Thursday 5 May 2011

"Prime Evil" Representation of gender

Sound: Non diegetic sound is used in most times within this clip. There are a lot of bridges used, where the music goes from quite and calm to very quick intense. this is a very clever way of creating attention in scenes or group of scenes when it is needed in order to express the danger. Once danger is near or soon to approach, music becomes all tense in order to tell the audience that something very dangerous and attention full is going to happen. Diegetic sound is also used in order to create more attention than there is, when the middle aged man shoots at the ground in order to scare the lady. This shows me that the man is in more dominant position at that moment, as he has a gun, where as when the dialogue is in process, the lady seems to be in more dominant position than the man.

Mise-en-scene: Within the clip there is a clear representation of different types of woman. Near the beginning there is blond quite young woman, who is digging a hole in ground with needed machinery. This represents her as quite dangerous, as she isn't put off by the fact that she could get her clothes dirty. On the other hand the other character that was a woman within this clip, that cared a lot about the way that she looked. She was worried about her coat getting dirty even though she was almost shot.  Clearly both woman are represented in different ways. The blonde girl was represented as a strong woman, that saves the day, where as the other character was being saved. Basically the blonde girl is against the usual representation of woman.
   I have realised, that the use of characters is done, so it shows that females are in less dominant position and are not as involved in dangerous actions like male characters.

Editing: There is a lot of quick cutting used while escaping from the dangerous animal/creature that was attacking. The quick cutting is used in order to be able to show both, the character escaping as well as the animal attacking and chasing after the character.  Also quick cutting is used in order to make it more tense and interesting for the audience to watch. As the animal within the clip is far too large in size to be real, there are very few shots of the big animal being right near the character in physical sense. Green screen is being used in order to create the creature. The shots are created and put together in order for it to look as believable as possible. There was jump cutting used in order to get straight to the point and makes it to look more quicker.

Shots: There was plenty of different shot types used. Wide shots were seen quite a lot within this aspect. Wide shots were mostly used in order to show the setting and location that the film was set in, as well to brig a message across. There were two shots that made me realise, that woman are represented as less important within the team of man.
  There was a zoom out shot, which zoomed out from middle angle and from right to the left side of the screen to a wide shot. I did find the usage of shot very informative, as it made me realise who is in more dominant position within the clip . There were 4 people walking, and the female character was seen last and in the corner of the screen.
  Right at the beginning at the clip, there was a shot, when the blonde female was out of focus with the other guy, but the focus was on the character, which maybe was in more dominant position or more important within the clip. This made me feel like he could be the main character of the series or either way more important than the two other characters.
  There were plenty of wip panning shots, which were very needed as the animal was moving very quickly, so the panning shots were used in order to catch the animal in action. Also there was slow motion shot used in order to catch the moment in better detail as well as to look at it with more detail. I find these type of shots very informative as it is being in slow motion for a good reason in the most cases.

  In conclusion the man were represented as more powerful and dominant than female within this clip, I suppose that this is the usual representation within action films/series nowadays. Even though woman have become more independent and are being represented as more independent nowadays, there are still few aspects that show that male characters are more powerful and in more dominant positions.

1 comment:

  1. WWW - You have clearly talked about sound, editing, mise-en-scene and sound.
    EBI - Try and use more terminology and keep relating shots, sound etc back to representation of gender.

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