Representation of Tony Stonem

How is Tony Stonem represented in Skins?

Tony Stonem is represented in a very different way in Skins to how normal teenagers his age would act. The stereotypical teenager is seen to be lazy, messy and irresponsible. Whereas Tony is completely different to this stereotype, he is represented  in this clip as very neat, controlled and responsible, he is shown to be a very pedantic character.

The first initial shot we see of Tony is a close up of his face, from this we can see the smug look of pleasure on his face as he has conveniently woken up before his alarm has gone off. The shot then pans out into a high angle shot where we see Tony lying in his bed under a duvet of a naked man and woman, funnily enough we see Tony in the middle of these two naked figures, this gives us the impression that maybe Tony is undecided of his sexuality being 'stuck in the middle' or maybe that he is bisexual being in the middle of the two genders.

The shot then jump cuts to Tony's alarm going off and him getting out of bed very swiftly. From this shot we can see Tony's room is very neat and tidy, his room is illuminated by the bright sunlight coming through the window, showing his room to be very clinical and bland, this could show a reflection of Tony's personality and proves my previous point of him not being a 'normal' teenager, as we would expect his room to be very messy and dark. We then see that he clearly has a daily routine when he gets up; turning off his alarm, stretching, working out, watching the woman across the street get dressed and then getting dressed himself. Filming all of this includes camera shots as mid shots of Tony's torso, long shot of Tony in the window and over the shoulder shot of the woman in the window across the street. We then move to a high angle shot of Effy walking down the street obviously looking worn out as she is scantily dressed from a night out. This is very ironic as we instantly see the massive contrast between the two siblings. On one hand we have Tony who isnt the 'typical' teenager: he is very organised, neat, well dressed and pedantic and on the other hand we have his younger sister Effy who is very much a stereotypical teenager: rebellious, sneeky and messy. The high angle shot of Effy shows her vunerabilty being the youger sibling and Tony looking down on her as the older, more responsible brother. Tony then pretends his CD player has broken, and distracts his dad whilst Effy sneaks in.

The sound used throughout the clip so far has been very varied. We move from the diegetic sounds of the church bells ringing and birds singing to the non-diegetic music which is pulsating and slow, building the scene up. We then return back to diegetic music as Tony puts his soundsystem on which is much more fast paced and louder and reflects the chaos he is about to cause by playing it and diegetic sound as his Dad comes in swearing and shouting at the high volume of the music. The dialogue between Tony and his Dad seems very well rehearsed like this isnt the first time Tony has woken his parents up to music blasting, we know this as his Dad says "every fucking morning" and the look on Tony's face shows he takes pleasure in winding up and annoying his Dad so easily.

We are then taken to a shot of Effy's room, which reinforces my point of her being a very stereotypical teenager. Her room is messy, decorated with bright colours and hardly illuminated at this time in the morning, the dark state of her room could represent the dark side to her personality which her parents obviously have no idea about and is masked by the decor  of her room being so childish and girly.

We then move on to the next scene where Tony purposely locks himself inside the bathroom just to annoy his Dad, he then climbs out of the window, down the drainpipe and back into the house to take a seat in the kitchen. he does all of this whilst his Dad still thinks he is in the toilet, until his Dad comes downstairs and to his dismay sees Tony sat at the table eating his breakfast quite arrogantly and looking very smug at how easily he can annoy his Dad, we see Tony taking great pleasure in doing this which returns us back to the actions of a stereotypical teenager; going out of his way to annoy and wind up his parents. Tony is represented to have a very mistured and varied personality, some sides of him being very different to your average teenager and other sides being quite a normal annoying teenager. Tony however, over all doesnt seem to conform to the normal expectations of a teenager, whereas Effy does and having the contrast between the two siblings highlights the differences in how they act in everyday life, which isnt seem to be the norm for most teenagers in the UK.