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.

Characterisation

In Psychological Thrillers, the behaviour of characters usually represent  psychology, as the characters often battle their own minds, e.g. trying to determine what is real, or who they actually are.

Typical Characters in psychological thrillers include:
Characters with Dark pasts- Silence Of The Lambs
Psychotic Individuals- The Shining
Menaced Women-Sleeping With The Enemies
Innocent Victims-Hear No Evil, See No Evil

The Characters psychological state is the driving force of the plot line, and often there is a first person narrative allowing the viewer to better understand the characters psychological state of mind.

Typical Characters in Psychological Thrillers:

Here is the mood board that covers the topic of Characterisation in our teaser trailer.  We want to focus on the transition of our character from before he takes the drug, to after he takes the drug. We therefore collected photos of TV and Film "villains" as well as "heroic"  and "anti heroic" characters for our mood board, to portray the change in personality our protagonist will face in our teaser trailer. We focused on the character Bradley Cooper plays in the Film "Limitless"  and his character change  after he takes the drug, as it is a similar transition. This shown through the image on the mood board of a close-up of him holding the drug in his hand, and the image to left where he has blood over his clothes. 

Originally we wanted our protagonist to be a male, so we focused on looking at male characters when creating the mood board, however, after creating a survey, and asking people what gender they would want the protagonist to be, the majority chose female, so we decided to change the gender of the character. It is stereotypical of Psychological Thrillers to cast a male protagonist so we have decided to subvert this. It will challenge the audience's expectations and this is one of the criteria a film of this genre should conform to. 

Mood and Tone

These are our mood board photos that cover the topic of the mood and tone of our teaser trailer.

At the beginning of our trailer, we are going to have a fast paced montage of a perfectly normal, and happy life.

At the party she protagonist is offered a drug.

And then the lights go bright red, as she takes it for the first time. 

And then she's in the party, and she's disorientated.

And she looks directly into the camera, breaking the fourth wall.

Everyone around her is distorted and the bright lights add to this effect.

Then after the party, his life goes rapidly downhill and a fast paced montage depicts her mental and physical deterioration. 

Cinematography

As the narrative of our trailer deals with issues such drugs and alcohol, the majority of our cinematography inspiration derives from films that also deal with these issues.These include, Judge Dredd, Limitless and Wolf of Wall Street. I have picked out shots from these films that successfully depict the effect of drugs, similarly to how we wish to convey them.

Judge Dredd presents the drug scenes with very bright an vivid colouring to represent the change in their mental states. As our trailer is a Psychological Thriller, it is key to portray the psychological shift from when the character is sober, to when under the influence of drugs.

This psychological shift can be depicted in various ways, Judge Dredd conveys it through use of vivid colour imagery and slow motion editing, however, it can also be done through editing such as layering, this is seen in Limitless, as the effects of his drug begin to change, negatively.

Emphasis is placed on the drugs in several sequences, through camera framing, such as in Wolf of Wall Street, as an extreme close up displays the drug use of the protagonist, as this becomes a focal point in his life, it also becomes a focal point of the screen.

Lighting is in Under The Skin to depict the protagonist's mental state, although this film does not explore drug use, it greatly demonstrates the ways in which lighting can be used effectively to convey psychological
instability.

Extreme lighting, such as red and black, are used to convey this, these colours connote aspects of the film such as pain, evil and death. This extreme use of colour is something we could bring through in our teaser trailer to depict this aspects about our protagonist.