Our theory teacher gave us some sample answers and homework to do with some extracts that were provided to us. We were supposed to do a textual analysis at least a 1000 words long.
The extract I choose was 'The Bill.'
I watched this clip many times with keen interest and came up with a textual analysis of more than a thousand words.
The link of the extract and my textual anaylsis is as shown.
My textual analysis is as follows:
The clip begins with a man pointing a gun towards two people who are sitting on the floor leaning against a wall. We are shown all this a part of a recap of the previous episode. The two people on the floor are one male and one female. Next, we see a man telling the female on the floor that if she must get involved she has to do it in his way, and we see her screaming that she will not back off and what keeps her away is crime . Then we hear sirens and are shown huge buildings and people in black clothes with wireless attached to their belts. From their dress and the purposefulness of their gait they look very professional, their jackets have the words “metropolitian police” written on them, and we see these policemen jogging in sync into a building that is labeled “Metropolitan Sunhill Station”. We see the Policemen in green jackets cordoning off a space with warning tape, and police men holding guns and also someone being arrested and handcuffed.
Then the serial starts and we are shown a top view of the building which is surrounded by policemen in green jackets and we see that it is some public place which has a *live football T.V* screen attached to one of the buildings, and a lot of traffic and a bus on the main road. Also on the road we see a police car entering and going into a the tunnel. From those Police cars we see many policemen getting out and we see the same lady who was shown talking in the recap previously, this time she joins another police officer and we now know for sure that she is a police officer who is in charge of some case here. The 2 police officers stop near a dead body of a cool teenaged girl which is lying against a steel fence a man in blue uniform is on his knees beside her and his heavy voice starts commenting that the girl is around 15 or 16 in age he then points to her arm and we are shown a close shot of the bruises on her arm, he says that these are marks of self mutilation and that apart from these the girl’s arm has a butterfly tattoo and she is wearing a necklace with a pendant with the initial “k”. Soon we are shown a shot from below and we see the police officers turn their head and inform someone at the back that they have found her. Then the police officers repeat the information they heard from the man in the blue uniform, they sit down and the female police officer seems to recognize the victim from somewhere and then they stand up and walk away to see what the female officer has to show. On her way the female officer joins the two policemen who were interviewing a man who is apparently the owner of the pub , she takes one of the policemen aside tells him to investigate properly.
Suddenly the mise en scene changes and we are taken into a police station where we see the two officers searching through files and looking at some pictures as they exchange some humorous dialogues amongst themselves and laugh at the picture of a girl called ‘Kief’ and create a mess of files and papers. T. The female officer finds the file with the name “ Kelly Kong, CRO-198743/07, souciting”, which contains a picture of the victim. The file contains the information that ‘Kelly Kong, brother King and lives in the jungle’. A copy of the picture is given to a female police officer who has blond hair who joins a male police officer very unclear. We are shown a view of what from the front of what and from another room , the camera looks though the gaps in the blinds into a room the police officers walk into as they talk and they join another man and walk up the stairs of the station and discuss further on that Again looks like you’re referring to something specific topic. The female office tells who some stuff like that her whose last name was Arnold and that the victim died just before 5 that morning and that she had had sex and consumed drugs just before she died.
Next, we are taken to a new scene all of a sudden and we hear sirens and we see the blonde lady police officer (who was given the victim’s picture earlier ) walk towards a lady in green who is sitting with her back to the camera ,sits on her knees and address women asking her if she was okay ,as the man joins her. The man introduces himself telling her who the signal manager told them about her that she was looking for her daughter too . She tells them about her daughter that she called her from a phone booth last night , her name “Kelly Potterfield” . After that the mother registered did a 1471 and that has been really worried for her daughter’s safery as her daughter had told her that someone was after her. The mother is shown the picture of her daughter, of which we are shown a close-up and the audience instantly recognizes that it’s the same girl who was shown dead at the crime scene at the start of the episode.
Then we see a new lady wearing a casual T-shirt , she takes the female police officer along with her into a room and shares some information about the mother. The two enter the room which seems like a waiting room which is very comfortable and has sunlight entering in through the window which gives a warm and welcoming effect The room has yellow walls and posters displayed on it. On the comfortable sofa we see Kelly’s mother seated all tense and confused. She is told by the female police officer that they found a body this morning and they think it might have been Kelly. Soon we see the mother end up in tears and the police officer tries to comfort her. The lady hides her face and continues to cry and we are shown a close up of her crying.
Throughout the extract the police staff has not been behaving very serious, they smile amongst themselves and they are shown kidding around. The females wear a lot of make up, they have their hair set very fashionably/beautifully and are wearing stylish and figure hugging clothes that make them look like models. The female police in white uniform wears so much makeup that she looked like a fashion model as listens to the story of the mother on the road. The main police officers on duty laugh when they see the picture of a girl ‘kief’ when they were searching for the picture of Kelly , that joke at that time looked inappropriate as they had a murder situation to tackle with.
The Police station looks like it could be any office of any organization, the walls are painted in bright colours like sky blue, the red floor on the stairs and the frames of colourful posters on the wall makes it look more like a advertising office than a police station.
Kelly’s mother didn’t react as the audience would expect her to when she was told about the death of her daughter. She did not give any sentimental comments like ‘you cannot leave me ‘ etc, she just says ‘No , Kelly’ and cries in a soft tone and hides her face. Hmm I’m not so sure about this last point- people even on tv in dramas act in different ways when they hear bad news so this is not different in the same way that the other factors you mentioned are.
My teacher was really impressed with this, though he found many mistakes. But he was really satisfied as it was our first attempt and he liked mine the best amongst the class, he even gave my example to the class.
After my teacher gave remarks on my work. I realised the weaknesses in my work.
So I started working to make my work stronger.
I went on Youtube and watched some videos which proved really helpful.
Sama this is a nice first attempt- now you know a lot more about mise en scene so you should be able to do better. You should aim to write more clearly and you should maybe try putting in analysis along with description for example you could say, “the photograph of the victim is handed over to a blonde police officer, this officer is wearing a lot of makeup which looks unsuitable and inappropriate for a officer of the law, also her clothes are a little too tight and too fashionable. It seems like the Director is either challenging stereotypes about how policewomen should dress and make themselves up or he is trying to show them as sex objects.” Also, we expect police officers dealing with crimes such as murder to be very serious and maybe even a little depressed or angry, however, these officers have taken the situation very lightly and are joking around. I think the director did that because, he thought it would be more realistic, Maybe he wanted the police officers to seem insensitive and without feelings, hardhearted etc.
