Mise en Scene

Mise en Scene literally means 'everything in the scene'. It is visual information that the viewer subliminally decodes and through this communticates essential information to the audience. There are six elements to mise en scene that will be relevant to my teaser trailer in the genre 'Thriller/horror'

Setting/Location - these are fundamental to the audience's understanding of the message being sent out by the director/cinemotographer, because they are not just a 'background'. Choosing my setting/location for my teaser trailer will be essential to the success of my product, because I need to make sure it fits in with my chosen genre of thriller/horror. Setting it in a house and/or park would be ideal because I can play on a lot of things especially with editing e.g. doors slamming/villain entering the house when victim is unsuspecting upstairs.

Props - like setting and location, props are essential to the audiences understanding. In my project, props such as mobile phones/watches are acceptable because it will be a modern thriller. However, because it is a thriller, I could use props such as knives or rope or other sinister objects that have a clear message that they send out - that the audience should be tense/scared.

Costume/Hair/Makeup - all three of these work in unison to tell the audience about the character's personality, status and job - and sometimes what they think about themselves but what everyone else sees. In my project, I don't want to reveal the identity of my villain, so his costume will probably involve a hood or something that will always keep his face in darkness. However, I want my victim to be a bit of a social outcast so she would wear something like bright skinny jeans and a band t-shirt because that isn't mainstream fashion.

Facial Expressions and Body Language - facial expressions are the main indicators of how someone is feeling. Body language can reveal how characters feel towards each other or in a situation or can reflect the state of a relationship. I can use this to my advantage in my project, because facial expressions will show how my victim is feeling and `the body language between her and my victim will show their power struggle relationship.

Positioning of Character/objects within a frame (blocking) - positioning within a frame is a way that a director can draw the audience's attention to either a character/object. A film-maker can use this to an advantage to idicate relationships between characters/objects. In my teaser trailer I can use this to establish the relationship between my characters.

Lighting and colour - Lighting is used to highlight import characters or objects within the frame. It can also be used to make characters more mysterious through the use of shading, and it's used to reflect a character's mental state e.g. bright = happy, dark = myseterious, strobing = confusion

Low key lighting - is created by using only the key and back lights. It produces sharp contrasts of light and dark areas and deep distinctive shadows/silhouettes are formed for effect. This will be the style of lighting that I will aim to use in my project because it fits in with my genre, and it also has connotations of mystery,  which is what the villain's identity will be - a mystery.

High Key Lighting - in this style of lighting, more filler lights are used so that the lighting is more natural and realistic to our eyes. It produces brightly lit sets or can emphasize a sunny day. This would be an inappropriate style of lighting to use in my thriller/horror teaser trailer, because it won't give off a sense of mystery and would therefore lose it's credibility.

Colour can be used to shape a meaning or understanding to the audience. It can have either a connotative or denotative meaning;

Conotation: the set of associations implied by a word in addition to its literal meaning.

Denotation: The most specific, literal or direct meaning of the word.

So, the denotation of any colour is that it is a colour. But the connotations can imply much more and shape the audiences understanding much more fully.
E.g. Black has connotations of darkness, mystery, funerals, death, enigma and evil.
Blue: Calmness, saddness, loneliness, peace, authority, coldness
Green: Sickness, new life (Spring), jealousy, nature, eco-issues
White: Purity, innocence, death (china/italy), Sterility (hospitals), cold, blank, desolate, goodness
Red: lust, romance, love, passion, danger, anger, hatred
Purple: peace, royalty, power, holiness

I can subtly use colour, in my project, in things like props/costume/lighting to emphasise the message I want my audience to recieve at any particular moment within my trailer. The shade of which colour can have so many connotations, that if I used an ECU on the whites of my victims eyes, and changed the contrast so they looked a pure white it could emphasize the fact she is pure and has done nothing wrong, but that that is about to change when my villain steps in.