Media Essay Hollywood and Film4 Working Title Comparison

How is regional identity represented in "The Rotters Club"

The clip begins with the camera panning across a table of food and drink, and then a close up of a character’s head. The characters eating are bosses and employees of a company; we can see that the food is stereotypical to their occupation. The men in the clip are "Northern" and the food they eat is filling and “easy to eat” northern food, chips, beer which is bitter and a big steak. We see individual specific shots of each character, effectively introducing them into the scene. The bosses are situated next to each other. The shots let us inspect their faces and it looks like the bosses are wary and the workers angry. One boss in particular, he looks frightened and cowardly while the other could be described as “one of the lads”. The cowardly boss keeps on getting “digs” at being gay, even when his son is the topic of conversation the boy gets also called homosexual. Stereotypical again of northern people as they are represented as being very homophobic. The camera moves to a shot which shows all of them sitting on the table. Giving us an insight into where they are eating. It would seem to be in a pub, implying that the north doesn't have restaurants or if it has they are pretty much pubs.
The sound plays a vital role in this clip. Mainly because there is no soundtrack making the music seem to becoming from the pub and the clink of knives and forks diegetic and natural within the scene. This has been used because it is highly effective at making social realism inside a scene. The cutlery is also an action code that suggests eating is taking place.
Most of the clip centres on the characters and it is intriguing to see how they are portrayed. The two manual employees are situated opposite their bosses, becoming an obvious example of their lower roles; we can also see this as the workers drink beer meanwhile their bosses sip on wine. There is tension in the scene with clear mistrust between the two sides. The northern trade unions seem to be on the agenda and are a point of humour to the bosses. The only time the group rallies together is when stereotypically the Northern sexists watch the waitress walk away, with the character we learn to be Roy, joking with a rather "suggestive" comment, which even the bosses laugh at. The scene is edited to clearly express the mistrust between the employee Roy, a man who looks most out of place in his oversized suit and the grey old man, his boss. The tension between the two is shown by the how stubborn Roy is; his character is being portrayed in a way that lets us understand the friction between the workers and the bosses.
Later when the cowardly boss’s son gets thrown into the conversation everyone is involved in a discussion about education. Using terms such as "poncy toffs academy" we can imply how the workers are sitting below the bosses. One of the employee’s sons happens to go to the same school but the worker gets a free grant. Suggesting that without it, it would be near impossible for his son to attend.
Regional identity is presented in the clip through the use of stereotypes, this being the easiest way to present a society as stereotypical and infamous as the "North." Obviously these stereotypes are highly unfair but they increase regional awareness in the clip, and therefore making viewing easier.

Regional Identity Notes

Northern Stereotype
- Flat cap wearing
- Pigeon racers
- Friendly but 'bloody minded'
- Stubborn and argumentative
- Whippet owning
- Manual jobs
- Very little education
- Sexist
- Thick accent
- Bitter drinkers
- Hot pot
- Miserable weather
- Cobbled streets

Country Stereotype
- Scrumpy addeled yokels
- Inbred
- Happy
- Stupid
- Livestock bothering
- Farm hand yokel
- Hunting toff
- Lord of the manor
- Slow pace of life
- Owners of animals
- Landrover/Tractor owners

How editing is used in Memento

In Memento editing is very important to our understanding of how the film works and what stories are being shown. In the first few seconds the credits are projected over a hand and a close up of the picture. We can see in the picture there is a gory image. First a character that was holding the picture was guilty of a crime because the picture contains what looks like a blooded corpse; we can infer that the character was a serial killer. The first noticeable bit of editing is the picture and how it fades out and disappears. The scene is in fact reversing back time we can see how the picture is being shaken back. Everything is placed back into its starting position, gun returning to killer and glasses flying back onto the face of victim. This is done to help us understand what has happened and establishes a path for us to be able to see how this murdered man was finished.
The whole of the next scene is edited. It begins with a close up of the characters eye and then to a close up of the keys. This is a sequence of shots because instead of panning down from eyes to keys the decision has been made to edit and jump the shot down. This is done with a commentary from who we assume to be the man the scene is focused on. He talks of his "amnesia" and the editing is done to mirror his mind. Editing is used in this film to help us understand the complex base to it.
The following scene starts on a close up of a totally different picture on the same Polaroid film as before, the shots are then edited to help us understand the conservation that starts between the first character and a new one who has entered. A close up of a pair of glasses in the first scene help us understand that the new character was the dead one beforehand. Throughout the following scene we begin to learn the first character seems to be a detective. In the scene there are wide angle shots, firstly of a city and then of a lone house in the middle of no-where it give us an idea of the environment our characters are operating in. One hugely important area to this scene is the close up of the man’s gun. This infers there is going to be killing and murdering soon to come. There is a close up of a picture with "Kill him" written on it. During the next sequential shots a fight arises and I can take notes of editing called "invisible cuts" this is where each edited moment runs so smoothly it appears that it hasn't changed. This has been done so as not to distract the audience so they don't think "This isn’t realistic at all." We see this in the sequence we saw at the beginning, but this time not in the eyes of an “amnesia” ridden detective. Close ups are essential in a film, especially one as confusing as Memento. But they are important parts of editing because without individual close ups. For instance when our character is conversing with a man behind a counter, who we assume to be the hotel owner, we see a close up of the Polaroid picture. Edited shots are put into films to help us understand them. We learn in this scene, through editing that our character from the start is guilty of the murder we saw at the beginning.
Each new monochrome scene links on from the last monochrome scene. Whereas the colours ones don't connect with each other until points overlap. The black and white scenes move forward throughout the film and the colour scenes move backwards until they meet somewhere in the middle of the plot. Editing in Memento is used to let people understand what is happening and is continued to be used like that throughout the rest of the film. Memento is a very confusing film so therefore editing is vital to enjoyment of an audience, without editing in the film the audience would struggle to understand the plot.

