Further Research Part 3- My Main Focus Elements

Both of these use similar elements but have a different approach to presenting them, which makes them both that separately unique. The most important elements which I am going to take into consideration towards my drama are the innocence and killing aspects.

Compare & Contrast

---------------------------------------	The Walking Dead	The Road
Innocence By a media standpoint, a media product such as films and tv show’s usually follows certain guide lines which the audience subconsciously adapt from characters and situations. When it comes to a young character, the audience evaluates that character as innocent as they are young, most likely not done anything unjustified such as murder and deceit. It’s very unlikely for a death to occur for a young child as it hits an encouraging emotion in the audience but allows that element of un-expectation for the audience.	The Walking Dead uses and abuses this element throughout. They have young characters which appear weak and with enough character development builds a bond with the audience but then extremely brutalises that element for the audience by having them die and turn into the un-dead which is a pure evil. The creators bring on this element of the un-expected and there really being no innocence within the first five minutes of the first episode, where you witness the first kill from Rick of a young, teddy carrying zombie girl. By the third season the innocence of the child has really been taken away seeing as the only child there, Karl has had to man up and even get involved in killing the un-dead. They have replaced that character’s innocence with a new born child which symbolises a new character in a new world, born of an innocent child. However the creators twist it a bit by bringing the child in by sacrificing another life so the child is born in blood.	The Road, they seem to preserve that element of innocence by the fact the father will do anything to keep the boy safe whilst teaching him how to live like a man in this world.  He sees horrible sides to this new world but encourages him to enjoy what is left such as coke, safety etc. There are moments where you believe that the boy will die considering the actors perform brilliantly, but he survives.  At the end the boy is left alone to fend for himself but luckily finds another group which to be innocent with. Another quirk they use to make clear on the innocence is how both main characters believe in “preserving the fire” which is basically keeping their humanity. They may have to kill to survive and protect the good, but not falling into eating other people which could be one of the most unthinkable things to do. They have a scene which they try to show that the innocence is gone with a mother and child being chased and killed but it doesn’t have that much of an impact as these characters are random and have had no previous screen time.
Killing Now killing is a major survival aspect in a post-apocalyptic world considering that you have to fend for yourself and everyone is a threat. The killing doesn’t necessarily be committed by a single person, it can be caused by his/her actions to not help or willingly allow them to be harmed or even killed to protect themselves and/or the ones they love. In any feature everyone is liable to be killed even those that are considered the main character but usually certain events will hint towards them changing or not of use which makes the audience less disoriented when a main character does die. However the ones that are just unexpected are due to be a massive shocker to the storyline and are memorable to the audience.	This show consists with a lot of killing in it, mainly of the un-dead which in this type of post-apocalyptic world becomes second nature as they are a constant threat .As they are un-dead, an evil spawn doesn’t play too much effect on the characters and audience. It is expected to kill but to keep interesting put the weak characters into drastic situations where they have to kill in horrific ways. When it has come to kill another survivor that poses a threat, they make the decision difficult for everyone including the audience. For example in season two, the group get shot at by some random scavengers and they capture one. They spend a couple episodes to character develop to which everyone has an input in allowing to live or to die. Through this the audience even find it difficult to want this scavenger to die, even though he attacked the main group. He is a young lad and is only doing what he can to survive. Most of the characters have some form of experience killing or using firearms so when they kill someone, even a friend that has turned it doesn’t come off as that distressing but when someone like Karl takes a life it hits the audience on an intense level. Watching him man up, taking his mothers last breath away from her shows true character development and gains pity from the audience.	There isn’t a lot of killing in this film but gains more of a shocking effect when a kill does happen due to that fact the characters have a different shocking impact. For example within the first ten minutes in this post-apocalyptic world we see Man encounter a number of scavengers and has been spotted by one of them and even though he knows he should kill him struggles to do it until they physically threaten Boy. Most of the world has died due to some form of world crisis. Something that is constantly mentioned throughout is the fact they have two bullets spare, one for each of them which they need to use if they are about to captured as it’s the safest thing to do. Otherwise they would be tortured, starved, mutilated then eaten. One of the most depressing deaths is the mother; she has given up on life and simply walks into the night and is never seen again. This death has a great impact as it shows how unstable the world is and even though she is most likely one of the few people that has a husband and child still alive, she would prefer to die now then take any chance of interacting with other life.