Media A2
SUMMARY
The concept of the short film is quite basic; there are coinciding scenes of two seemingly normal families having breakfast and the two fathers of the family getting ready for work. The two meet in a car park and the white male asks the Asian male to ‘do me a favour’ and ring his phone. He accepts and phones the number he gives him but there is no ring to be heard. The White male drives off and then it cuts to the Asian male in a traffic jam. There are police and ambulances passing and he turns on the radio to hear of a ‘serious incident’ that may of been a bomb that was detonated remotely and this is where it ends.
These two shots are really important in this short film because it challenges stereotypes of a terrorist in our mind. This has been done effectively by making the muslim man look like his having his last pray before doing something bad. The low key lighting portrays the man a dark thinker and quite mysterious, this suggest that maybe his the bad guy in the situation. On the other hand , the while male is being portrayed as the nice family guy (friendsly). This has been done by having a shot of him smiling at his daughter to show kindness and respect. In this shot the director uses high key (natural) lighting to show his personallity as a bright interligent man which he is and also how open he is to his family, to make the audience believe that his not a threat to anyone, young or old. This challenges stereotype because in this short movie its the white male that's the real terrorist whereas in our mind we would think it's the muslim man.
This shot is very well placed; the shot is almost perfectly divided. Showing a division between the characters and again as Asian male breaks the divide and steps in when speaking to the other character it again puts him in a good light. Although throughout this scene the mise-en-scene, in particular the height differentials and the dialogue suggests that the Asian male is in control and this lulls the audience into a false sense of security although the quote “favour” in this scene which references back to the title is a slight indicator that the favour is not what it seems and puts the audience slightly on edge.
In this shot the white male character is seen to be wanting to go off in a rush even though he had time to look for his phone. This makes the viewer think why is he in a rush when just a minute ago he had time to look for his phone. Further more this also makes the audience think maybe his afraid of the Asian man.
After a few seconds of that show towards the end the directors had an extrem close up of the Asian man's face (eyes). In this shot this has been done to show the character's reaction to finding out and realising what the white male has done. This is effective because it really shows the reverse stereotype and showing that his not used to being the bad guy and getting caught whereas we notice that the white male has carefully planned this out and maybe is used to being the bad guy.
