How does our media product represent particular social groups?
Our thriller opening doesn't contain many actors, this was because we were limited. We used three females and one female casted as a male character. We tried to perceive the three females as weak and vulnerable, therefore casting the male with the more dominant role giving him power over the females. A feamle critic may say that the females are represented as weak and this is unfair. However as we were unable to use our original character for the role of the stalker, we replaced him with a female actor. Therefore a female critic may also argue that this character is potrayed as powerful and strong.
The character to the left of the picture is the protagonist in our thriller opening. She represents a 'normal' teenager who is simply going out with her friends. She is represented as quite weak and vulnerable as she is the victim of a stalker She s from a working class background, her sexuality is unknown and irrelivent. The character in the centre of the image is the antagonist. Little is known about this character if anything in order to create an enigma and the scary effect in which we intended on by leaving the character unknown creating an ominous effect.
Finally,the other two characters shown in the picture, the protagonists' friends, were simply also portrayed as 'normal' teenagers. Their part in the story is to simply carry the story along. Their relation to the protagonist is shown as friends. they are also working class and their sexuality, similer to the protagonists is unknown and irrelevent. Not alot is revealed about these charcters.
There is a lack of input of ethnic minorities in our thriller opening which we did not take into considerations. In order to refrain from ethnic restrictions we did not contain any offensive and racists language or actions. We did not feel as though this was a reltive issue throughout the production of our thriller opening. Although the protagonist is of a mixed race ethnic background, this may therefore be seen as racist as the protagonist is seen as weak and vulnerabe. All of the characters are shown positively, other than the antagonist, however we do not know a lot about their background or personality at this stage of the thriller.
We also did not feel that sexuality was relevent during the production of our thriller opening as this was not revealed at any stage, the thriller is appropriate for a person with any sexuality. Although as the pictures of the proatagonist are placed in a heart shape, it may seem as though the antagonist is in love with the proatganist, we simply meant for this to portray the antagonists obsession for the protagonist as we do not know the sex of the antagonist it is also irrelevent what their sexuality is.
Our thriller will more than likely be seen as inappropriate for younger chldren as it may be seen as disturbing or too frightening for them. The teenagers in our thriller are potrayed as 'normal' teens. We consider to thriller to represent working class people of a 'normal' background. the audience will be able to realate to the characters as they are 'ordinary' making them more involved in the thriller.
We tried to avoid stereotypes in our thriller as much as possible in order to give it a less amatuer look to it and also to make our film more original. However, when we created our antagonist, we diecided to use conventions of a stereotypical 'hoodie'. This was becuase we didn't want to reveal the identity of the antagonist therefore, we decided to dress our character in a hooded sweater. Although, we feel as though our character differs in a way from the stereotype through his obsession. This is because a typically 'hoodies' don't have obsessions, and would definitely not stalk someone to the great extent of which our antagonist stalked our protagonist. Furthermore, a stereotypical 'hoodie' would carry a weapon more negative such as a knife, whereas our character's weapon is a piece of rope.The lack of a more stereotypical weapon makes our antagonist appear less threatening. Although the irony of the audience knowing of the antagonist's obsession, and knowing that he is chasing the females, whilst the girls are unaware reinforces the nasty and more threatening nature of the character, making it sutly effective. This is shown below;
Our 'hoodie'
Stereotypical 'hoodie'
