Mise En Scene - Miss G

Mise En Scene.

Mise En Scene is the arrangement of everything that appears in the framing such as:

• Settings & Props
• Costume, hair & make up
• Facial expressions and body language
• Lighting and color
• Position of characters

 

 Saw 5 (Head Game)

The setting in the scene from the movie Saw 5 is in an unknown room. The fact that the victims are trapped in an unknown location connotes that the victims cannot escape which therefore is conventional to a thriller as it keeps the audience on the edge of their seat as they are hoping the victims can find a way out to release themselves from torture. 

Furthermore, in the head game scene you can see the props used are neck traps, these signify and reinforce the pain and discomfort the victims are going through, this is conventional to a thriller movie as the props used is helping to show the victims suffering and the neck trap is a vague victim suffering tool to use, the audience are now placing themselves in the victims position and are shaking with horror.

Usually within horror movies you have a criminal/villain with either an hidden identity, powered character or is a psychopath.

The character shown on the right is the villain named 'Jigsaw'. Jigsaw is wearing a mask to hide his identity, Jigsaw is capturing each victim and is playing a game. The game is to escape by completing a task, if the victims are unable to complete the task they will face the consequences of a very crucial and painful death. This is conventional to a thriller as the villain is creating an enigma. This will keep the viewer captivated in the film and will therefore prevent the film from being boring as the enigma builds tension ready to shock the audience.

In addition to the villain, as the camera moves in different directions you can see that the mask has red swirls on both cheeks with red long marks above the lips, this can connote blood which could suggest that someone may die or tortured to an extent that there is blood shown.

A victims facial expression and body language in a thriller is far unusual to how an ordinary characters expressions and body language would be. As shown on the left is an image of the victim in the 'head game' scene, we can see by the characters facial expression that the she is expressing pain, her body language of holding onto the chains and dropping her body on the floor can be a metaphor of her dropping her hope of her surviving. This is conventional to a thriller movie as the victims are tortured to a certain level to where they completely give in until they have no hope, we can also relate this body position to a thriller as the victims always seem to be positioned in a less dominant way in which we can see from the image above, this immediately brings disappointment to the audience as they are wishing and hoping for the victim to dominate the villain.

With the use of lighting the audience can assume on the genre by the way the lighting is displayed. The lighting is a key aspect to a thriller scene as we can see on the image from a the scene head trap low key lighting is used which brings out the main objects and characters within the frame. The low key lighting is conventional to a thriller as it uses deep shadows to emphasize the characters and eliminates the background. These shadows are used to create a tone of suspense in which the shadows are less ominous but represent clearly the facial expressions of the characters. As the camera moves to different angles showing the back light and the main light focusing on the victims stomach. The victims stomach has a red blooded question mark printed on his stomach, the color red can symbolize blood and makes awareness to the audience that death is about to occur.

The way characters are positioned within a frame can tell the audience a lot about the character. The image on the right is part of the trapped scene where Emma is tied to a wall. We can portray here straight away that Emma is the victim and is the less dominant one as she cannot escape so here the villain is clearly winning. This is conventional to a thriller movie as the camera shot 'mid-shot' captures the true moment to where the victim has no turning backs, she has been defeated and is completely powerless. The audience are now at a stage to where they have to take in the truth, this is conventional to a thriller as the audience still have hope in the victim as they are forcing the victim not to give up in their minds.