1. Case Study On Mise-en-scene in
Beautiful People
By Christina Low

2. Costume and Hair
BEFORE
•No logos
•Looks very cheap
•Liked to wear dresses
•Nylon tracksuits
•Clothes with heavy
Patterns
•Chunky shoes are
Worn in school
•The school uniform is
Not modified by the
Students. • Very fashion conscious style.
• All the boys have middle partings and girls • A ‘normal’ modern hair style
tend to have their hair scraped back. • A lot of designer clothes.
•Hairstyles are typical of those in the •Clothes look very expensive
nineties.

3. Setting
• Weather looks perfect.
• Shows flashes of money- shows
wealth.
• Shows many designer
boutiques such as Dolce
&Gabbana.
• People there look happy.
• The streets all look very clean
and well kept.

4. Setting 2
• Very industrialized.
• bad weather
• Looks very dirty and dingy.
• A lot of graffiti.
• No designer boutiques.
• The complete opposite of New York
• Furthest away the characters go on holiday is
Slough
• Inside the house the décor is very old
fashioned, and is not at all modern.

5. Props
• No mobile phones.
• The phones are still very old.
• No plasma televisions etc.
• The television programme shown is an old clip of
Eastenders, which was probably televised over 10 years
ago.
• They drink ‘homemade wine’ suggests that they can’t
afford proper wine.

6. Speech/Dialogue
• No modern words such
as ‘innit’ or the constant
use of ‘like’.
• Simon insinuates that his
mum is an alcoholic, his
sister has gone out with
every boy in the
street, his dad has being
playing away, and it is
also mentioned that his
aunt use to be addicted
to prescription drugs.

7. Beautiful People
Sound

8. Digetic
• The main aspect of Digetic sound comes
from interaction between characters with
a large majority of it being dialogue.
• Certain characters also tend to sing a lot
in a musical style (Breaking out into song
while walking down the street going to
school).

9. Non-Digetic
• A wide variety of songs are used to depict the tone of
different scenes. Some of these songs are used in a
commentarial sense. For example, in Episode 1 when Debbie
thinks that Reba is having an affair with her husband (Andy)
and is very emotionally upset from it, the non-digetic song is
Jolene – Mindy Smith which is about a woman stealing the
heart of the singers man.
• As Beautiful People is a comedy show, there are no clichéd
ambient sounds to make the audience aware of the the
antagonists/protagonists.

10. Genres of Music
• There are three main genres of music used in Beautiful
People: Musical, 80’s and Modern Pop.
• The Musical genre is used to highlight their vocal abilities
(Especially in Episode 2 when Simon and Kyle audition for a
stage school)
• The 80’s music is used to depict Simon and Kyle’s dream of
living in the 1980’s where their typically ‘gay’ behaviour
would be accepted as the norm.
• The modern pop music includes singers such as Kylie
Minogue, the current biggest gay icon in the world, to show
the affection from characters (Mainly Kyle who only
responds when called by the name Kylie after his hero).