Mise-en-scene blog post

    The goal of this project was to portray a character using at least 10 elements and a mood board. My team and I planned to focus on the characters we received utilizing the resources we had at hand; my group specifically used Canva. The character prompt we received was "A former singer with a sharp wit and a love for storytelling. She lives in a cozy apartment filled with records and memories, often sharing life lessons with younger neighbors. From this we decided our character was a brunette woman in her 50's named Robin Campbell, who rarely sees her family and spends her time listening to jazz music and babysitting the neighborhood kids. To create this character, we made a Canva slide show with multiple collages representing her setting, aesthetic, music taste, and physical appearance.

    We attempted to combine multiple musical elements to emphasize its importance to "Robin Cambell" as she is a retired singer who still holds a strong passion for music. It was also to represent a musical era as most of the music is dated, with the exception of some artists like the cranberries who were used more for aesthetics.

    This slide includes her location, Chicago, and what we pictured her home interior to look like. We selected the Chicago location as we believed being a retired singer she would want to still live somewhere highly populated though we decided she would live in a nice flat by herself. The interior of her home would be very modern with a lot of wooden elements and familial ornaments.

    This slide was to establish that she is very minimalist and chooses a very natural look as she spends most of her time inside with no need to be ready for any special events. 

    In our character station, we wrote an instruction list for the students to click through the Canva at their own pace. As each student had the Canva open on their laptop, there was also a set of headphones attached to each computer as "Fly me to the Moon". The instrumental version was playing in the background of the Canva to add to the characters' personality. Additionally, my team left a guitar tuner and microphone for a tactile element to the station; these objects were both usable and had instructions for them at the table.

    Overall, our group worked well to create additional elements for a fictional character with little description. It was interesting to see how everyone initially interpreted the character as it appeared to reflect on what we are surrounded by, and it took a while for our group to come to a complete consensus on the character's interests, aesthetics, and appearance.