Research into mise-en-scene Miss Georgiou

Mise-en-scene is everything you see in a camera shot in a film, it is made up of five different elements: Setting and iconography, costume,hair and make up, facial expressions and body language, lighting and colour and positioning of characters or objects. Mise-en-scene helps the audience into understanding the conventions of a thriller in more detail.

I chose a clip from 'The woman in black' analyse because it has many different mise-en-scene elements within this specific clip.

In my clip from 'The woman in black' the scene is set in a little girls room, we can see this from the use of the teacups and dolls. This is then contrasted by their deaths because you don't expect any violence or killings in a little girls room. This makes the audience seem curious of what makes the girls kill themselves which is conventional to a thriller because of the themes of mystery and horror. The iconography used; the teacups and dolls are normally used for girls to play with and have fun, when the girls see the woman in black and walk to the window, they break the dolls and cups as seen in the screen shot above; which makes the audience wonder what has happened to make them behave so strangely, and then eventually jump to their death.

We can see that the film is set in the 19th century because of the costumes wore by the little girls. The old fashioned, posh dresses and shoes which is seen in the screen shot above, show the audience what era the film is set in and gives us an insight of how the characters may act. The girls' hair are done it up bows which we can infer that they are well looked after and possibly live a wealthy life. All of the girls look pale and have the same skin tone which shows us that they could be sisters. Sometimes in thriller movies a family is attacked which could be conventional to a thriller film.

The body language of the girls when they walk up to the window looks as if they are being controlled, possibly by the woman in black. This shows the terrifying actions the woman can make the little girls do, their facial expressions also change from smiling to a straight face this connotes again, that the woman is controlling their actions. The body language of the woman at the end of the clip is still like she is dead, she also is facing away from the camera which is hiding her identity, shown above,

which adds mystery to her character and like many thriller movies, mystery is a main theme.

The colours used in the room and on the girls are very light and plain, the light colours used are contrasted by the woman in black. Black can represent death and horror, which is what the woman causes and the light colours are linked with happiness. This helps the audience understand what the woman does to innocent children just by using different colours. The room is lit by the back light from the window which the girls jump out of, after their deaths and when the camera zooms out, the light from the window darkens as if death has taken over the room because of the woman in black. These lighting features that create horror and mystery and key to thriller movies.

The girls are always in the middle of the shot, this shows that they are important and that they are the main focus of the scene. Contrastingly the woman in black is position in the corner of the screen even though she is a main character throughout the whole film even though we only see glimpses of her, which makes her very eerie, which is conventional to a thriller film because it makes the audience curious of her character.

My mise-en-scene research will help me when planning my own thriller opening.