After Thomas is a TV drama which was aired in December, 2006 by ITV - reliable institution so know that the drama is a true story based on a mother who has a child with autism.
Mise-En-Scene
- Mother - angry, protective, and angry at other people's ignorance and how they are judging her.
- Change of setting from the town scene to the office scene - character is portrayed as a person who is committed to their work as they don't rush out when the firebell is heard.
- Props in office scene - desk, desk light, computer, etc - items which are found in a standard office workplace.
- Lighting - very dull at the start.
- Characters are dressed in normal, everyday clothing.
- Colours - quite dark. Black - depressing, death, low mood. White - heaven, death. Red - danger.
- Black writing, to say the story is true, stands out well on the white background - see the 'light' in the truth.
Camera Angles
- Close-ups of the mother and child's face - see expressions and features - scratches on mother's face - child lashed out - emotional difficulties and distress.
- Long shots of the shops at the beginning - shows where the characters are.
- Over-the-shoulder shot from shop assistant - see the action from her point of view, audience are asked to judge the mother and the mother reinforces this by telling the child not to look. Going through the child's tantrums is an everyday routine.
Camera Movements
- Arc.
- Hand-held shots.
- Zoom - used when child falls.
- Pan shot - used whilst mother and child are walking to the shop.
Sound
- Traffic.
- Screams.
- Violin - portrays relationship between mother and child which is contrasted with the child's screams.
- Edited sound - disorientated - blurred and stretched out.
- Sound is quite negative - communicating emotion.
- Diegetic sound doesn't match the non-diegetic sound.
- Sound is magnified - background noise - dangerous situation emphasised.
- Sound sucked back out - different time.
- Contrapuntal sound - the use of the violin doesn't match the dramatic action going on in the scenes at the beginning.
Narratives
- Enigma code (Barthes) produced through the non-matching diegetic sound and non-diegetic sound at the beginning - audience doesn't know what's happened.
- Subjective time - time experienced/felt by the characters is shown through the editing and camera movements - audience experience the event at the same time.
- Semantic code (Barthes) - the cars going past connote life going by.
- Semantic code - red bus - connotes danger.
- Set in 1993 - allows audience to contextualise.
- Enigma code of red bus, which goes past a second time, foreshadows that something is going to happen.
- Mother - protagonist (Propp).
- Ideology - 'normal' mother trying to teach her son 'normal' things.
- Slow motion at the beginning - emphasise dramatic action.
- Red bus - real-time - feel emotions that the mother is feeling.
- Representation of disability and how the mother copes with it.
- Todorov's theory is challenged - no equilibrium, the story doesn't start straight away - it starts a little into the T.V drama.
- Action codes (Barthes) - action involving another narrative action.
- Ideology - show disability through parent's perspective and how difficult it is to cope with ignorance of other people.
- Black and white - binary opposition (Levi-Strauss).
- Main family and 'normal' family - binary opposition.
- Boy (usually worst behaved) - autistic child - and girl - binary opposition.
Editing
- Change of background colour - the transition to a white background - being taken to a different place and time.
- Fast pace editing when mother and child are in the middle of the road - action editing - creates tension for audience - they're sharing the action.
