Mise-en-Scene: Sets/Props

In the last mise-en-scene post I discussed the most important prop of the whole movie, Maddie’s diary. In this post I will talk about the sets and also props within the sets which will add more to the story and Maddie’s Life. The two main locations are Maddie’s house and her high school. 

The first location is the school. Here the audience will see Maddie walking in the hallway and exiting the school during dismissal. For this we will use our school. The only props we need for the school scene are a backpack, her car, and a poster we will need to make. This poster will be in the hallway and will say something like “Last day of school, bye *the name of the school's mascot*!” indicating to the audience that it is the first day of school and the vibes are high. Then Maddie will walk out through the white gates of our school and get into my team member’s car. 

Here are some pictures of our school:  

Next, the audience will see Maddie entering her house. For Maddie’s home, we will film in my team member Fatima’s house. Filming in the house will be much easier since we have more control over the props, and we can move things around. Maddie’s house is bland and dull, full of whites and muted colors, this aligns with my team member’s house which has lots of cool tones and beige. We will film a couple of shots in her kitchen in which the only thing we need to change is the lighting to make it darker. We will also need to add various portraits of Maddie as a child throughout the house that can be seen as she walks in to really make the house seem like a family home. 

Then we will film in Fatima’s room. Fatima’s room is already mostly white and beige so regarding color we don’t need to change much.  We will, however, add props like pictures of Maddie and her childhood best friend all over her room. The pictures will be bright and happy to create a contrast between her current life and her life back then. Her room will have lots of cool lighting, even the lamp that she uses when writing in her diary. We will also make it messy to show how unmotivated she is due to her depression. 

For Maddie’s pictures, Fatima (who is playing Maddie) will find pictures of her younger self with her best friend to act as Maddie and her childhood best friend. We will also print out Fatima’s baby pictures to put around the house.