Essay- Hotel Babylon

In the clip From Hotel Babylon we see ethnicity presented through the less positive stereotypes for each characters' ethnicity. Most of the characters of a foreign ethnic background have been portrayed as having less power than their white-British counterparts, working lower paid jobs as cleaners or kitchen workers. All of the police officers that participate in the raid of the building are white-British characters that hunt down the illegal immigrants, which enforces the idea that they are superior to people of other ethnic backgrounds.   

The music throughout the clip is upbeat and has a fast tempo, suggesting a chase or pressure will be present during it.

At the beginning of the clip, the focus is on the arrival of the all white-British immigration service that have come to take away the illegal immigrant workers. A mid shot is used when the police officers enter the hotel through the door to show their arrival into the scene as they become the subject. The next image is a mid shot of the hotel receptionist noticing their entrance, which then switches to a close up of the main officer's face, showing his stern expression, which suggests that he is not going to take any nonsense of anyone and he means business. 
Atmosphere is created through the movement of the officers as they walk toward the camera, which indicates that they are coming for the illegal immigrants and they are also walking towards the audience, making the scene feel more suspenseful. 
Once the main officer has reached the front desk, he verbally claims his authority to search the premises, informing the viewer that he has the most power in this situation and that he is to be feared by the illegal workers. 

Two hotel workers rush to inform 'Jackie' about the arrival of the police. A mid shot of Jackie working in her 'office' highlights the conditions that she works in, contrasting with her white counterpart, the receptionist. Jackie's office is below ground and is dark and dingy, and her clothes are black and red, which connotes 'hell'. Upstairs the white-British woman works in a modern and attractive setting that is above the ground and she is dressed in white, giving the connotations of 'heaven'. This suggests that while the hotel looks charming and innocent on the surface, within the hotel there are many dark secrets hidden away, with those secrets being the illegal immigrants. This also shows that the white woman has the better job, whilst Jackie, an Asian woman, has a lower rank than her.

Following pan is used to follow the action of the scene as Jackie runs into the kitchen to round up all of the illegal employees so that she can hide them from the officers. She is shouting in a foreign language, which is something that, stereotypically, people from different ethnic backgrounds do. 
The paralinguistic features used in the kitchen scene creating tension e.g. Jackie's and the worker's facial expressions and frantic movements. 

As the illegal workers run to a store cupboard to hide in, a close up of Jackie's hand shaking while attempting to unlock the door is shown to present how nervous she is to the audience.
The workers running into the cupboard is shown with blurred 'bars' in the foreground, creating the idea that they are trapped in these furtive lives that only ethnic minorities are subjected to.
When everyone is inside of the storage space, Jackie locks the door. This symbolises that they are now safe, but also being restricted and possibly victimised by society. 
There is low lighting in the cupboard, with the lack of light adding to the idea that these illegal immigrants are being kept in the dark, in both senses of the phrase.  

The diegetic sounds inside the cupboard consist of the heavy breathing and whimpers of the workers. This is not a situation that any person should find themselves in, which indicates how dehumanised these ethnic minority characters have become. The sounds also convey the stress within the scene and make the show more realistic.
With the exception of Jackie, all of the workers are dressed in uniforms typical of people on a low wage, again indicating that there is an inequality between these characters and white-British ones. 

Close ups of all of the illegal employees faces are given to present their emotions; anxious and panicked. Despite the illegal immigrants being of various different ethnic backgrounds, they have conflated, giving them one identity as 'the immigrants', instead of individual people that have their own lives and personalities, which is emphasised when we find out that one of the workers 'Adam', "wasn't always a cleaner" when he uses his medical knowledge to help a worker who fainted under the pressure.  

The camera zooms in on Jackie's face to show her reaction to one of the workers being absent from the hiding place, which is followed by parallel editing used to reveal the missing character 'Ebrahim' as he peacefully vacuums a hallway, oblivious to the raid.

As soon as Ebrahim (an African man) sees the officers, he gasps, showing his shock, then attempts to run but trips and falls, where the two officers in suits take get hold of him and begin to take him away. 
The camera moves down to the vacuum cleaner that Ebrahim was using not even 30 seconds ago to show that he is gone now and will vacuum the halls no more. 

The upbeat music stops when Jackie is informed that an illegal worker has been caught. We then see Ebrahim struggling to escape the grasp of the officers unsuccessfully as they take him outside. This makes the mood more realistic, therefore more emotional so that the audience connects with how Ebrahim and Jackie (who was responsible for the illegal immigrants) feel at that time.