eastenders

Age

Representation of age is shown through how the character in a clip is portrayed. This could either be elderly, middle age, young adults, teenagers, children and babies ect.

Initial thoughts.

Representation of age is shown through the elderly character in this clip because he has the knowledge of past events as he actually witnessed it. Therefore this shows that the older character has more background knowledge of what happened during the racist periods. However both of the younger girls in the clip know some aspects of what he is talking about through their education. This shows that all ages around the table are interested in the same topic of history because it is to do with their culture background. I can straight away tell that they eldest man is respected by his family because of they way they all seem so interested in what he has to say.

Camera shots

The first shot used is a pan shot. This shows the eldest character to be seen as the main attention in this shot. We can see that his family look up to him and enjoy listening to his stories because the pan shot follows around the table, showing the other characters leaning over the table, looking very excited. This shot also makes the elderly character seem as if he is at the top of the table even when they are sitting on a round table. Therefore this shot helps to show us as viewer that he is largely respected by his family due to him being centre of attention.

After this a high angle shot is used to show further interest in the elderly character. You can see from this shot that all of the characters eyes are on him. This supports my initial thoughts of all ages being interested in the same topic of history. This shows that older people have strong knowledge because they have lived longer and experienced what we learn about today.

A medium close up is used on the older daughter. She is a young adult as we can see from the way she is dressed. During the conversation she says "fattening tuesday". From this it shows that younger people are more interested in their appearance and their weight then learning about history. However she does start to ask question about the elderly characters experience of moving to England and it is taken as a shot for her to be interested.

Throughout the conversation there is a shot reverse shot used. This shot helps the conversation to keep flowing and you can see each characters reaction. However in this shot after each character speak it goes straight back to the older character. This shows that he is the main focus of this whole conversation due to the amount of knowledge he has about their racial experiences.

There is a medium shot used on the eldest character to show his reaction of the conversation. From this shot we can tell that he feels as an older person it is his job to protect his family from the horrific side to his experiences because he doesn't seem to want to talk about it. Before this show we hear the teenage girl ask about the riots he replies "we're not going to go into that". Therefore this shows that older people want to protect the younger generation from racial events in the past because they feel that they do not need to know.

Editing

During the whole conversation there is a eye-line match between the elderly character and all the other characters. This shows the older character looking slightly down on the others and them having to look up. From this we can infer as a viewer that he has a higher status because of the amount of knowledge he knows. Therefore this shows that elderly people are respected by younger people.

Also through out the conversation there are shot cuts from one character to another. This shows limited amounts of the conversation in order for the viewers to just see what is important in the conversation. This is also a way of learning the reaction of the characters. Therefore the cut shots keep going back to the eldest character shows he is looked up to by his family.

Sounds

The sound used in this clip was the music in the background. This music was old fashion, slow, clam music. From this we can infer that it is the eldest characters type of music because it helps us as a viewer to see that he is portrayed as an elderly man.

Following this there is also the sounds of each characters voice. From the older characters voice it is deep and quit slow witch shows he is a elderly person. Whereas the other characters voices are very up beat showing that they are younger and have a lot more energy that an older person. The elderly characters laugh is also very crackly. This could show because he is an old man he is out of breath or short of breath when laughing.

The last sound used is the mobile phone ringing. This phone is the older daughters phone. from this it shows that younger adults/children are far more interested in technology than older people because they can not be without their phone as you can see when the daughter does to answer it while at the table eating with her family.

Mise-en scene

The first thing I noticed about the elderly character was that he is dressed very smartly. This helps to portray him as an older man because the younger generation would not be seen to dress smart unless it was for a certain event where you have to. His waistcoat that he is wearing is also very old fashion which shows that he is an older man in order to have a waistcoat like that.

There are empty bottles on the table which shows that the characters are most probably drinking and the parents might be drunk during this conversation. This represents age because you can only drink over a certain age.

Also from the older daughter wearing a lot of makeup and having her hair all neatly shows that she is of an older age than the other daughter because she is old enough to be able to wear makeup and also because she cares about her appearance a lot. Whereas the other daughter is wearing glasses and she speaks about learning about history in school it shows she is younger.

From the family being very shocked about the older daughter being interested in learning about the past experiences of the elderly character, it shows that they didn't expect a young adult to be interested in history. however we learn that she wants to listen because it is about her own history.

From the mum saying she remembers 'some' of the blues clubs shows that she is old enough to have aspects of knowledge from the past but not old enough to have experienced as much as the elderly character because she has one witnessed 'some'.

Conclusion

Overall from this clip it shows that the older generation are well respected by the other generations of people because they have experienced parts of history and have a huge amount of knowledge about events that all aged people are very interested in.