How does your media product represent particular

social groups?

What is a Social Group?A group of people who interact with each other, conscious of the fact that they share a quality in common. How social groups can be determined can be perhaps through their age group, gender, race, sexuality, religion or moral beliefs. They may share a common goal which unites them.

Social Group One:FEMALE VICTIM

Both our character ‘Jennifer’ and Kim use mobile phones as a source of aid and then consequently as a weapon. Initially, both girls use the phone to capture information: Jennifer the plans of a dangerous terrorist gang, Kim of the plans of a sex trafficking gang.. Upon being discovered, both then use the phone to aid them – Kim to phone for help, Jennifer to capture top secret information and to hopefully foil the plans of the gang. The phone prop is what consequently foils the plans of both gangs in the films. After watching ‘Taken’, we could see that the female character is often shown through high angles to make them look more minuscule and insignificant – therefore more vulnerable. We incorporated this Thriller genre code and convention into our opening. Frequent cross cutting is also used in our opening when the female is being pursued to show how the gang are approaching inevitably nearer. This increases the drama of our opening, which is a technique used often in Thriller films to show the social group of female victims being targeted.

For our Thriller opening, we based our female victim character on the character of Kim, from mainstream Thriller film ‘Taken’.We selected this character as she possessed the characteristics we wanted our female to have, such as: vulnerability, intuition, helplessness, the desire to survive despite all odds and to be pursued, therefore putting her in fatal danger.

Vulnerability is a quality we modelled our character of Jennifer around. Kim’s character shows her childlike innocence and vulnerability by dressing in young, childlike clothes with bright colours, by wearing minimal makeup to give the impression she is younger, and by having a terrified expression on her face throughout her scenes. We incorporated these qualities into our own film, by applying the methods of childlike clothing of bright colours, minimal make-up and scared facial expressions and mannerisms. The light colours both characters wear symbolise goodness and our desired quality of innocence, which is a Thriller genre code and convection for the ‘good’ character’s to have. ‘Taken’ also taught us to show our vulnerable character of the female victim through high angles, showing her to be smaller and therefore more easily overwhelmed by the threatening characters both films share – this is a Thriller genre code and convention.

Both Kim and Jennifer also share narrative similarities. Kim utilises her skills in ‘Taken’ as a heroine, before falling victim to the gang, by acquiring her Father the information he needs to track down the gang and foil their plans. Jennifer also does this by recording the gangs plans on her mobile, then removing the SD card containing the footage and salvaging it, which enables the police to watch the video and then act upon the information she has gained them by foiling the plans of the gang also –which highlights her intuition.

At the start of the opening, the only character on screen is our female.

To hint the character is in danger, we play an ominous ambiance sound as she walks through the setting of an urban area. These sounds have an earie, sinister tone that implies there is danger ahead for this female character, making the audience feel apprehensive. Setting our film in an urban city setting was taken from Thriller film,’Casino Royale’.

Despite both characters being put in fatal, life-threatening danger, both play a key part in the narrative by keeping their cool and aiding the authorities in the film, showing their desire to survive despite all the odds.. Kim’s actions hugely inspired us when creating our character of Jennifer, as she showed us how to present a character as helpless, while also showing them as heroines. The clothes the characters wear show they’re just ordinary girls but in extraordinary situations, another genre code and convention. A final similarity in the narrative the girls share is that they both momentarily think they have escaped the hands of the merciless gangs, both to be proven wrong when confronted in the climax of the scene. We have mirrored our scene with the one from ‘Taken’, as this moment of realisation of the inevitable danger of the girl being confronted by the gang is height of action in both films.

Social Group Two:GANG MEMBERS

For our Thriller opening, we based our Gang Member characters on the gang from the mainstream Thriller film, ‘Sin City’. This was our choice as the gang members in the film were shown to be truly intimidating, omnipotent, threatening, mysterious and capable of committing horrendous crimes with a heartless approach.

The way in which we positioned our gang members was hugely inspired by the gang in ‘Sin City’ .We placed our own characters in the similarly confined, corridor/alleyway setting, which has the effect on audience of feeling trapped with the gang, increasing their menacing, oppressive presence. Their casual, slouched body language, which is shown through a midshot, shows how both gangs are very relaxed and unconcerned about the heartless crimes both are about to commit. This quality both gangs share shows them to be a serious gang as opposed to amateurs, which is the quality we strived to incorporate into our work after being inspired by the gang from ‘ Sin City’. When the gang first appears on screen a sting is played. This is a clear indication to the audience that these characters are dangerous and to be feared. The menacing, harsh sounds of the sting is aiming to intimidate the audience. Intimidation is a typical character trait related to the social groups of gangs, as they often consist of many members, which shows the more people the more power you have, which is a convention the gang in ‘Sin City’ also reflect.

Regarding Mise-en-scene, in our project we also got inspiration from the costumes the gang from ‘Sin City’ wear. It is conventional in the Thriller genre that the ‘bad’ characters wear black, signifying evil. Our project was no exception. Our gang members, just like the ones in ‘Sin City’, are dressed from head to foot in dark clothes, mostly black, clearly showing the audience who the ‘bad’ characters in our film are. Also, like in ‘Sin City’ our gang members are partly concealed from the audience in shadow. Low key lighting is a key technique that increases the mystery of a character, therefore making them seem more menacing and unpredictable. The secretiveness that surrounds the gang members implies what they’re up to is so horrible it needs to be hidden from view. The fear of the unknown is a aspect we play up in our project, to match ‘Sin City’.

The two gangs also share narrative similarities. The gang in both films are the antagonist, who peruse a female victim who acts as the protagonist. The manner in which our actors acted was influenced by the arrogant, egotistical manor or the gang who offered us a clear blueprint to follow to achieve a successfully intimidating, realistic group.

Both gangs earn their bad reputation by reeking havoc in the storyline of the film they star in. The idea of the gang overpowering and harming a female victim was a key plot idea we incorporated into our work after watching ‘Sin City’, and many other Thriller films in which the social group of female victims are subjected to pursuit. Harming another person proves to be the quickest way of establishing the dangerous, criminal facet to the gangs character’s. In the same way the gang from ‘Sin City’ harm Shellie, our gang harms our character of Jennifer, which sets up the narrative for the rest of the film that this is a notorious gang who need to be stopped, as opposed to teenagers on a street corner. Their crime pays a key point in the plot.

We learnt from watching ‘Sin City’, our gang should contain at least one male character, as men are stereotypically more likely to be a member of a gang. We achieved this by selecting a male friend our ours to take up the part of gang member two. The deep, husky voice of a man is much more suitable for a gang member as the harsh tones influence the audience into feeling more threatened and in anticipation for danger. As men are typically seen as the more physically overpowering sex, a male actor was ideal.