After Thomas: Essay Notes

Mise En Scene

Talk about the hidden meanings within.
Lighting - Intro fades to a bright light, starting the program.
Characters - Mum, appears to be caring and protective over her son, gets angry over the ignorant civilians. Son, begins to appear misbehaving, but we learn he has a disabilty. Dad, seems caring as he struggles to get to work and is committed to earning his money.
Costumes - autumn scene, coats scarfs hats etc.
Props - lollipop given to child, childs mickey mouse cuddly toy
Colours - Lots of red in the intro (signalling danger)?

Camera Angles/Movement

• Close ups of characters, shows the son confused, mother struggling and scared
• Cars flashing by - shows life passing by?
• Low angle shot on the floor- gives the characters' point of view/perspective
• Mid angle in the office, average view (like on office chair?)
• Long shot at the beggining show the scene at a glance
• Over the shoulder of the shop worker - this is so we see the same thing, and judge what we see the same way (judge the child to be misbehaved and the mother struggling to control him)

Editing and Transitions

• slow motion (subjective time) - intense intro scene
• Edited text saying [1993] contextualises the time zone.
• Fast Editing creates action, we see the same tense shot in real time compared to the slo mo intro version.
• cars flash by. Connatates everyones life going by, yet the mother is stuck in the middle.

Sound

• Contrast of diegetic and non-diegetic sound (contapuctual) - this produces an enigma code
• End of intro the sound gets sucked out, then we see 'true Story text' - this has impact on the viewer.
• We hear disoriantated noise and a child screaming over the top. Then a violin sequence (does this represent the relationship of the child and mother)
• The sound of racing cars and the road magnifies the danger in the scene.

Other

ideology - shows how difficult it is to cope with a disabilty and struggle with the ingnorant public
We see this from the mothers perspective, we feel sorry for her and feel for her.
Narratives - Enigma Codes and Action Codes (Barthes) - binary opposites, main mother and child > 'normal' mother and child?