Mise-en-Scene 📹

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The Mise-en-scene project has been, by far, the most interesting project I've ever worked on. After being given a character description, my team and I had to create a full representation of this character in a multimedia presentation that encompassed the many sides and aspects that made up this character. Our presentation had to include a description of the character (literal or visual), a mood board, a setting that best characterizes them, and audio and tactile elements for added depth and variety.

Alice Rose, or AR, as she prefers to be called, is a tech-savvy middle schooler who loves computers, tinkering with gadgets, and hanging out with her friends and the character we'd been assigned to create. She loves videogames, the color indigo, and coding and robotics.

My team and I, after much brainstorming, thought the best way to represent her character was to use her own abilities in our favour. Using Scratch, a simple coding website by MIT, we created an interactive room where many items could be clicked in order to learn more about AR through the things she keeps in her bedroom. I designed the room using Canva and, in it, we included a large computer where she spends her afternoons, a robot, and a box of tools with which she creates gadgets, as well as posters of her hobbies and photos of her friends. With the coding, it was possible to click on all these items and learn of their importance in AR's life. 

Click here to visit the interactive room. 

Aside from this coded setting, we created a playlist that covered some of her tastes including original soundtracks and a genre called shoegaze, featuring her favourite artists from each and we brought in a small robot, used for robotics, to represent one that she was building.

We used a couple of stereotypes when creating AR since we made her a very "boyish" girl after reading that she was tech-savvy. This is a stereotype because it is what is largely seen en masse about girls that are techy; they're not generally "girly."  We followed the basis of the character's traits as they were given to us and we used selection to make sure that these were specifically demonstrated by only showing those traits, i.e. the computers to show the techy side of her.

I think that my group did a great job in creating all the elements required because we gave her a solid personality that describes all sides of her required and we included all of these in a single space that represented her. Every team member contributed to a different aspect of the project, with someone making the playlist, someone the mood board, someone the coding and I the bedroom setting. Through all this process we talked with one another and discussed what best portrayed her character through the choices we made in each of our tasks. The outcome of this project as a logical and coherent project that I think the whole team is quite proud of. Despite this project's difficulties, we worked hard to present a good representation of our dear character.

Genre Research- Mystery 🔎

Solving the Mystery of the Mystery Genre

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Mystery is defined as something that is difficult or impossible to understand or explain. In film, the mystery genre contains many twists and turns that leave the audience constantly guessing, until, finally, all the pieces click together and we get "the big reveal" that finally wraps up the story and solves our mystery. It includes an incident, often a crime though it's not a requirement, that starts the plot of the story and solving it is the main goal of the film. Finding clues, collecting information, and having many possible suspects are necessary in this genre, and the movie only concludes once the culprit is found or the mystery is solved. It often features a detective figure, who solves the mystery; a culprit, who is usually a person can also be a thing or an idea; and possible suspects, who all may be a believable culprit for numerous reasons.

Content:

Often seen in this genre of films is the investigator, suspects and criminals, and clues and misdirection.

Mystery films feature someone who must solve the puzzling issue, the investigator. The audience often learns of clues at the same pace that the investigator does, drawing us in by allowing us to solve the mystery along with them. They usually are a separate party, personally uninvolved in the mystery they are solving, which allows them to have an objective view of the crime. They can, however, sometimes have a personal stake in the mystery that compels them to solve it for themselves.

The Maltese Falcon (1941) follows detective Sam Spade (Humphrey Bogart) as he investigates the murder of his partner, detective Miles Archer (Walter Long). However, the audience only learns of clues and suspects as Sam does, limiting the storyline to the detective's point of view.

Suspects and criminals are also a very important and prominent convention seen in mystery films. Suspects are often the way that the investigator gathers their clues and solves the mystery. They are linked to the crime or offense in some way and they each have a motive or opportunity that could mean they are antagonist. The villain should be amongst these suspects also, but it is sometimes used as a big plot twist where they are someone completely unexpected. They know they are guilty and they know who is investigating them, so they try to outsmart and mislead the investigator, sometimes even blaming another suspect. However, their motivation and course of action should ultimately make sense and leave the audience thinking "I should have seen that coming."

Knives Out (2019) features a large cast of eccentric characters that make up the family of the deceased Harlan Thrombey (Christopher Plummer). Each one of these characters had a motive and opportunity to kill their family member, but, at the end of the film, it is obvious why, how and when Ransom Drysdale (Chris Evans) was the killer. These are some of the most important questions to be answered in a mystery film.

A mystery film wouldn't be a mystery, however, if it didn't need some logic and thinking to figure out the ending. Clues and misdirection are an essential part of movies in this genre. Clues allow the audience to be able to figure out the problem while misdirection, often called red herrings, keeps the audience guessing as they are misled from the correct answer and toward dead-ends. In the end, the mystery's solution should fit all the clues set up throughout the film, and prove why the red herrings do not work and why they are, in fact, red herrings. 

Production Techniques:

Films in this genre tend to follow certain techniques that help to heighten the mystery factor. Camera angles and editing, lighting, and sound choices are among these techniques.

Camera angles are most prominently used to highlight a clue, or a possible clue, being found. Close up angles and extreme close ups allow the audience to see what the investigator has found so that they don't miss what could be an important clue to solve the mystery. Editing techniques such as shot/reverse shot is often seen in scenes where an interview or accusation is taking place. A character will say something to another, and the shot will switch to said character in order for them to speak their response, and back to the other character for further conversation.

