Planning: Mise-en-Scene

Mise-En-Scene is French for ‘Set the scene’. Mise-En-Scene has five aspects: costumes, props, sets, lighting and space. The one thing that all of those have in common is that they all give you an idea of what a character is going to be like weather or not it is in theatre or film. I will go into detail about all five of those aspects which set the scene.

Costume

This is one of the most important aspects for setting the scene. The costume for people who do not know what it is are the clothes of which the character on screen or on stage is wearing. This is important because, you can gather a lot of information about the character by their fashion sense. This will give away so much detail for an example whether or not someone is a slob or  very proud of themselves and dresses like he has a business meeting every day. You can learn a lot about a character from the way they dress.

Straight away in this picture you know who they are and what type of people they are going to be. You know that they are royals. You can tell that they are high status because, of the clothing which they are wearing. However this image also covers props, the King is wearing a crown. The crown is considered a prop because, it is something that he does not have to be wearing but he can touch.

Props

Props are items which the person on screen can touch. These are very important in setting the scene because, it can let you know what type of character the person is playing. An example is if the person lives in a dark mansion and he has lots of gothic pictures hanging up on the walls. We learn a lot about the scene and the character just by what props are in the scene.

Sets

This is probably the most common part of setting the scene, the set is the location which the scene takes place. You can learn a lot about the type of person which the scene wants you to focus on. The scene can tell you a number of different things about the character, for example if the characters are poor or if they are rich. The surrounding is arguably the most important part of setting the scene. 

The Lighting

This is probably one aspect of setting the scene that a lot of people would have normally over looked. However the lighting can tell you a lot about the characters through two different types of lighting, high key and low key. High key lighting is a type of lighting which tries to climate all of the shade which would normally be visible. High key lighting is used in light hearted and comedic scenes which is created by having for lights on the subject - one behind, one directly in front and two on either side. Low key lighting is the complete opposite, it casts shadows, which hides parts of the face thus, creating mystery and an intimidating personality to the character.

                                  

Space

Space helps identify status of characters in a scene, the higher a person is in a frame reflects higher levels of power a character has. An example of this is if there is somebody on the left hand side and somebody at the right hand side of somebody else and that person is centred and higher in the shot gives a clear sign that the person is the middle is in charge. By doing this you are manipulating space.

This is a good image to show space manipulation. This is from a TV show called Merlin, this is the scene where Arthur becomes King. It shows him front and centre. All of the lords and knights on the right side and all of the members of the castle on the left side. It has its hierarchy which is evident in this image as he appears larger than the other subjects as well as higher, showing dominance.