This document discusses representation in media through four aspects: mise-en-scene, camera, editing, and sound. It analyzes the representations in a film opening called "Split" in four ways. First, it represents the social group of alcoholics through dark makeup, clothes, lighting, and inclusion of drugs and alcohol. Second, it represents innocence and teenagers through a girly character design with bright lighting. Third, it represents the gender of girls through the main character's clothing and camera angles. Fourth, it represents disability through the main character Sophie who has schizophrenia, as shown through medical reports and an unsettling soundtrack.

1. Representation
By Leah Noray
Group 18

2. What Is Representation?
Representation is the means in which a certain piece of
media uses its aspects to represent a social group in
society.
It can be shown in media through the use of four
aspects: Mise-en-scene, camera, editing and sound.
Representation can vary from age, disability, regional
identity, gender, sexuality etc.

3. First Representation

4. …
• I thought that the dark side of our character and film opening can
represent the alcoholic social group who are quite disruptive, into
drinking, smoking, and doing drugs. All of this is shown through the use of
mis-en-scene as we include dark makeup, clothes, alcohol and drugs.
Also, the use of lighting, as much of it is dark, gives a dark atmospheric
perspective. I think our film opening gives a negative view on this social
group as it suggests that young adults/teenagers who drink alcohol and
smoke can be capable of violent and criminal things, it also suggests that
maybe a lot of these people could be mentally unstable like our character
as it is hard to identify.

5. Second Representation

6. …
• The second representation that I found in our film opening is one of innocence
and teenagers. I found that the other side of our character is very girly as she is a
ballerina. This is representative of girls who love pink, makeup, dancing, etc. This is
also shown through the use of mise-en-scene, due to the makeup, tutu, hair etc.
Also, when comparing the two sides of the character, you can see that the girly
side has very bright lighting, whereas the dark side has low lighting. The use of
camera, as we have close ups, show the innocence in the characters face and eyes.
I think that this has given this social group a negative aspect as it shows that just
because someone may look innocent and harmless to the eye, it doesn’t mean
they are in fact that. This kind of image is show quite a lot in thriller movies, for
example in ‘The Room Mate’ the girl seemed to be innocent and nice, but it
turned out she was a psychopath. This was the type of image we were trying to
create in our film opening ‘Split’. Examples from our opening, shown below.

7. Third & Fourth Representation
• The third representation we have in our opening is gender: girls. Solely because of
the fact that the main character is girl. The use of mis-en-scene lets the audience
know that the character wears female clothes. Whilst camera angles such as long
shots and close-ups allows the audience to see what the character looks like and
what she is wearing. In addition, our editing can represent the female gender as
we used many fade in fade out transitions to give a softer effect, this adheres to
the stereotypical view that girls are weak and soft.
• The fourth representation we have, is disability. Our main character, Sophie
Bezborodov has been clearly shown to have a mental disability, of which is
Schizophrenia. The use of mis-en-scene shows that she has a disability as we
showed doctor reports. Also, the soundtrack we created is very eerie and tension
building, it also changes its tempo a few times to represent the characters split
moods and paranoia.