Downton Abbey: Class & Status

Camera

Tracking shot is used throughout the majority of the screens for example: with the bike at the start of the scene which also links to the establishing scene. It just showed a girl on bike just as something to start the scene on. The another part of the scene which in involved a tracking shot was when Hugh Bonneville (Robert Crawley) was going down the stairs into the other rooms. It stared off with a Steadicam shot following him down the stairs until a clear shot was shown from the bottom of the stairs when he has arrived with his dog. This links in with cross-cutting because he is shown in one place from two different cameras and angles. The type of shots used links with the stereotypes of class and status in many ways some of which include everyone being dressed nice and shows this with the shots used in the scene. Robert Crawley is seen as superior in the scene because everyone seems to be doing everything to please him for example when their daughter asked about why the news papers are being ironed and the reply back was "We don't want his hands being as black as yours". We can clearly tell from what we have just seen in a short clip that they live in high end properties and other factors which relate to this are that he as many people working for him for example in the kitchen and waiters. From all this visual/camera ways we immediately know that he is rich and considered as upper class compared to other people. However he does show sympathy towards the poor after one of his waiters made a comment stating "Most of the women managed to get out" he then replied: "only the first class women that is". Shallow focus is also used when everyone arrived to the dinning room as they did everyone else was blurred out in the background this created effect on the audience  to represent each character in the scene in a unique way.