Mise En Scene Task

11/09/2016

Mise en Scène Task

What was the task?

To film a two minute film opening using miss en scène elements that we were given.

The mise en scène elements which we were given were:

- A 5 year old boy

- A boat on the Norfolk Broads

- A mug of tea

- Artificial lighting or neon lights

- A suit

We decided to change the 5 year old boy to a 10 year old boy for convenience because Evie's brother is 10 years old.

Casting Ideas:

We only have two characters in our film opening. One of which is Evie's 10 year old brother (Herbie) and then Evie's mum (Sara). We chose them to be our characters because Herbie has a very vivid imagination and therefore is able to play the role of the character very well. We choose Sara because she is in the correct age range and is actually the mother of Herbie and therefore it is realistic.

We went through with these casting ideas as we felt that they were appropriate for our plot in the opening two minutes.

Location Ideas/Research:

We were given 'a boat on the Norfolk broads' instead of filming the entire 2 minutes on the broads with a real boat we decided to have a small boy putting a paper boat onto the broads and then his imagination takes him onto a real boat. We decided to do this for convenience because it would've cost us to hire a real boat on the broads. Instead we made use of the fact that we know of an abandoned boat on a beach in Weyborne and decided to use this for the imagination scene. We also have a seven at a park before the boy goes and puts the paper boat on the broads and this scene features his mum. We were thinking that we would do this scene at a park.

Due to circumstances out of our control we were unable to film at our given location of the Norfolk Broads or our initial idea of Weyborne beach. Instead we decided to film at a location near to us, called Broome pits and Ditchingham playground. We choose these two locations as they were convenient for us to get to under the circumstances. The locations we used were very effective. The park we chose was completely empty which added impact to the story because it made Herbie seem more abandoned and alone.

Prop Research/Ideas:

The prop we were given to use was a mug of tea. However we will change this to a flask of tea instead because the character drinking it will be outside so we feel that a flask is more appropriate. Another prop we will use is a newspaper for Herbie to make a boat out of.

We stuck with these prop ideas and used only a mug of tea and a newspaper. After we had filmed the scenes and put the clips together we realised that the headline on the cover of the news paper is about the Syrian crisis. Herbie takes the newspaper and creates paper boats and sends them away on the water. We are concerned that someone may read into this message and think that there was an underlying racist message that we were trying to convey. However we were not actually aware of these connotations and definitely did not set it up purposefully.

Costume Research/Ideas:

The Costume which we have been given is a suit. This is easily achievable for us as Herbie already owns a suit which he can wear for the filming. We've decided that Herbies mum should wear casual clothes that a mother would typically wear on an average day out with her son.

There was a slight issue with the suit that Herbie was supposed to wear as we hadn't realised that he had outgrown it. However we were able to compensate buy him wearing his school trousers, a shirt and Evie's school blazer and some posh shoes. Evie's blazer was slightly too big for him but we thought that this suited the film opening as it looks like he maybe wants to be older than he really is and this is shown by him wearing an oversized jacket. His mum just wore one of her average outfits that she would normally wear.

Lighting Ideas/ Research:

The mise-en-scène lighting condition we have been given is artificial lighting. The idea which we have come up with is to use glow sticks on the pathway to where he makes the paper boats to give it a more magical and imaginative feeling and to make it look like he was a direction to follow so it is like he already has a path set out of him.

Unfortunately when we got to our location we realised that we had forgotten to bring the glow sticks and it was not really possible for us to go back to get them so we decided to continue without the prop. In the end we didn't feel it was necessary for them to be used anyway as we didn't want to give too much away about the storyline within the opening two minutes of our film.

Initial Plot Ideas:

Our initial plot idea is about a young boy who uses his imagination to escape the boredom of his everyday life. His mum takes him to a playground where she sits on a bench, drinks a flask of tea and just sits on her phone totally ignoring her son and not realizing that he is not having a great time. He sits on a swing which is way to small for him and looks at his mum. There is an old newspaper laying next to him and as he rocks on the swing he kicks it. Looking around his environment he spots a close by river. He makes sure his mum is not paying attention (she is still on her phone), takes the piece of newspaper and runs off to the river. At the river he builds a small paper boat and lets it off very excited. As it slowly sails down the river he imagines a little man on the boat waving at him.

After that he stands on a boat pretending to be a sailor.

In the end we felt that it was not necessary to include the last scene which would've been of Herbie imagining himself in the boat. We did not incorporate this as we felt that we had already revealed enough in the opening two minutes.