacking and is often shown to represent the theme of violence. However in this shot it comes across very different to how the situation truly is, as actually the person without the weapon is the victim within the situation.


This clip will help me to achieve a good thriller clip because it contains a lot of convetional features that are seen in thrillers and because it is so well known amongst people, it is a great influence to have my work on, therefore I believe it is a good inspiration to have and contribute to making my thriller at a high standard.