Sexuality in Skins - Episode 1 Season 1

During the 10 second clip, the only character is represented as being bisexual. There are many different items and positioning that point us to this evaluation. To start off with the camera is only on his eyes, they snap open as soon as some church bells ring close by. The curtains are open and as the camera zooms out you can see that the character hasn’t had a very good night sleep, if any sleep at all. When the camera is fully zoomed out you can see that he is just lying in the middle of his bed.  His bed sheets consist of a naked man and woman sleeping but without a head, this is so a person sleeping will have their head on a body. The character though is lying in-between these pictures, this shows that he is confused about his sexuality and that he is single. One reason for him not getting a lot of sleep is that he has been troubled by something, and it has kept him awake. This maybe that he is troubled by his sexuality, his curtains are open so he might not have wanted to get any sleep. The day is Sunday as church bells are ringing; he must have woken up early. The church bells are a ‘cultural code’ for people in England, the church bells ringing automatically gives the idea that it is Sunday to an Englishman. The stereotypical teenager lays in on the weekend because they have been out the night before. This character is up early, this shows that he is not tired and hasn’t been up to much on the Saturday night. This gives out an ‘enigma code’ where questions have been asked but there have been no answers. This encourages the audience to keep on watching as they want to get the answers to these questions. When the camera is fully zoomed out you can see most of his bedroom from the ceiling. There is a white wooden floor, expensive rug, an office chair and a trolley found in most supermarkets. This infers that he most likely have stolen this, stealing such a big object would be impossible for normal teenagers as it would be impossible to carry upstairs and sneak it past parents. You still would have to stop them noticing it as well.

Hotel Babylon

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During the clip on Hotel Babylon you can see many different ethnic stereotypes. Starting with looking at the ethnicity of Afro-Caribbean people. The setting is the hotel's swimming pool; it begins with a pan of the pool, and then moves into a close up. The lights are dim and the music is calm, this creates a relaxed feel to the scene. Soon two characters are introduced and straight away we are able to see that they are in fact complete opposites. Both are men and one is presented as a casual laid back character, we can gather this because of his use of slang and colloquial language. This character has just emerged from the pool in trunks; this shows us that he cares more about his recreational time then work. He also refers to parties, girls, drugs and alcohol. The other character is smart and is acting anxious and nervous. The more casual character seems happy to meet up again while the other character looks unsure of himself and is worrying with the conversation topic. This looks at the two different sides that blacks are tend to be stereotyped as.

Next is a scene containing two French maids who are about to clean a Japanese man room. The camera closes up onto the room service card which reveals two stars which is a code for him 'paying double for double'. The maids have heavy French accents and seem to only be able to use French-Latinate vocabulary.  The maids enter the room we begin to understand of what the term 'he pays double for double means' the maids begin to dance for extra money. This is very stereotypical as it seems a foreign worker will do anything to make any extra cash. The music at this point is a very cheesy pop song that also appears to have French lyrics which are in relation to the maids themselves. Whilst they are dancing the camera enters a mid shot and switches from this to a close up of the Japanese characters eyes which are watching them.

The Japanese character is portrayed as a very typical ethnic stereotype. First is a mid shot of the Japanese man sitting on his bed in a dressing gown. This automatically assumes he may be slightly 'pervy'. The camera then moves into a close up on to the two piles of money for each maid on the table. The stereotype that the Japanese are extremely wealthy met quickly and made very clear by this shot. He is paying workers extra cash for them to strip and dance, which follows a clear stereotype of him being dirty and perverted his room also, appears to be extremely tidy and clean, either the maids do a very good job or he lives up to. The Japanese are renowned for keeping their belongings very tidy and clean so we are shown another stereotypical view of this particular ethnicity. The camera focuses on the characters eyes which are in turn focused on the maids body’s whilst they undress, this uses a close up. This represents perfectly that he is a character fascinated and thoroughly enjoying something that he should not be looking at.

