Billy Elliot - Mise En Scene Analysis

Billy Elliot (2000)

Billy Elliot is a 2000 film which was later adapted to the musical Billy Elliot the Musical. It stars a young boy called Billy Elliot, who has a passion in dancing and ballet, despite the society having negative thoughts on male ballet dancers. His father discourages Billy to become a dancer, but after seeing his talents, he helps Billy attain his dream.

Mise En Scene

1. Billy's room - set/costume colors

Billy's room has a dotted yellow wallpaper and yellow shelves all around. In the opening scenes, Billy also wears a yellow shirt bouncing on his bed in his room. The yellow strongly contrasts with the dark gloomy kitchen/living room just outside his room. This suggests that Billy is different from the other people from his family and other people from the society. This is then later proven in the film of his desire for being a ballet dancer, and his family disagreeing against it.

2. The argument between Mrs Wilkinson and Tony in the kitchen - character blocking/placing of characters

Tony (Billy's older brother) stands in front of the window, blocking some of the light, showing that he is dominant. Jackie (Billy's father) sits silently, he seems to have lost, not only his job, but control of the family. Grandma sits at the edges, part of the family but with no significance, showing that she is not very important, as shown by the "Shut Up"s from Tony. Mrs Wilkinson stands at the edges of this family near the kitchen door, showing she is not in control of the argument. Billy is behind the door, only his head peering around at the action – he is central to this scene but has no voice, when he does make a comment Tony commands him to "Shut up" immediately.

3. Outside the house

When Billy tries to run out of the house in frustration, he is surrounded by large tall brick walls around the house. He tries to climb over them, but has no luck. It suggests that he is trapped, not only from his family, but also from freedom. He does not get to do what he wants to be, which is to become a ballet dance. He cannot go anywhere, and has no hope.

Unit 2 Reflection

Describe how you approached writing your script for a musical idea, show examples of your inspiration and your work on your blog.

Our group was inspired by a number of ideas, either from watching the musical "West Side Story", or from other songs that were related on a specific theme. Eventually, we decided on Alex's musical idea, which followed a specific theme which was 'kindness'.

Even though I wasn't the main scriptwriter, and I was in charge of the sound production, I still helped contribute towards the writing of the script. We followed Alex's plan for the plot of the story, and our script was basically based off from that. We also went online and searched for some inspiration for some of the songs and the choreography that we could use as part of our musical. Erica found a video (as seen below) that inspired us. It gave me as the sound producer what sort of music I should be using/producing for the musical, and gave Erica some ideas as to what sort of choreography moves should be used.

While writing the script, we had to consider the setting for each scene, and the characters that were going to be present on that scene. Since we only had 2 main characters in our musical, it wasn't very hard to figure that out. We also had to think of the actions each character would do (such as walking, clapping hands, running), and what they would be doing during the scene.

We tried to be as efficient as we could with the work, so we split up roles for contributing to writing the script, so people wrote the dialogue, some people decided on the choreography, and some people wrote the lyrics for the songs we produced. Tiffany and I worked on the lyrics for the two songs, which were "Working Hard", and "Happiness".

Writing the lyrics for the song was challenging, because the syllables of each word had to match with the number of beats in the music. To add to the challenge and make the song sound even better, we could also make the lyrics rhyme.