Question 2- How does your media product represent particular social groups?

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

In the thriller, that my team produce for the AS Course will represent the following social groups:

-          Teenagers

-          Gender

-          Ethnicities

Teenagers

In the opening to the thriller ‘Cursed Life’, the main teenager boy is shown to represent that the story behind the thriller is that the teenager boy is cursed as everything around or associated with him is falling to bits. He is facing relationship issues and teenage issues like modern day teenagers who face these teenage issues on a daily basics as they may be having problems with girlfriends/boyfriends and family relation. The age of the teenager male character is 17 years old, as to shown that the teenager male character is at this age; we uses adult-like costumes  to show that he is on the border line of becoming an adult. Also we used the mise-en scene to make the costume for the teenager male actor to have an effective use of colour to see both the good and evil sides of the 17 years old teenager male character has he has good feelings that he has emotions for his girlfriend as shown by the ‘white’ colour of his costume jumper. But the ‘black’ colour of the teenage male character’s costume jumper shows the bad feelings that he is facing life-like issues with family and relationships and finding out them are hard to life with/cope with.

Furthermore, the representation of teenagers in the thriller, the team used mise-en-scene to make the locations for the thriller to help the film with setting the location and telling the plot, for this we used locations such as a park and classroom to show the stereotype of 17 years olds that they are still teenagers and some of them are still at school during higher education (6^th Form). This is telling the audience that these 16-18 years old teenagers are still young people not yet fully classable as adults start facing issues with relationships and lifelike adults as this issues majority start just as you finish secondary school. In additionally, we used long shots, mid-shots and establishing shots as well as a tilt shot to show the locations by the use of camera shots and angles. Even more the post-production of the thriller, the editing on the camera shots create more a deeper effect to the audience as the editing helped to set the mise-en-scene and put it together.

Gender

In the opening to the thriller ‘Cursed Life’, the team made sure that gender will be well represented in the thriller. For example we used close-ups, mid-shots and long shots on the teenager male character to show the physical stereotypical masculine side of the male, that they are very independent as they will decide their own path in making real-life issues. Also the particular camera shots we used to show the representation of the male shows that they don’t show any emotions in physical appearance but in mentally the emotions can be shown beneath the skin.

As for the representation of the teenage female in the opening to Cursed Life, the team used a high angle shot of the photograph of the teenage female character as to show the common stereotypical representation as the females can be very vulnerable as they can be hate from the actions of males.

Also, my team included a 17 year old teenager female character to play as the main teenager male character’s girlfriend as to show the two sides of the boyfriend/girlfriend relationship as both characters represents that both sides can get hate by the other if one of them are facing harsh times in their life.

Ethnicity

In the opening to the thriller, my team used two characters that the audience can see are both white, as this represents that any ethnicity person can be in a relationship not just one pacific ethnicity group. For the rest of the thriller, we planned as in own research and planning to have a mixed characters in the thriller. Own team planned to have that the majority of the characters will be white, however there is one main female black character, which will be a doctor and will be important to the story. This is a countertype of the black community as the female character will have a professional job as it shows that not all doctors in today’s society are white. As it implies that  every ethnicity group can be a doctor if they work hard to become one.

Daniel Chandler's Genre Theory
For the thriller my team used Daniel Chandler's genre theory as we adheres themes, characters, setting, iconography and filming techniques that we understood and applied to the thriller.

For example: the setting was geographical as we used locations that fit to the plot of the thriller as we used parks and modern buildings to help with making the thriller feel real. Also another example of Daniel Chandler's theory that we included in the thriller was iconography; as we used the mise-en-scene very well as we used the correct setting, costumes and characters to create the story of the thriller. Like we used teenage clothing for the teenagers in the thriller to show to the audience that they are young teenagers, who's going in adulthood and the other characters in the thriller like the doctors and police officers, the team will used professional costumes for the characters like a police uniforms and a white coat with medical features to the costume to tell the audience their professional job in the film's society. Even more the editing and the usage of the camera help with showing the characters and locations to the audience with telling the atmosphere of the set, that shows social groups in the area, in how the groups react with one another.