In the next part of the scene the setting is the hotel kitchen, which focuses on two main characters which appear to be the head chefs, they are surrounded by many other chefs, and they are of no importance to the scene though. The ethnic of one head chef is Italian. The stereotype of this ethnicity is a strong accent, overly friendly and well dressed. Next we get a mid shot with the two chefs standing next to each other being friendly which an act is clearly. The British chef is overweight, tall, has much paler skin and dressed in white in comparison to this the Italian chef is skinny,  small, has a dark complexion, and dressed in black. The two characters dressed in black and white may be signifying good and bad between the two ethnics. Later on, after we have been introduced to the characters an argument breaks out, during this the background music gets faster which builds even more tension between the two characters. The English chef seems rather pathetic and hopeless at this point in time which represents what a typical overweight British would be stereotyped as. On the other hand the Italian has picked up a knife, and at this point we see a close up from the camera which puts emphasis on the fact that the character is dangerous. This is following the stereotype which plays on men from foreign countries being very sneaky and unreliable.

Overall, ethnicity is clearly represented in the clip by using stereotypes which are usually associated with a certain type of ethnic. The clip does not explore any contrasts which may go against a typical stereotype and instead sticks to making each characters role very predictable due to their ethnic.

Select one character from a British TV drama and explain how they are a 'stereotypical' representation of your area of study (Age in The Inbetweeners).

Age is a portrayed hugely in a stereotypical way in British TV. Children are shown to annoying and will get upset if they don’t get their own way. Teenagers are shown to be mischievous and troublesome. Middle aged members of society are shown to be very boring, monotonous people who don’t really get up to much. While the elderly are portrayed as being old, crazy, weak and cranky. They Television programme I chose to analysis was The Inbetweeners, this programme is based on a teen from private schooling has got moved to a public school. The Inbetweeners is a story of his mission getting new friends and the four of them have adventures, trips and spend all their time going after girls which always ends badly.

Children in this programme are defiantly shown as being annoying, one of the main characters Simon has a little brother. His little brother sucks up to his parents, informs them when Simon has done something wrong. When he is out of view of his parents he uses vulgar language and tries to get Simon into trouble. The reason for the media portraying children in this way is that the programme is aimed at teenagers, who most of them can relate to having an annoying little sibling.

Teenagers are never shown to be ‘normal teenagers’, the media tend to exaggerate teens problems for the sake of comedy. Viewing teenagers will such bad fortune will make the viewer feel good about their life and because their teenager will laugh at the others misfortune. In The Inbetweeners the main characters who are teenagers are represented as basically being losers, who are desperate to have sexual intercourse with girls. They go to school, go round each other’s houses and get drunk and go to the rare party. There would normally be not a lot of good viewing in their lives but being very very unfortunate really makes the viewing so much better. Anything that can go wrong will, this is quite different to normal teenagers as not every day is a train wreck of misfortune. If they aired a programme that consisted of four teens sitting around drinking it would be quite boring. Throw in hilarious language, a lot of vomit, urinating on each other, cars in lakes and erection problems then the programme is bound to be hilarious. Not a lot of people can relate to the lives lived in The Inbetweeners that’s what makes it so popular. It shows how unlucky your life could be so you have to laugh at a continuing luckless streak.

Adults who are middle aged are represented in the Television programme as being the opposite of the stereotypical adult. Instead of being boring and workaholics, they are a main source of embarrassment for their children. For instance Simon’s dad tells many a tale about sexual experiences with Simon’s mum, these tales are usually told in front of Simon and his friends. The main character Will has a mum that is known among his friends as being very good looking. But she also reveals many of Wills secrets in front of his friends e.g. crying on rollercoaster’s in the past and having to take suppositories for illnesses. The reason why middle aged adults are represented this way is because of the viewing audience again. Most teenagers is embarrassed about their parents or parent, they can relate to the characters and know that it is quite normal to have embarrassing parents.

Elderly people are portrayed in The Inbetweeners as being weak, boring and ill. In one of the episodes they volunteer at a retirement home for the elderly. All of the old people are just sitting around sleeping or watching rubbish mid-day T.V. The home is smelly and the elderly even need help going to the toilet. This episode is funny because the audience can laugh at how the teenagers have to create their own entertainment. Later on another character Jay brings out the non-stereotypical side of the elderly. He gets caught masturbating by a group of people; little did he know there was an old woman in the room. This old woman blurts of “He did that over me!” we can infer from this that not all elderly people are boring and sapped of all humour. The reason why the elderly are represented in this way is that we don’t really know what old people are like when you’re not around. This goes strongly against the stereotypical view and brings to our attention that we don’t really know the elderly. For all we know they could all be party animals who always get drunk and cause trouble when we’re not around.