My Murder

For the drama-documentary section of this assignment I watched My Murder.

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The opening 5 minutes of 'My Murder' uses a variety of techniques in order to give the audience an insight to what the story is about and what each of the main characters are like.
(0:00 - 0:40)Before the title of the production there is a point of view shot from the person who is phoning the emergency services about the boy who has been stabbed. It then cuts to a close up shot of boy who has been stabbed struggling with his sound of pain as the main audio with a vague voiceover of the continuing phonecall made by the woman to the emergency services. overpowering both of these audio layers is a soundtrack that is slow and moving and adds emotion to the opening sequence. This immediately tells the audience that the story is about a boy being stabbed.

(1:11 - 2:26 ) There is a slightly optimistic emotion given off by the soundtrack which is being played over a short sequence of shots of the main character, Shakilus Townsend. Following this, there is then a voiceover of Shakilus himself explaining a breif part of his background. He then goes on to talk about the how the story is about a girl who goes to the same school as himself (shots of the girl are shown walking through the school) and about her boyfriend Danny who he desciribes as a "wasteman". (Shots of the girl meeting Danny are shown at this point). Further information about a couple of minor charcters is given away. The majority of shots in this sequence are mid/long shots showing the audience the location and their characters' ways of dressing and body language etc.

Just like every other story, it has an equilibrium, disequilibrium and new equilibrium. The equilbrium is when Shakilus is just doing his usual everyday business.The link from the equilibrium to the disequilibrium is when Shakilus meets Samantha on the bus and they exchange numbers before she gets off the bus. The mid-point is when Shakilus recieves a phone call from Danny who claims Samantha is already his girl. The new equilibrium is when Danny and his gang find out where Shakilus is. Shakilus and Samantha get of the bus and Danny and his gang chase him, beat him up the stab him whilst Samantha just watches the event unfold.

5 minutes from the end shows the opening sequence of Shakilus being stabbed which was shown at the beggining. This has a good effect on the audience as they are able to see the full build up to the stabbing. Also, as the audience already know what is going to happen, they  are able to make assumptions throughout the film as to what they think may happen to lead to Shakilus' stabbing.

Strauss' binary opposites is demonstrated in this drama-documentary. Good vs Evil is shown between Shakilus who is good and Danny who is evil. The distributer who makes the events happen is Samantha as she is the cause of the conflict between the two boys.

Green Street

The second film I have watched is Green Street, which is a crime drama.

Firstly the narrative structure demonstrates the three equilibriums. The equilibrium shows the introduction of the West Ham United firm and tells us what they are all about. The link between the equilibrium and disequilibrium is when the 'yank' goes to the football with his brother. The disequilibrium is made up by showing how the yank slowly fits into the West Ham firm and him learning about how they work. The rest of the firm are against americans, but his brother, the firm leader tells them he is a good one. One member of the firm see him at The Times and suspects him of being an undercover journalist as they know he studied journalism at Harvard University. Turn out he is just visiting his dad. This is the turning point in the film. The link between the disequilibrium and the new equilibrium is when the woman turns up during the stand off between the West Ham and Millwall firms. 

There are two main scenes which show great production techniques. Firstly, there is a fight scene when the West Ham firm arrive in Manchester.

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The use of different camera shots is very effective in this scene, starting with the overhead view of everyone involved, to the close ups of the main characters switching to the view of the CCTV cameras showing the audience that the fight is a crime. This fast editing pace between the variety of shots adds great excitement and helps the audience to feel the adrenaline that is pumping through the people fighting. As well as this, the rock music being played over emphasises the aggression of the characters. The close up shots in the fight scene make the audience feel as if they are at the location and are right in thick of all the action which makes it more entertaining for the audience to watch. The mid and long shots in this scene show the audience exactly what is happening to each character involved in the fight and what is going on around the area of location where the fight is taking place. Allowing the audience to see what is going on are the fight location makes it easier for them to imagine they are at the location and makes them feel more involved. 

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This scene also demonstrates a large variety of shots similar to the fight scene in manchester which has the same effect on the audience, however there is a very calm score being played over the top giving the audience a sense of a number of different emotions.


This film demonstrates Claude Levi-strauss' theory of binary opposites quite well, as do many films. This theory explains who two people with opposite personalities work against eachother to move the story onwards. For example in Harry Potter, Harry Potter and Voldemort are a perfect example of good vs evil. Similarly, most films have a distributor and a protect and a hero and a villan likewise. In this film, the good vs evil appears in two ways, in which the 'yank' links them both together. The first way this theory is portrayed is between the West Ham fans vs the other teams hooligans. From the West Ham fans' point of view, they are the good people and the hooligans of the other teams are 'evil'. The 'yank' is a small part of the West Ham fans hooligan group. However, the 'yank' is see as the evil by the West Ham fans firstly for just being american and secondly because he is a journalist who is seen at The Times and is suspected of getting the West Ham hooligans in to trouble.