Mise en scene

Mise en Scene

In Psychological thrillers, low-key lighting and shadows are normally used.  They add tension into a scene, and in some cases, are used to represent the inner darkness within a character. Sometimes, red lighting, or white lighting is used to create a sense of disorientation and to portray a characters mood.

 

Setting:  The setting of a psychological thriller is commonly used to portray and outline a characters life, through where they live, the things they own and what their lifestyle is like before they meet a series of unfortunate events, which will haunt them psychologically. Psychological thrillers are usually set in an urban area, or a house.

Costumes: In psychological thrillers,  the protagonist usually wears something that draws the attention of the audience making them stand out from the other characters. The protagonist is usually wearing brightly coloured clothing, juxtaposing the Antagonist who would stereotypically wear dark, black clothing representing suspicion etc. The antagonist also usually wears smart clothing e..g. A suit or a shirt and jeans. Costumes usually match the location of the film, e.g. in  a built up area the character would be wearing a suit and tie.

Here is the mood board that covers the topic of Mise en scene in our teaser trailer. We have chosen to focus on red lighting for our teaser trailer, so we can convey the disorientation and confusion of the protagonist when she takes the drug. We want our trailer to have a variety of different locations, however it will mainly take place in her house. After she takes the drug, her personality will change and we want to convey that by using “dark” locations such as an alleyway or a dark corridor etc. We will also use low-key lighting for this to represent the darkness of the character. We decided that our protagonist would wear “normal teenage clothing” to fit with the conventions of the genre. She will wear a suit in the school location as it matches the location, this is conforming tot he costume stereotype in Psychological thrillers. Once she has taken the drug we are going to change her clothing to darker colours, similar to typical Antagonists in psychological thrillers. This subverts the stereotype of typical costumes in psychological thrillers. We decided to do this to convey to the audience that she is her own worst enemy, exploring the theme of split personalities, and that she is essentially battling with herself.