The Mise-en-scene

    Following up our second sound project we were tasked to represent a character through Mise-en-scene. We mostly had complete freedom on the how to characterize our subject, other than some requirements that would help us set the stage. My group consisted of 4 people including my self. We were given a firefighter that was retired and loved to go to animal shelter, this was all the information that we had. My group decided to take a route that would create large amounts of backstory and lore for our character. For example, we decided that our character, Bill F. Steel, would receive the Medal of Valor due to his courageous act during the great Sacramento Fire. We also gave him a sad and emotional reason towards why he became a firefighter in order to further exemplify his past. 

    In order for my team to properly illustrate Bill we came to the conclusion that we should show his life through different stations and concepts. At first we created a mood board that would summarize his life in a visual way; then we made a station focused on Bill's character description, which would talk about his journey. For these two station we felt it was necessary to give a detailed description to immerse the audience so there would be a sense of connection. Another way that we created an immersive atmosphere was through making a miniature animal shelter that would focus on our characters love for animals and his willingness to go to the shelters. After this was all set and done, we created an interactive PowerPoint that would act as a little scavenger hunt where you would find an item, click on it, and learn what it meant to Bill.  In this interactive component we added voice recordings that would act as Bill and talk to the audience and give a small story of what the item meant. Then after completing each station we organized the stations 1-4. The character description was #1, the mood board was #2, the items/memories were #3, and the miniature animal shelter was #4. Our reasoning was due to us thinking that establishing and idea of who Bill was and then entering his world would give an engaging experience to the audience. 

    Throughout the creation of our character we used certain stereotypes that would help us build our character. Like making him a straight white male, giving him a dark reason on why he became a firefighter, or putting music from the 1980;s. Although, we gave him some stereotypes it was not as easy as if it were someone with an ethnic background. This lead us to have more of a creative interpretation of who Bill would become. While we created Bill we did not decide to make him someone who was othered as it did not portray what a firefighter was. Later on our characterization of Bill we felt we successfully portrayed him, but personally I felt that we could have done a better job during both his visual representation and the stations. For instance, we did not create a visual image of how he looked like and instead got a man of the internet that would act as "Bill." Then for our stations we should have had a some other component that would further grab the audiences attention so people would feel more involved and connected. Though, I feel this way I thought we had a solid project with minor errors to adjust.