Monday, 17 October 2011

Primevil Sequnce Analysis - Gender Representation

Mise en Scene
The main girl in this sequence is represented as the tougher character. Firstly she is seen operating the digger which is the sort of machine associated more with masculinity. She operates it with confidence and seems to know what she is doing. Throughout the clip she is continued to be shown as the more masculine character by attempting to fight the sabertooth tiger and saves the male character from it with a gun. The male, however, is still represented as the typical hero shown in most Sci-fi dramas. When the tiger is attacking the girl in the digger, even though she looks to be quite safe in there, he still lures the tiger away from her and causes it to chase him. He also shouts the girls name in panic as the tiger starts to attack the digger. This could be that he actually does think that he can take the tiger on or that he is a "wannabe" hero trying to save everybody no matter how foolish it seems. His main intention was to get the tiger away from her but what he panned to do after was unclear. He runs but the tiger is obviously much faster than he is, so he may be represented as quite unintelligent if he thinks he can outrun and defeat the tiger unarmed. Although he does perform some action while trying to escape the tiger such as going down the zip wire, something that is seen in a lot of action films/TV dramas with the protagonist.
Unlike the typical male, he is not the one who defeats the antagonist. It is the girl who finally gets him out of danger whereas in most drams this would have been the other way around. This shows that even though both characters display some masculinity, it is the girl who appears more strong. The girl again shows confidence while firing at the tiger.
In the last scene of the sequence, the two characters shown are comletely different to the ones previously seen. The woman is much more feminine and manipulative and the man is dangerous and perhaps psychotic.

Camerawork
As the clip focuses more on the man, close ups are needed to show that he is exhausted from the tiger chase and is nervous and weakened. In the scene with the digger, there are virtually no close ups of the girl and more long shots are used instead. This is necessary in order to show that she is confident in operating the machine.

Editing
In the tiger sequence, the editing becomes a lot more fast paced with some quick pans where the tiger runs past the screen, and jump cuts while the man plans to go down the zip line. The jump cuts may have been used to quickly show that he knows exactly how to go down the line and also to show that he is in a hurry as the tiger is getting closer.
It is the main male character who is privileged by the editing as he has more screen time and more close ups than any of the other characters. All other characters are marginalised by the editing.

Sound
The music consists of mostly string, percussion and brass instruments. The drums start as soon as the action begins and the beat becomes quicker as the chase sequence starts to give the more primal feeling. When the action is over, it is mostly string instruments that are used.