Researching Mise-En-Scene for Photographic Shoots

In order to get successful photographs, I will need to plan the Mise-en-scene for my shoot. This includes the settings and props, costume, hair and make up, facial expressions and body language, lighting and colour as well as the positioning of characters or objects within the photograph. For the genre of my magazine (R & B/Hip-hop), the Mise-en-scene has to appeal to the target audience of this genre of music. To do this, I have decided to look at Mise-en-scene in the photographs of a popular artist in R & B music: Rihanna - particularly from her 'Loud' album. I will look at her style of clothing and make up, the general settings, as well as how she poses.

Red is a reoccurring colour in Rihanna's music videos, and album/single covers in this album. This colour represents energy, danger, strength and power as well as passion, danger and love. Rihanna's hair and lips are often red, as well as some of the surroundings in her photo shoots and videos, such as poppies. In this case, the colour red could be associated with strength and power because people may see her as a powerful woman, in the sense that she is a role model and can make styles of fashion and make up popular. The colour red could also represent passion and love, as in her passion for music, her fans passion for her music or her fans passion and love for her.

I began by researching Rihanna inspired make up tutorials on YouTube. This is a popular make up tutorial that people have made videos on, but I thought that this one by Pixiwoo was one of the best.

During this tutorial, it shows ways to apply make up and what colours and products are best to use. Because I won't own all of these products, I will use the most similar matches I can find. I found that the eyes are quite natural in terms of colour, and emphasise the eye crease, lash line and lash length. Because of this, the dark coloured lips stand out more, whereas if the eyes and lips were both dark/bright colours, the look would be too much and it would take away any natural look. Rihanna's make up look puts emphasis on her natural features such as; brow bone, eye crease, eye lashes, cheek bones and lips which makes her look feminine and radiant. To recreate this look, I have learnt that foundation will be needed to give the skin a flawless look, and concealer is used to neaten and perfect areas, such as under the eyes and around the lips. I have also learnt that to give a softer and more smoky look to the eyes, dark eye shadow can be used over the top of liquid/cream eye liner to soften the definite line. Another technique I have learnt is that by using a darker eye shadow around the crease of the eye, it makes it appear deeper and puts emphasis on it. A powder is used as a final touch for the skin to stop it from looking too shiny - this is an important part of the tutorial, especially in my case as the lighting/flash that I may use in my photo shoot could emphasise the shininess of the skin which will not appear natural. In this tutorial, false eye lashes are also used. This makes the eye lashes appear thicker and longer, but I don't think this is important to create this look.

In order to recreate this Rihanna inspired look, I will need:

• Foundation
• Concealer
• Powder foundation
• Brown/Bronze eye shadow
• Blusher
• Highlighter
• Eye brow pencil
• Liquid eye liner
• Black eye shadow
• Mascara
• Red lip pencil
• Red lip stick
• False eye lashes
• Eye shadow, foundation, blusher and concealer brushes

Next, I looked at a hair tutorial which has been seen on Rihanna. This look has been inspired by 80's curly up-do hairstyles.

This is a quick and quite an easy hairstyle to do. I learnt that the easiest way to curl the hair for this look is to firstly put it in a pony tail, put in into sections and curl one section at a time, and then curl the front section separately. I also find out that by putting sections of the hair forward towards the face from the pony tail makes the hair look bigger and more full even if the models hair is thin. To finish this Rihanna inspired hair style, a bow is tied around the head. The colour of the bow depends on what stands out best against the hair colour of the model.


To recreate this hairstyle, I would need:

• Heat protecting spray
• A curling wand
• Hair spray
• Hair band
• Bow

I will be using female models for my photoshoot in order to create make up and hair like the ones above. In my magazine, this will appeal to females in my target audience because they will want to look this way too, and also males because they will find them desirable. This supports Laura Mulvey's Theory that the role of female characters in traditional media products functions on two levels: "As erotic objects of desire for the characters within the story, and as erotic objects of desire for the spectator.”  (Mulvey, 1975).

Using sex to sell is one of the most common tactics used on any media product. It is easy to attract a male audience by having an attractive female on the front cover. However, this often does not make female readers avoid these magazines because some women may feel that the woman represents them because they want to be seen as an attractive woman themselves.

The following are two of my own images that I have produced after learning about the mise-en-scene and lighting.

This image is a close up portrait that I produced in the photography studio. With this image, I concentrated mainly on the lighting and editing on Photoshop. 

This image is a medium close up portrait that I also produced in the photography studio. I concentrated on the make up, hair and clothing with this shot more than I did the first image to get a more professional looking image that will represent my target audience.

I have edited both of these images in Photoshop using my Art Master III graphics board to get a more detailed and precise airbrushed look using the paint brush tool of an appropriate colour.

From the previous research, I learnt new make up techniques for photoshoots especially that help certain features stand out. These make up techniques are useful and helped me to create the look that was necessary to represent my target audience. I have also learnt techniques from my Researching Photographic Techniques post which have helped me to create more professional lighting for portraits. As well as the make up techniques, this has helped me to create images that will represent my target audience because of the quality.