Mise-en-scene project

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So, last week our teacher had us do a mise-en-scene project. A quick recap on what mise-en-scene means, it's the lights, set, costumes, props, etc. of a film or any sort of media creation. For example, in a musical like Mamma Mia you'd see Greek buildings, a beach, or the island as well as lighter colors, high-key lighting, the diary, Donna's overalls. You get it. 

Now the goal of the activity was to see if we truly understood mise-en-scene in the context of a specific character. Our teacher gave us a short character description and we had to create their entire life through a soundscape, mood board, presentation, tactile board, and set model. My character was a movie lover who enjoys social get togethers with friends, they write a movie blog on which they post critiques of popular movies. We chose her name as Cameron Lee and made her a USC student majoring in Film who posts on Letterboxd. My group created a model of her apartment, a model doll of her, a tactile board of things associated with her, a notebook she would use to write her reviews down before posting them, a mood board for her character, a soundscape of her daily life, and a presentation to tie it all together. 

We had to create stations after all was done to allow our fellow classmates to view our creation, each group had their own little area to setup. We used 4 laptops to allow for each seat at the station to be able to click through our Google Slides presentation found here: Mise-en-Scene slides. We set up the tactile board in the middle so every student at the station could feel it while watching our soundscape as they were directly tied together, students would watch the soundscape video which had words presented, such as "Touch the popcorn.", and the students would touch that certain item for the part they were on. We left the model of the doll standing next to some of the computers as to present her and we left the set model on the desks that the doll wasn't on as to create a better space. The notebook was left near the center of others two desks, the formation was sort of like every 2 desks had something out of the 4. The bottom left and right shared the notebook, the top right and bottom right shared the doll, the top left and bottom left shared the set model, and the two top ones didn't have anything but we left space for them to view the notebook as well. 

We used the classic film major stereotype seen both in movies and real life, they love movies and become very critical of every film they watch as they know more about the working of the films than others do. We also used the stereotype of a college student as her outfits consisted mostly of sweatpants and her life consisted of school and friends. I have to say my group and I worked very well together and we were on the same page about everything when it came to creating our character. We all did our own parts as well without any arguments about who was or wasn't doing something, I took the mood board and creating the slides presentation, Marissa took the soundscape, Christina took the model doll, and Alana took the set model and the notebook creation. We were told by our peers that ours was very well done, which was nice to hear as we had put so much work into it.

To see all the media from this project click here → Mise-en-Scene media