Gender is represented in the mise-en-scene in our media
product by the contrast in clothing between the girls and the trafficker. The
man is wearing a full body of clothes, while the girls are wearing near to
nothing in a freezing container, suggesting the men are sexualising them. The
girls are all wearing small, provocative clothes, which suggest that they could
be easily taken advantage of. The stereotype of prostitutes always being girls
is also represented in my sequence, as the norm in real life situations is
trafficking of women, not men. Their makeup and clothing is dirty and rough, suggesting
that they have been crying and been in a grimy place. The audience will notice
this from the close-ups we have edited into the sequence. The man who comes in
to collect a girl one at a time is your stereotypical man: broad-shouldered,
has a stern face and looks emotionless. We used the torch in this sequence to
shine onto the girl’s faces to make them feel intimidated by the light, as it
glares into their eyes; it makes them feel smaller than they already feel. This
suggests that girls are easily intimidated, which is another stereotypical
representation. Their facial expressions express their emotions towards the
situation, and if it were men there would be a completely different aura in the
sequence as they would not be worried, only determined to find a way out. Our
media product is set in a container and this is an empty, cold environment the
girls will be afraid of, suggesting weakness and connotations of helplessness.
The females having more screen time than the males represent
gender in camera angles. There are many close up shots of the girls faces to
show their emotion and suggest they are confused and distressed. This suggests
their importance in the sequence as the audience will be intrigued in the rest
of the media product because they expect the girls to attack the situation they
are in. When one of the girls attacks the man who is coming to get her, it
represents a countertype, as usually the detonation of a female is not to stand
up against someone who is a bigger build than them selves. However, it is
stereotypical of females to be taken advantage of, and therefore the man
fighting back and winning suggests this. In our sequence we are conforming to
the gender stereotype of female weakness and try to alter this throughout the sequence
but conform at the end of it. Showing a femme fatale in our sequence makes the
consumers interested, as this is not the norm because females in the movie
industry are considered frail and helpless in most situations. We try to show
masculinity in one of our characters as she stands up for herself, but fails
miserably. Camera angles show her being slammed onto the container’s wall and
we carefully capture the gaze from the man towards the other two girls, which
is stern and terrifying. We limited the amount of long shots we produced in the
product, as our location was claustrophobic and not very interesting. We
focused mostly on mid shots and close-ups to capture emotion and response.
Near the beginning of our sequence we kept it slow and
steady to allow the audience to get comfortable and understand the setting and
the scene. The start of the sequence begins with a shot of a hole with daylight
shining through it, proceeding to some dialogue between the girls about the location
of where they are. Editing it, we decided to jump between pictures of the girls
talking and the other girl’s reactions. This makes the audience feel the
emotions the girls are feeling and makes the viewers sympathise with them. As
soon as the man walks in, the sequence starts to get more fast paced with hand
held camera angles. We filmed the identification of the girls with a hand held
camera to make the mood seem unsettled. We cut the scenes down into jump cuts
and quick pans to make the audience feel unnerved and assume that something bad
is going to happen. As soon as the first girl gets taken out, the jump cuts
slow down again, like the beginning of the sequence and makes the audience
relax again. The scene after the first girl gets taken out is a scene of
dialogue and to suggest to the audience that the girls are getting more
frightened the more they don’t know about the situation they are in. We
included many jump cuts to show the girls responses to ‘they are taking her
away, she’s gone’, by creating the stereotype of the females openly feeling
sympathetic and caring towards the loss of a person. On the other hand if males
were to be in this situation, stereotypically they wouldn’t care for the other
person, just care about their own wellbeing. The title ‘Renegade’ was found by us
as a group to suggest prostitution and to indicate gender and status. The word
‘renegade’ means ‘a prostitution ring which is not run by a pimp’ which is the
same as our sequence, as the man who takes the girls is not a pimp, but a
trafficker. Renegade is quite a feminine word; it slips easily off the tongue
and is delicate, just like the girls in the sequence.
Gender was represented in our sequence by sound by having
the girls speak in a naïve, high-pitched worried tone, which is stereotypical
for females to speak like. The microphone did not pick up echoes in the
container, so in Adobe Audition we had to edit echoes into their voices to make
the situation seem more realistic. We did not have any non-digetic sound in our
sequence because we felt we did not need any background music to heighten
suspense. The girls breathe heavily throughout the sequence, which suggests
panic and alertness, which is a gender stereotype as females are normally the
ones to get anxious in a situation like this. Another gender stereotype is how
when the first girl gets taken out, she screams, which is the natural reaction
of a female to produce. In post-production we had to dampen down the scream
because it was so deafening. There are many noises of cars arriving and driving
away, making the girls become more panicked and heightening the tension of the
sequence.
Overall, the effort of the girl standing up for herself is a
counter typical representation in our sequence as we tried to not conform to
the gender stereotype of weakness of females. In the end, the audience is left
wondering what the final two girls will do to protect themselves, leaving the
sequence on a cliff-hanger, intriguing viewers to watch more. The girls show
the normal social behaviour a stereotypical female would, and so does the male
trafficker in the sequence, reverting us as a group to conforming to the
stereotypical representation of gender in our sequence.
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