A very small droplet of blood on Marta (Ana de Armas)'s shoe is the essential clue that allows Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) to determine her involvement in the murder of Harlan Thrombey (Christopher Plummer) in Knives Out (2019). This is only seen when there is an extreme close up of her shoe so the audience can see what Benoit has noticed.

Lighting is another important technique often seen in many mystery films. Dim lighting or shadows creates a sense of suspense as clues begin to pile up and the solution is so close, but is still not solved and tensions begin to rise. Brighter lights can also be seen shining on objects or other things that will help the investigator uncover the truth.

Sound, as with lighting, helps to build tension in films and help establish the emotions in the scenes. Music will be faster paced and louder as the big reveal happens, and it may low and almost expectant as the investigator finds clues or begins to solve the mystery. There don't tend to be many drastic changes in sound, but are sometimes featured when the big crime or offense takes place as it is the grand moment where everything changes.

Marketing:

Mystery films are often marketed with the goal of intriguing the audience with the mystery itself, emphasizing the complexity of it and its multiple angles from which the it might solved. Trailers often include moments of high tension such as the moment of the crime and right before the mystery is revealed. They also include quick scenes of clues found that all show different culpability in order to intrigue the audience into watching the movie to find out what the correct answer was. Audiences are usually older teens or adults that want to think and figure out what is happening along the movie, as younger audiences may not understand some of the complex themes usually seen in mystery films, such as themes of morality.

Film Sample #1:

Clue (1985) embodies the classic board game of a murder mystery at a large house where everyone could be guilty of the murder of the host of the party. This film is a great example of the mystery genre since it features a crime, the murder, and has many clues and red herrings that point to many different suspects until the actual killer is found. The host of the party had invited them telling them that he had a secret to blackmail them with, which becomes a possible motivation for any one of these people to kill him, and they are all handed a weapon upon arrival, giving them a method. This film includes many twists and turns that leave you guessing until the very end.

Film Sample #2:

Now You See Me (2013) follows four magicians known as the Four Horsemen as they commit multiple crimes, such as bank heists. An FBI agent (Mark Ruffalo) attempts to catch them and arrest them, but cannot figure out how they are committing these crimes. This movie is another great example of a mystery, though it changes up things quite a bit. In this movie we know who is guilty, in part, and we know what they've done so the real mystery is figuring out how they're doing this, and, from the perspective of the Horsemen, who is telling them to commit these felonies. As they constantly evade the police, and the police gain more clues and, they think, the upper hand on the criminals, we are left to keep guessing just how the Four Horsemen will achieve their next heist.

Some more mystery:

Murder on the Orient Express (2017)

Gone Girl (2014)

Sherlock Holmes (2009)

Zodiac (2007)

The Sixth Sense (1999)

Sound 🕪

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During this lesson, I learned about the importance of sound in film and the different techniques with which it can be created and used to convey meaning. We worked on two different sound projects to learn this. In the first we had to create and tell a story using only sounds and other auditory techniques. In the second, we had to provide the necessary sound elements to a previous project we worked on that had lacked it.

For the first sound project we worked on, my partner and I decided we wanted to do a more fictional story than we were able to do for the previous project we worked on (the editing project had to take place in a school setting), and we thought that a sci-fi narrative would have the most interesting sounds, so we made the story of an alien abduction. Making an outline to plan the project before we started working on it helped us understand the ideas that each one of us had and work together to come up with a single story we were both happy with. It also allowed us to have a clear timeline of the way the story would go—where our first scene would take place and what would happen leading into the main plot of the alien abduction—so we would know what sounds we needed to find online or record ourselves through foley. Since I don't have extensive knowledge on digital editing, it was recommended we use a simpler program such as Clipchamp, a program that has all the basics you could need when editing a project of this style including adding multiple sound layers and being able to shift each one's volume and their fading in and out. I think that our story may have gotten slightly overcomplicated near the end, and having a simpler plot would have allowed for a more detailed soundscape than what we have, however, I like the layering we do have. We included many sounds that, on top of one another, make for a cool background sound that does make it sound like the character has been abducted by aliens.
RosenbergChavez_Soundscape_per4.m4a

The second sound project had a bit of a different approach when completing it since we already had a story and we needed to come up with sound elements that fit this specific story. Our first step for this was to think about what background sounds are present in a school hallway that are usually ignored but are necessary for a video or a film to sound realistic. After, my partner and I simply needed to think about what sounds we made as the characters that the story would focus on, from sounds made by our shoes or clothes to actual sounds we made. Similarly to the first project, the outline made it easier to determine what specific sounds where present in each scene so that we could know what we needed to find or record. It broke a minute long project into 5 different scenes where each scene had a list of the sounds that should be heard based on what was happening on screen. Clipchamp, having proved itself to be effective for this style of project, was used again to put our sound clips together, though this time my partner and I edited each our own project. I am very pleased with how this second project turned out. I think our soundscape was very well executed, from adequate sound elements being used to the way I edited it, making it seem very realistic. Something I would have like to have done differently was the use of music since we have none. A sting or some type of "cartoon-y" sound effect in between scenes where we go into and out of our character's imagination would have added a more clear distinction between reality and imagination that could have been more fun.
OWFSound_Chavez.mp4