‘UNDERGROUND’ RADIAL ANALYSIS

By George Lawry

The first shot is pitch black, with the non-diegetic sound of an Underground station in the background.

This firstly adds a sense of mystery as the reader tries to work out what is happening.

It also makes the reader understand the name of the film from the beginning, as we were aware of the various interpretations our film name had

We felt this was better than simply starting with establishing shots as it showed the direction the film was going in, as well as one of the main themes and locations in the film.

The next scenes are various establishing shots of ‘Nick’ walking home.

This allows the audience to study the protagonist. They can see he is a young teen in school uniform walking home from school.

They can also tell he lives in a suburban, middle class neighbourhood. This is very relatable to our target audience.

Early implications can be that the child is quite isolated and lonely, which immediately gains sympathy from the audience.

From the establishing shots, the screen goes black and then into this medium/long shot

Nick is now in his room on his laptop.

The effect of the large shot with Nick at the bottom centre of it reiterates the isolation and vulnerability of the character, which explains his fear and paranoia later on in the film.

Also, the rather bland wall highlights both his boredom which leads him to research terrorism and also it lack of individuality; we didn’t want to make him overly unique or delve too much into his personality to keep to the social realism genre that everyone can relate to

In the next shots, Nick scrolls through Twitter and sees countless tweets about a prevented bomb attack in Piccadilly.

This is a unique way of highlighting the problem in our film in a way that encapsulates all the themes in our film: terrorism, media portrayal and the power of phones/tablets/ laptop

The fact it’s a POV (point of view) shot creates relatability with our target audience, as it is something we all do and a majority receive the latest news through social network, just as Nick has.

We then move to a close up of Nick, to really capture the scared reaction he has to the news reports of the bombings

The close ups juxtapose with the previous long shots of Nick on his laptop, shows the importance of what he has discovered to the plot

We wanted his reaction to connote fear but also curiousity and a desire to discover more; this would lead to him doing further research into what terrorism “really” is, instead of just what social media is telling him.The fact it shocked him so

much outlines his youth, innocence and naievety

After being told to stop and go to bed by who we assume is his father, he sits there for a while, still looking shocked and agitiated

This really hits home with the audience, as they are now completely aware of how much this has affected him

This brings up questions to do with social media and its power, especially to gullible and naieve kids

Our actor plays his role here very well, he captures the essence of our film here perfectly. This is the problem fully introduced to the audience, and from here the suspense builds to the climax. (rising action in Freytag’s narrative theory.)

This shot follows an early morning establishing shot, where Nick has woken up and gone straight onto his laptop, now downstairs and not in his room.The subsequent shot shows him carrying on researching terrorism, shows his infatuation and curiosity on the subject

He researches “Donald trump muslim ban”, which shows the danger of being scared by terrorism, as it can turn kids like Nick into racists who strive for political change to ban muslims and other minorities from the country.

It also shows yet again how much social media has effected him, from the minute he goes to bed to the minute he wakes up he is scared, researching.

As he continues researching, his father comes in and stands over him, but after a few seconds leaves the room without saying anything.

This leads the audience to belive that its due to a lack of parental attention and protection that he finds himself on the internet finding out about terrorism himself

Either the father does not realise what he is researching or the dangers and effects it can have on someone too young and innocent to completely understand

Or he simply doesn’t care. This is open to interpretation for the audience; but regardless it furthers the sympathy they have with the protagonist.

Another day passes, and Nick comes downstairs and sits down at the table, to which his sister is there waiting for him.

She tells him that they are going to London to meet their mother – this immediately triggers Nicks fear of terrorism and the news he’d read about an attempted bomb attack on public transport.

This causes the audience to try

and foresee the rest of the short film – by putting two and two together, they could reach the conclusion that there could be another attack, and Nick has good reason to be scared

This is what we hope the audience predicts, as it gets the audience in the mind of the protagonist and makes the climax of the short more suspenseful as they beleive they know what is going to happen.

All of a sudden the shot changes to a backseat shot – they are on the way to London, specifically the tube station.

Yet again, the sister (and this time her boyfriend) are with him but are not showing him any attention. Nick sits in the back on his own with all sorts of thoughts circulating in his head.

While in the backseat, Nick looks out the window, and one of the things that catches his eye is the Morden Islamic Community Centre

This reminds the audience of Nick’s new fear of muslims due to his research on terrorism. Furthermore, it shows his generalisation of muslims, prejudging them all as terrorosists.

The fact he notices this shows that these thoughts are always in his head. This is crucial to the plot of the film.

Before getting on the tube, Nick and his sister go into a shop so that she can get a magazine for the journey.

Nick notices that the shopkeeper is of Asian origin and becomes very shy, hides himself behind his sister and tries not to look him in the eyes. He is scared of the man despite him being polite and not doing anything to suggest he is dangerous or a terrorist – this does not stop Nick from being afraid.

Now they walk into the tube station: his sister lugs him along, he falls behind, looking disinterested and distracted.

This ‘out of character’ attitude of his elucidates his progressing fear of getting on the tube. The prevented Piccadilly attack was on a bus, but nevertheless he is terrified.

Regardless of this, his sister still does not notice he is acting differently. This surely makes her partly to blame for his prejudice of Asian people.

At this point, the suspense has been rising and will continue to grow until the imminent climax.

On the tube, Nick tries to distract himself by going on games on his phone, but cannot help but notice the Asian man across from him.

We used focus pull to initially have the man out of focus, and then bringing him into focus with the non-diegetic suspense-creating noises in the background. This works really well to make the audience automatically assume what Nick is.

Nick looks over at the man, and starts to panic. From this point on, he assumes he is a terrorist and examines everything he does.

Nick sees him rummaging through his bag and perceives this as him looking or setting up a bomb.

The Asian man is also noticed looking around the tube, to which Nick sees this as him being paranoid and looking around for Police.

At this point, Nick is practically certain that this man is terrorist. However, he doesn’t know how to react.

He tries tugging on the arm of his sister, who like always ignores him as she is too interested in her magazine.

This close up shows the true fear in his face. This coupled with the suspense being built by non-diegetic sounds builds up an excellent climax where the audience are expecting an attack any second…

Just before the climax, a high pitched beeping sound is heard, this time diegetically. This sounds like a bomb to the audience….

But…

The beeping stops. The climax has happened.

The beeping was actually the opening of the tube doors: the perfect epitomy that the audience got into the characters mindset and believed that he was a terrorist too.

The Asian man gets off the tube without causing any harm to anyone. His assumption that he was a terrorist is false; showing he should not have got so paranoid and scared by his research online.

A fake climax, but with a very strong message. You should not generalise a group of people as evil just because a very miniscule proportion of them are.

Nick lets out a huge sigh of relief as he realises he was wrong about the man and about stereotyping Asian people in general.

He is now clear that the Asian man meant no harm to him or anyone. He greets a Caucasian man who is waiting for him at the stop.

THE ENDThe moral of our story is now apparent and the audience have seen the problem with generalising a group of people through the eyes of a child. If they too believed the man was a terrorist, then they can point fingers at themselves too.