Representation essay

Explain how the meaning is created using the four technical areas, in the following clip.

Here, we are introduced to a scene taken out of ‘Breaking Bad’, a crime drama which contains contexts that represent the topic of age and gender very well. Aspects of illegal activities and territorial personalities are mentioned. In this specific scene, we can see what mostly stands out and displays the four technical elements of media.

As we begin to watch the clip, we can firstly focus on the main topic of this which is age and gender. We know that in the clip there are two main characters shown. An older middle-aged man, and a young adult man. By focusing on the certain actions of the older man, we can see how knowledgeable he is when it comes to a very important part of the scene shown. As the cameras establish the area and what specifically is happening at this moment of the scene, the close ups being used also shows us as the audience the emotions and thoughts going through not just him but the younger man as well.

As the camera captures the confused look on the older man’s face looking at the trolley, u couldn’t really tell what he was going on about since the camera only kept showing cuts of the old man and the full trolley. We can see how the camera was being used in a hand-held movement when showing what was in the younger man’s trolley. The slow pace that the hand-held camera was using for the certain moments in the scene that showed the trolley really stood out. 

In the small clip of the scene, we are also introduced to the Pan movement. This gives an opening start to the scene for the audience, showing which aisle the old man was looking in. The angle the camera mostly uses is low angle. From the low angles they all had been using, this brings out the contrast of their height. The low angle shows who’s higher and bigger in this situation. 

As we lean more towards the sounding of the small clip, we can know that in this clip,  there is visible soft rock music as well as soft dialogue. When this plays, this  shows more to the topic of age and gender. This connects back to the low angle contrast. As the soft starts to become hard and rough when the old man’s dialogue goes harsh.

We can also hear in the voices of the two men who were most scared and who weren't. By the younger man we can hear in his voice how nervous he was with the whole situation. The small little trembles he had in his voice when he was talking really gave it away to the older man about what he was trying to do. 

As the editing in this scene also brings out that dramatic crime taste to the clip, we see this happen a lot after the young man runs out the store. When he chooses to run off in such a suspicious way, the older man instantly knows what is about to go on. Through the time he was realising what had just happened back in one of the aisles, the beat matches the quick cuts on the camera which is continuously zooming in, creating more of an intense feeling for the audience. Luring in that eagerness from the audience about what is going to happen next. 

Once the older man reached his instincts to run out and follow where the younger man fled to, music began to become and feel more dramatic, but in a criminal way. When the teen boy runs back outside to his father, we see that it is not a shock that he is not that different looking from his son. The old man speaks out to them both, telling them to stay off his “territory”. This speaks more of the age and gender topic, showing how the older man is more known for being some type of person who is in charge of a big part of the area.

In conclusion, we see that the meaning behind this small clip of a scene taken out of the tv crime/drama “Breaking Bad” is that the older man still knows who is in charge and who, in a way, “runs this area”. You can really tell by the situation with the younger teen and his father, that the older man probably used to have a history with illegal properties like what the young man was doing with the type of materials he was purchasing from the hardware store.