Q2 how does your media present different social groups?

Within our media product we represent a select few social groups that are on a wide spectrum within today's society.

When planning for our media product we wanted to make sure that we included a range of different social groups which is why our characters are presented as different social groups especially our female characters as they are complete opposite ends of the spectrum. Firstly, we represented gender as being very different to each other but we also represented two varieties of females and the differences between them. We represented the two female characters as opposites because we wanted to include a diversity within our opening but we also wanted the audience to be able to establish them from when they first the characters. Our lead female character is presented as anxious and unglamorous due to how she acts and the costume she wears as well as her make-up. Her anxiousness can be seen through the way she walks and her facial expressions at the opening of the opening an example of this is at 0:29 where the female character is reflecting on her life in the mirror and her facial expression is anxious as well as the way she is looking into the mirror. This character is represented as being slightly broken while at the same time anxious and attempting to be glamorous and classy. This is different to our other female character as she is very stylised and glamorous which is shown through her costume an her body language but also her persona as even though there isn't dialogue she may be viewed as impatient. An example of this is at 1:19 where she is checking her watch. This connotes that she is quite impatient but it could also be perceived to the audience as being quite deceitful and shifty as she is checking the time which connotes that the other person is late and that she doesn't have time to waste.

The females are presented as contrasting to the one male character that we featured in the film because the male character is presented as quite predatory and enigmatic as the audience have no idea who he is and what his motives are for watching the protagonist. This could viewed as marginalising males but as there is a male in our thriller this is proved otherwise. Even though our film is highly female dominated it represents the same gender very differently but it also represents age differently within our characters. For our thriller, age was represented differently through the use of camera work and mise en scene for example Ruth's character is dressed sophisticatedly and smart which connotes that she is older than our other female character as my character is dressed like a teenager would which has connotations of being quite young  and naive. This is similar to our male character as he is dressed in a hoodie which is quite a young persons item to wear which shows that perhaps he doesn't want to be predatory and that he was forced to be .He is also portrayed as being a criminal due to the lighting being dark and the music changing to a minor key making the piece seem darker. All of our characters are portrayed as being fairly young with ruth's character being portrayed as the oldest out of all 3. An example of this is at 1:00 when she checks her watch as this demonstrates that she is older because of her impatience but this is also exhibited as a close up which emphasis her level of patience and how she is a busy person compared to the other 2 characters and their actions.

We didn't really represent ethnicity massively within our thriller but one of the actors ruth is Spanish and she was represented as glamorized and high profile but she was also represented as being corrupt due to her characters actions and how she informed the male character of what was in the envelope and who the other lead female character was. But british people are represented as being broken and slightly menacing due to my character and the male character and how we are dressed and the type of camera angles used on us. For example at 1:18 when there is an over the shoulder shot it emphasises that the male character is predatory and not very victimised even though he could be because of his job and his role within our thriller. In our thriller we have used but at the same time we have challenged stereotypes of each of our characters by using mise en scene and different types of camera shots to convey how the characters are represented. An example of this is the way ruth's character is dressed her costume is stereotypical and we took influences from the third man but also se7en as the costume is quite stylised yet it conforms to stereotypical detective wear due to the long coat.  This is shown in figure 1 as the coat is long much like the coat in figure 3 which is from se7en but to juxtapose this the outfit is also very stylised due to how we wanted to represent her character much like the outfit in figure 2 from the third man. At the same time we also challenged stereotypes with my character as she could be perceived as strong and but due to the closeups and the way the character walks and is positioned in the frame she is perceived as anxious and weak to the audience. For the male character we didn't really challenge or use conventions intentionally we that he should blend in with the crowd as we didn't want him to be obvious to the audience.

figure1

figure 2

figure 3

Lastly, we tried to represent how society sees young people by having a lot of the characters being isolated ins hots which shows that older people generally leave younger people alone if they can help it but it also shows that older generation perhaps find younger people intimidating due to the way they dress and act. But it also shows that older generations think that younger generations are slightly broken and unorganised when in reality they are just misunderstood by older generations because of their appearance. We also chose to subtly  represent criminality by having the male character be predatory towards the female character  as at the end we were originally going to have him kill the female character but in the end we decided to leave it with the dress and the last bit of the music with a black screen. In the end we didn't manage to represent criminality as strong as we planned to but prefered it when criminality was inferred through the over the shoulder shot of the female character and the male character watching her. This also presented an enigmatic feel to our thriller opening as the audience never sees the killer so he remains a mystery.
My character is presented as contemporary, modern and gritty by the way she is dressed compared to Ruth's character. My character is dressed quite modern which is demonstrated by her wearing a hoodie where as Ruth's character is presented as quite old fashioned in a way which is exhibited by the trench coat and how formal she is dressed  which is different to how informal my character is dressed. My character is also presented as modern and contemporary and also gritty by the way she acts. This shown when she meets the detective but also when she is walking towards the small underpass bit as she is constantly checking behind her which could reflect on how concious she is of her surroundings and everyone around her as well.Lastly she is presented as gritty by her surroundings as they all are covered in graffiti or they are all worn down like the small underpass clip and the clip where she is walking towards the underpass.

 




Through all this we represented different groups through the means of mise en scene like costume and camerawork like frequent close ups to convey either how society sees them or how we wanted them to be perceived.