What is the role of a set?
Michel Foucault, in his work Of Other Spaces, explores the concept of Heterotopias and Other Spaces and how it can contain various meanings or relationships to other spaces and how its complexity may not be apparent at first glance.
The author presents various types of Heterotopia. Among them, we'll focus on two: Illusion - through real objects it manages to create illusions - and Compensation - a place that manages to reproduce the conditions of another. One space that manages to incorporate these two conditions is the set.
Scenery can bring atmosphere and aesthetics to a given medium.
An actor always needs a set, even if it's just a curtain.
But what is its role? A set is not always an illusion, since we have various spaces, such as talent shows, game shows, among others, in which its role can be merely decorative, representing nothing; it only serves to give atmosphere to the action taking place.
This publication explores various scenarios from a movie and a game-show scenario. With unlimited access, we were able to follow the recording of Vicente Alves do Ó's Portuguese for three months and the recording of three episodes for the RTP program The Price is Right in order to try to understand the role of sets.