Media

Use of shots in "The Bill"

The extract is about a certain case about the death of a young male who has been found fallen from a block of council flats in London. We can tell that they are London police officers and that it is a council flat in the establishing shot. This is because in the establishing shot we see the sort of uniform that the policemen and women are wearing and we can tell that it is a London police uniform. The reason why we can tell that it is a council flat is because of the way it looks, it doesn’t look well looked after and there is graffiti on the side, therefor this proves that it is a council flat because if it was an expensive set of flats in a nice area there would be no graffiti on it and it would looked after properly. This builds up the expectation that it is not a pleasant place. You would also that you would expect crime to happen there quite a lot.

There are a few over the shoulder shots. One focuses on the one looking over the detective in beige’s shoulder looking at the other detective. The shot is after the beige detective (Beige) has told the blue detective (blue) that the “Gov.” wants them back at the station. After this dialogue we see the over the shoulder shot and we see blue’s face. Blue looks at beige. We can see from her facial expression that she is not happy and slightly angry. We can tell this because her eyes are slightly closed and her overall facial expression is one of disgust. The over the shoulder shot works quite well because we can clearly see the facial expression of blue and putting the shot over the shoulder of beige’s shoulder shows us that blue is looking at her. This is very similar to another over the shoulder shot earlier in the extract. Containing the same two characters in an interview scene. Blue looks very upset and angry with beige even at this part of the extract. The look from blue is so strong that it gives the audience the idea that blue and beige are not friends anyway and they don’t get along. Since blue and beige do not get along anyway blue uses the fact that beige forgot to call back a witness on the witness protection programme to publicly not like her.

There were only two point of view shots. This one is where then police woman and the forensic officers find the balcony where in the young man fell from. We see down the flat from the point of view of the police woman, this shot could be easily confused with an aerial shot because we are looking directly down also the fact that it is a high angle camera shot gives the impression of an aerial shot. It is a point of view shot because before this particular shot appears we see the police woman look over the balcony and then the point of view shot appears. This tells me that we are looking from the eyes of the police woman. The shot also follows the rule of thirds composition. This is where the main focus of the shot is slightly of centered. This is because the eye naturally looks slightly off center; this means our eyes are drawn towards the place where the young man fell. They have done this type of shot because it gives the viewer the experience of seeing what the young man saw before he fell to his death. Also because we are looking down onto the place where he landed and the other police officers are stood around the dead young man it makes them look really small and insignificant compared to the young man because we can see all of him whereas we can only see the top of the police officers.  This draws you attention to the young dead man and makes him the main focus of the scene instead of one of the police officers for instance. This is like another scene earlier where we see the young dead man from the eyes of the police man. This gives the viewer the chance to see the crime scene from two different angles and two different perspectives.

In conclusion the two shots I have chosen to analyze both work very well for the purpose they are intended to serve. The over the shoulder shot shows the emotion and facial expression on blue’s face, letting us know what she feels about beige. This makes the viewer feel part of the scene as they feel they are there looking at blue’s face. Whereas the point of view shot gives the viewer the perspective of the police officer from the balcony with the high angle camera shot. This gives the viewer a sense of fear that the young male would have felt before falling to his death from the balcony. Both very different shots but both used to great use with different use of camera angles and rule of thirds.