Media Mock
This extract is from the BBC drama, ‘Coming down the mountain’.
The clip starts with a high angle, crane shot of a bedroom. The audience can see that Ben’s side of the room is decorated with brightly coloured bed sheets and posters, whereas David’s side is predominantly grey and black. Here, the colours that have been used act as a metaphorical illusion of the moods that the brothers are feeling. There is non-digetic narration by the character of David whom states: ‘Last summer, I planned to kill my brother’. The director then pans the camera around David through a mid-shot (MS), before cutting to a medium close-up of Ben, who is asleep.
This clip uses narrative continuity editing that is typical of British TV Dramas. The CU of Ben fades into a short montage of clips that have been edited in, showing the life of a dinosaur, gorillas and a caveman. All of the clips in this sequence are in black and white and the quality is of an old film-reel projector.
The director then cuts the camera to an establishing shot of a block of flats, with a popular song playing, which is non-digetic. There is then a sound-bridge and the next shot is of the family’s kitchen, where the song changes to a digetic sound and it sounds as if it is coming from the radio.
The scene from inside the kitchen follows David as he complains about Ben finishing the cereal. David tries to steal some of his brother’s breakfast, but both parents tell him off. The audience hears the mother telling David to ‘grow up’ through the use of digetic sound. The mother then gets ready to leave the house and the audience see a CU of her kissing Ben’s head before walking out of the frame. The director then shows a CU of David’s face which seems to display his jealousy, suggesting that Ben is treated better and taken better care of due to his disability. This is re-emphasised when their father explains why David must watch over Ben when he goes to the bathroom. Here, binary opposites have been used to display the contrasting ways that the boys are treated by their parents.
Non-digetic music starts to play as the director cuts to the next montage of short scenes where David narrates his duties as a brother of a disabled child through a non-digetic voice-over. The music includes a percussion instrument and a guitar, which is quite up-beat, signifying the many thoughts going around in David’s head. The first shot is of the boys walking to the bus stop with David in front and Ben following behind. The placement of characters signifies how David, as the able child, must lead his disabled brother and guide him in the right direction. The way David is dragging his feet suggests that Ben is a burden who is weighing his brother down due to his disability stopping him from being independent.
When David talks of people dragging Ben away to their ‘sex dungeons’, the percussion instrument in the non-digetic music speeds up. This signifies the implications of ever leaving Ben’s side and his inability to look after himself. The percussion could also be symbolic of a heartbeat, illustrating David’s worry for his brother.
The non-digetic music fades out and the audience hears the digetic noises of a classroom instead. It seems as if the noise of the classroom breaks David’s train-of-thought and so, his non-digetic narration and the music both come to a halt.
The director shows an over-the-shoulder CU of David as he draws a dinosaur, which is a visual aid to remind the audience of the earlier montage of dinosaurs, suggesting that David is questioning why his life is the way it is and why the ‘mixed-up chemicals’ were so ‘messed up’ in Ben as to make him disabled.
After witty dialogue between the teacher and some students the scene cuts to a shot of students walking out of a school building. The director shows a CU of David with Ben standing behind him as the audience hear the digetic sound of David’s friend asking if David had to ‘babysit’. This, along with Ben standing behind David, shows that David is Ben’s protector and suggests that Ben’s disability makes him inferior.
David tells Ben to go home alone and requests Ben not to tell their parents, before giving him money to buy chocolate. This re-emphasises Ben being treated like a child due to his disability.
The scene cuts to the next where non-digetic harmonic, piano is playing as the audience hear David’s non-digetic narration on how he ‘had to get some space’. The CU of Ben’s face as he clutches tightly onto the bar on a seat on the bus reveals his fear of being forced to go home alone. The fact that Ben is so afraid of independence evokes sympathy from the audience as Ben deviates from social norms and therefore can find small, everyday tasks daunting. During this time, the harmonic piano music signifies the sympathetic emotions that the audience is meant to feel for Ben and juxtaposes with their anger towards David for abandoning his disabled brother.
This clip suggests that disabled people are inferior and need constant supervision, however it does imply that it is through no fault of their own and cannot be helped or avoided and that avoiding responsibilities of looking after a disabled person could lead to that person getting themselves into trouble due to them being unable to look after themselves properly.
