Mise en scene and props for COUNTERPLAY

For both scenes in our thriller opening we wanted quite a dark mise en scene.

                                                               Alleyway mise en scene
 We wanted a dark atmosphere and mise en scene for this location, there was the ambient light from the street lighting and we could use torches to have harsher shadows across Lewis' face making him seem more threatening.







                                                            Chess game mise en scene
For the chess game scene we again wanted a dark shadowy mise en scene and will use the diegetic lighting that is already on the walls of the conservatory and will use lamp lights behind the camera to emphasize the shadows and create silhouettes of the characters on the wall behind them.

Props
We're not having many props for our thriller opening but we have considered the connotations for each of them.

The vodka bottle, carried by Grace as she leaves the party has strong connotations of recklessness and shows teenage rebellion.


The phone, again carried by Grace, has connotations of technology and shows that she is a modern in touch teenager.

The chess board, with it's black and white colours has connotations of good vs evil and this is shown with the black and white and we will have the black pieces win the game to show that evil is winning which will be the point when Grace is abducted.

The red wine has connotations of class and shows that the men playing the game for Grace's life are taking the game seriously.

The cigarettes have connotations of empowerment and show that the men smoking them have a 'you only live once' attitude.

This was written by Amy Roberts (me) but all decisions were made as a group.

Evaluation Question 1

Here is my answer to question 1 of the evaluation task,

COUNTERPLAY rough-cut

Rough-cut
The use of a rough -cut enabled us to see the areas of our video that need to be worked on. For example we focused on transitions between clips, and how we could make it neater and more effective instead of cutting straight to the next shot. Another thing the rough-cut showed us it that we need to sort out the breaking of the 180° rule in the end shots with Rakib and Ali. It has also allowed us to get a feel of the sound and how we would need to work on that because we have 3 different non diegetic soundtracks as well as the diegetic sound of footsteps and heavy breathing all to sort out.

The rough-cut allowed us to analyse and fix our work before it was finished and too late to see what was wrong with it.