Mise-en-Scene

 For this project, I had to represent a character through props, sound, and setting. For this project, I was assigned to portray a middle school girl, who is shy, but loyal to her friends; and very tech-savvy and inventive. Because the presentation was meant to be interactive, I wanted to make it feel like you were looking through the bedroom of this teenage girl character. To do this, I made a website. The bedroom itself was the background for a desk, where my character would spend a lot of her time tinkering with gadgets, reading, or programming and coding. I designed and drew the desk and all of the objects/props around it myself in a digital art app. To further characterize her, I added a function where, when an object was clicked, a short description of it (including a fact about how it relates to the character) would pop up. 

With the required moodboard for the character, I used images that I knew would match the “vibe” of the character: quiet, calm, and soft. So I used desaturated warm shades and colors found generally in nature within the color palette. I included a lot of pictures of clothing items I think the character would wear, most of which were heavy or covering to reflect the shy nature of my character, as if she wanted to hide herself in long sleeves and thick fabric. For audio elements, I made a playlist of song that were of the chill lo-fi genre and sounded more soothing and sweet, again, to match the quiet yet smart personality of my character. I wanted the tangible props I had to use to seem like things that would be found in the bedroom desk setting I had created. So I used a robot to line up with my character’s love of “gadgets,” and wires and computer chips to show her tech-savvy abilities. 

I set up all of these things in a specific order. I put website I made for the setting in the middle, because that was the main interactive experience of my presentation. The objects I used were placed right in front of the computer, to seem like they were apart of my character’s space. I only used two computers because I worked independently, but I wanted to have the screen with the character’s picture and description on the left side (because you typically read from left to right, and so that would be the first thing someone sees), and the moodboard on the right. I also decided that the character should have glasses, which is a very typical convention in media for a smart character. The name I ultimately gave to my character was “Maya Whitlock,” which sounded very nice and elegant but not at all big and flashy.

I spent a lot of time trying to imagine what I should do. My first thought was that I was going to make a full tour of my character’s bedroom, but that ended up being to time consuming and I also struggled to find a suitable app to make a website like that in. In the end, I wish that I had found a solution earlier. I ended up using a website called ThingLink, which worked very well for the website I wanted to make to create the setting. At that point, I had decided to just limit it to my character’s personal work space, but use the items around the desk to convey her personality. It took me along time to draw and design the desk area in a realistic way, but the resulting website looks even better than I had hoped. I also drew the pict of my character, albeit, based on a real picture I found. I ordered most of my objects and props off of Amazon. I am also very happy with the moodboard I made. I wanted it to look a little unprofessional but still organized because I felt that it was a good fit for the character. And I used a lot of warmer shades in it.

Link to website: https://www.thinglink.com/view/scene/2037714147554099686

Link to playlist: https://spotify.link/rs8MPFTAOXb