Our Girl- Representation Task

Gender in television: representation of stereotypes
In our girl we are seeing a woman in the army, this concept itself breaks stereotypes of women being weak and powerless.  

In this photo we still notice stereotypical aspects to her presentation. She is shown here wearing makeup with her hair still looking better than we should ever expect, she also carries a clean and presentable look, this insinuates that she has not yet seen field action. We can see Georgie wearing her dog tags as though they are jewellery, whether this is used as a reinforced view that she is in the army is not apparent. Also, the way she has positioned herself shows she is relaxed, however judging by her background she has found herself in a corrupt and dangerous environment.

Analysing an episode of 'Our Girl' using the 4 key areas.-

Lance Corporal Georgie Lane, an experienced army medic, joins Captain James and 2 Section on a humanitarian tour to Kenya. She has promised her fiancé, Doctor Jamie Cole, that she will return home soon to marry him. 2 Section are posted to a refugee camp near the border of Somalia, and as soon as they pull into the camp, Georgie jumps straight to work when an IED explodes, harming many refugees. When aid worker Kicki is kidnapped, Georgie's determination to find her lands her in great danger.

Camera work-

During establishing shots and ariel shots we can see that the program/drama is set in a country which has a warm and dry climate with near-desert landscapes. We find out later on that the drama is actually set in Kenya.

The filming during sudden and spontaneous scenes is a mixture of hand-held camera shots which create a shaky effect. This way of filming allows the viewer to become submerged into the action and feel as though they, themselves, are stuck in the tense scenario.

majority of the camera work used in Steadicam however occasional crane shots are used, especially during operational movements within the team; when the other soldiers are moving around a site. it is used so we can assess all of the drama going on and understand the storyline and plans better.

Many tracking shots are used to help the audience maintain their understanding of the action going on.

Editing-
The ordinary continuity editing is used to show endless action and allow the scenes to piece and flow together. There were cross cutting scenes and these were made evident by the music used and the way the continuity shots had allowed us to follow the two story lines. The cross cutting shots appeared when the two storylines/ plots were possibly close to colliding. A few jump cut scenes were used to help the audience establish the main characters space as she was being held captive, this was helpful as it allowed the audience to know more than the character (dramatic irony).
During scenes when characters were being moved or captured there was plenty of fast paced editing purely to build up the tension for the viewers.

Sound-
The programme contain both diegetic sounds and non diegetic sounds. an example of a diegetic sound and occasionally synchronous sounds would be gun shots, explosions and the sounds of vehicles when they are on screen or even if they are heard in the background. On the other hand there is no appearance of a voice over at any point of which we watched. Music was used in some scenes as a non-diegetic sound, the pace of the music varied to persuade tension and anxiousness, it also allows the audience to see who exactly is in control at that point in time.   

Mise-en-Scène -
In this drama I was expecting a level of defying the normal everyday stereotype, in other words I was expecting an incredible feminist view or an anti terrorism viewpoint. Unfortunately I was deeply disappointed. The production allowed terrorists to be shown in the normal stereotypical way and women were shown to be annoying and non-tactical to a certain degree. The only part that I was quite surprised, which obviously follows a deeper plot line, is that the secondary leader of the terrorist group was British.