Film Studies Blog

Our short film is a psychological horror, using a narrative portraying a conflict between two characters, portrayed using the mise-en-scene of costume with the main character, Mara, wearing white and the other wearing black and with the character’s game of chess. The first scene will be a dream with no sound, until the last chess piece is moved then an upbeat song will play, that is contrapuntal sound, this will be revealed to be a phone alarm for Mara to wake up, thus creating a sound bridge, highlighting the scene is a dream, high brightness and low contrast will also show this. The transition from this scene will use a graphical match cut from a close-up of the chess board to a close-up of a phone. She’ll go to class that will be lit with low key lighting and the teacher will be shot using low angles to imply Mara’s fear of them. We will have another sound bridge when Mara takes her tablet, which will be coming from Mara’s earphones in the next scene. In this next scene Mara will b

The film focuses on Mara, our protagonist,  a teenage girl in college struggling with anxiety who is being stalked by a mysterious figure in black. We follow her through a normal school day as she is forced to fight against the figure, a physical representation of her mental illness. We see how she is haunted by nightmares of the figure in a metaphorical game of chess throughout her day, which is used to foreshadow Mara’s inevitable final confrontation with the figure, in which she loses against it. During the film, Mara and the figure are the main characters with some minor appearances from background characters, such as her Maths teacher who contributes to her growing anxiety by asking her to answer a question in class and the other students in class. Our film is a psychological horror, to show the harm that mental illness causes and the feeling it gives to those who suffer with it, for example feelings of isolation and hopelessness. In the end, the film can be seen as a

 

Choose one scene from Pan's Labyrinth to explore the cinematography and mise-en-scene, and how they create meaning. My chosen scene is the scene where Ofelia eats the grapes from the Pale Man's table, the mise-en-scene of costume/prosthetics of the pale man makes him extremely underweight with white, sagging skin and his face is without eyes or a nose, just nostrils and a mouth, he is completely hairless, this design makes him appear like a grotesque monster, but since he was made with prosthestics he looks real to the audience. The mise-en-scene of setting is in the fantasy world, so the design is with warm colours like red and brown, the pale man is sat at the head of a table covered in food - mimicking an earlier scene where Vidal was sat in the same position at a similar table in the real world, thus creating a link between Vidal and the Pale Man. In my opinion, Guillermo Del Toro is representing the Pale Man as Vidal to illustrate Ofelia's feelings about him, b