Research - Mise-en-Scène & Location

    Next, I focused on mise-en-scène, which includes everything the audience sees on screen, for
instance, lighting, costume, props, and setting. This is really important in psychological thrillers
because it helps create the overall mood. For lighting, I decided to use low-key lighting in order to create shadows and make the scene feel darker and more mysterious. I realized using shadows in a scene can make the audience feel uneasy because the shadows could hide information and create uncertainty.

This is a picture is of the types of shadows that psychological thrillers utilize - I would love to recreate this image with our own shadow figure and the eerie feeling that this picture projects.

I chose simple and familiar settings such as the bathroom and bedroom, basic rooms found in
every house, to make the situation feel more realistic. I chose these familiar rooms knowing it is
actually more unsettling for the audience when something scary or strange happens in a normal
environment. 

I also thought about props and costume. I didn’t want anything too dramatic because
psychological thrillers are usually more realistic. Simple props like a phone, mirror, or notebook
can actually be really effective if used in the right way. For example, a mirror could be used to
show something unexpected or create a sense of confusion. A challenge for our group in particular regarding the mirror was the fact that the house we were going to film at, Santiago's, did not have a mirror so we had to improvise. 

Overall, this part of the planning made me realize that even the small details matter. I tried to focus on having everything onscreen serve a purpose and contribute to the mood and the story and not having useless information present.