In the clip, there are only 4 characters in the scene; 3 of
which that have different ethnicities, white, black and Asian. The other
character's identity is hidden as he is wearing a balaclava. He experiences the
effects of the power of authority from the Asian who is the antagonist. They
are all in a room with low key lighting, the only light source coming from the
windows.
There is a white woman and black man bound to chairs
directly opposite each other. They are in smart, what seems to be, business
clothing. This was shown using a medium long shot also to emphasise their
physical state and contrast in ethnicity. During the scene of the woman being
filmed, her colleague is threatened. He gets a knife held to his neck by the
man in a balaclava as directed by the Asian man. The black man is discriminated
against as his life is immediately threatened rather than the woman. He speaks
very little and only says a sentence throughout the clip; we gather his other
thoughts and feelings through his body language being still, anger shown my
frowning and eye contact. He is mostly shown with a medium close up to
emphasise these feelings.
During conversation, the camera goes into a medium close
up/close up of the characters faces to show their facial expression, which were
neutral and expressionless. During these shots, the camera is very unstable and
tends to move a lot suggesting it is hand held. There is scene where the antagonist
is filming the white woman while she read her ‘lines’ off a piece of paper.
This scene used focus well by switching from being in-focus video camera
showing her being recorded to making the video camera out focus and have her
actual face in the background in focus. A slight high angle is used to make the
woman look vulnerable and inferior to the antagonist.
The voices of the black man and white woman were low pitched
connoting sadness, whereas the Asian man was very loud and assertive. Due to
the setting, being a large room- there is little sound. Diegetic sound involves
the dialogue of the characters and the sounds of the noises made on scene such
as door slamming and footsteps. Non- diegetic sound includes the sound effects
such as the blast when a photo of ‘butterfly’ was laid sharply on the table,
there is also droning, low pitched, slow music played throughout.
The editing has simple and quick cuts to increase the
tension in the room. The tension is not only between the characters as
different social statuses but different ethnicities too.
