Facial Body language (Mise-en-scene) Ms Heath

The objective of this lesson was to critically analyse body language and facial expressions.

Body language:
The body language of a character is the way a character is positioned in relation to their feelings, state of mind, actions or the way they present themselves.
The Body language of a character can tell the audience either what their thinking or about their personality. The way a character acts towards certain things should be very effective upon the audience and should be conventional to their film genre whereas in this case we are looking at thrillers.

Body language of an Antagonist:

• Confident
• Mysterious
• Superior
• dark
• How any props they hold may affect their strength/ confidence etc.

From the picture above and seeing Loki in this stance we are able to say that this character is confident and believes himself to be powerful, strong/ superior to his enemies. He is standing open as if any hit or attack won't affect him at all. He holds the staff as if it is his only protection and he is ready to use it to defend himself if he needs to. This character does not look physically strong however he does look mischievous which could mean he has a trick or two up his sleeve. His facial expressions tell me that he is definitely confident and somewhat intelligent his mouth is closed and his eyebrows are not raised which means he is either focused or annoyed at something or someone.

Body language of a Protagonist:

• Usually handsome
• Focused
• Sometimes confident
• Calm

From the picture above and seeing Thor in this stance we can automatically that this character is also fairly confident and focused on the task at hand. Due to this character standing openly the audience believe him to be strong and powerful however the vibe we get from a protagonists body language is very different to how we determine an antagonists mind state depending on their body language, for example we may say that this character is courageous and focused whereas the picture above it showing the antagonist, we may say that they are mischievous and evil. We can see that this character is physically strong which may enable us to have a better understanding of why he is confident. Furthermore his facial expressions tell us that this character is focused on the task at hand; this relates to my next sub-heading.

Facial Expressions:

The facial expressions of a character help to determine how the character is feeling in relation to their body language. The facial expressions are also used to create suspense or get to get the audience emotionally attached to the audience. Facial expressions can tell you a lot about the type of character they are including their cleanliness or mind state.

Looking at this reaction shot above we are able to see that this character is in shock due to something he has seen, this is easily identified due to his widened eyes and his open mouth which may represent someone gasping almost. Capturing this emotion from the characters face effects the audience as they may see this reaction and then become emotionally attached to the character by having the same sensations and feelings of shock.

Conclusion:

Learning about and analyzing a characters body language and facial expressions has helped me as I understand how the audience is affected by them and how they determine each characters role in the film from how they are portrayed through a characters body language. When creating my own thriller trailer I will now be able to determine how each character should express themselves through their body language in each scene and their facial expressions at each moment in the trailer. I understand that the body language of a character effects how the characters determine who the character is and what their role is in the film. This is why I have decided to spend time working on each characters body language making sure it is conventional to a thriller. When filming my trailer close up shots of characters facial expressions will be used so that my audience can easily interpret how that character may be feeling at that point in time.