QUESTION TWO - Evaluation

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

My thriller opening sequence involves two characters. The characters included are two a female victim and a male antagonist. The victim was chosen to be a female as they are portrayed as innocent and venerable on screen, creating a larger and quicker relationship between the audience and the victim. A female is seen to be stereotypical in a thriller film as females are frequently used as the victim as they are portrayed as weak and not having much power over anyone but themselves, whereas men are seen stereotypically as larger and muscly, and fit the role better as a antagonist, with strength and dominating power.

Gender in my opening sequence is represented in a stereotypical way as I have used generic conventions from previous thrillers which also use gender to gain a closer relationship with the audience. Gender is very important in a thriller film, as a wrong choice can mean not as much compassion and care is felt towards one character e.g. a male victim may be portrayed as strong and lean, completely defeating the object of an 'victim' being stereotypically seen as venerable and crying for help. 

The male antagonist doesn't show much of a character/personality to the audience, although the reason why he was used in my thriller opening sequence is because he played the character well, he was supposed to represent himself as tough, scary and intimidating, and this did work. Although no facial expressions could be used, his body language showed that he wasn't scared of anyone, and overpowering over his 'young female' victim. Furthermore, the female victim in my opening sequence was young and represented to the audience as venerable and innocent, again this is stereotypical but works well in so many ways in catching the audiences eye. The female victim was represented to be willing and innocent as she walks through a isolated setting (forest) in the dark on her own, something which the audience notice straight away, which helps support her character role, also walking through an isolated alley way. Furthermore, from watching other well-known thrillers for example; Lucy, taken 3, insidious ect, I found that women were seen to wear common colours in their outfits such as white and red as it shows their innocence or even showing to the audience that they will be the focus of attention of the antagonist. The female victim within my opening sequence is positioned in the centre of the camera, walking up to the opening field of the forest, this shows her innocence and not knowing what she is doing or what she is letting herself in for. The way the characters are positioned within the camera can depend on whether a relationship is created or not. Within my thriller opening sequence a relationship is created between the audience and the female victim. The way as a group we have worked together to discuss what she will do and where she will go/stand, has meant the audience feel sorry for her, and making them think that they can't wait for the next scene and want to watch more.

In thriller productions mise-en-scene is very important, as a younger audience want to see a lot of excitement on the screen involving the characters. Hannah, myself and Oliver all had the role of the mise-en-scene co-ordinator. One thing this role does involve is costumes. From research from the film 'Scream' it helped us come to light that costumes help add them final touches, and add to their role of what they are. In the film scream the antagonist is a male, and is seen to be wearing a mask and dark clothing. From comments from peers and the public and other resources I found that the target audience liked this, and found that the dark clothing helped to hide his identity more, and isolating him from all the other characters. From this research as a group we decided that we would use the same features, to catch our '15-25' age audience. The antagonist is portrayed to be wearing his mask and dark clothing throughout the whole sequence, again being stereotypical and conventional of a thriller film.

My target audience is aimed at the age group of 15-25. This is a very popular age group for thriller films, as these are the people it is enjoyed by the most, and take the most time to watch thriller films, after much research into this, this is what was decided. The characters discussed above have been chosen and used directly to capture this particular audience, which I found has worked well and having an overall basis of an target audience has allowed certain decisions to be made, helping the devolvement of the opening sequence.