Mise-en-scene

 Although the title of this post is quite vague, this post will be focussing on the set. Since our idea will be a psychological horror about the grief of losing a loved one, our set will reflect the mental strain it puts on them. After the 1 year period post death, the character will be struggling mentally and physically in their day to day life. The scene where we will see this will be the characters room, which is why set design is so important. The room will have to be in deep chaos with objects scattered around the room, maybe unpacked laundry all over the floor. It will reflect the mental state of the character whom it belongs too. Using mise-en-scene in a piece like this is so important because it conveys what we want said without words, which is the struggle our character is going through. We could also show pills and other negative stuff scattered around the room as well. This would also show that the character has not been able to overcome what they have been burdened with, which is that death of the loved one as mentioned before.

We could also use mise-en-scene in our set design to create that horror aspect as well. We can use clever editing techniques like fast cuts or loud stings to create tension and anxiety in the audience. We can design the set and shot to be able to show small details in the room that are indicative of mental hallucination. We can maybe show like false memories of the loved one haunting the survivor, or the survivor can do things that remind them of the victim. We can pair these set choices with sound techniques to create fear in our audience. This is a very common technique used in horror movies up to today. This also represents the psychological horror side of our genre since all of this would be taking place in the survivors head and not in reality.

Scene from Smile (2022)

Above is a scene from the film Smile which is quite similar to what I was explaining about above. The 2022 movie used careful set design choices to create a dimly lit horror-like environment where they could show a hallucination of a character that has been tormenting the survivor. This is just one example of a technique commonly used in some of the biggest productions in the world.