CASE STUDIES (life and death row unfinished)

Life and Death Row - BBC 3
Around one minute into the programme, we are introduced to Heinze via a short piece of text. It states he was "charged with the murders of eight members of his own family". Immediately we begin to dislike this character and words such as 'murder' influence our opinion. However, this is also an enigma code; it makes the viewer want to continue watching so that they can find out the backstory and what caused Heinze to commit such a crime. the next shot soon after is of a man in a small room, sat alone at a table - like the start of the programme, there is a voiceover of someone on the phone to the police - the audience automatically assume that it is Heinze, the man at the table. A few minutes later, there are some close ups of framed pictures. Again, we assume that these images are of Heinze and as an audience, we may begin to feel sympathy for him as we are witnessing him as a young, naïve, innocent child. After we see these images, we are taken back to the small room where Heinze is sat at the table. At first, his body language makes him seem like he doesn't care too much as he seems quite calm, but he then folds his arms on the table and puts his dead down on them. This is typical body language of someone who is tired and upset. While he has his head on the table, there is another voiceover. An elderly woman begins talking about how Heinze was never a confrontational person and this has quite a big impact on the audience as it makes us question whether he is actually the bad person we think he is.
Overall, the audience would have mainly negative opinions of this man due to his past offence and the way he treated his family, however the way his grandmother speaks about him makes us feel slightly more sympathetic. The mise en scene also makes us feel negative as it is mainly set in a courtroom.