Ella's Evaluation - Question Two

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

When looking at our thriller opening, there are clear representations of specific social groups. For our thriller we had to make certain choices when it came to portraying our characters in out film. It's impossible to present every aspect of the character, even within a feature film, so in our short 2 minute opening we highlighted certain features of their personality and appearance, to construct the representation we wanted the audience to see. When representing a person, media texts often focus on their:

• Age
• Gender
• Race/Ethnicity
• Financial Status

Natalie, our first character is a young female in her mid 20s, she is caucasian. Having a young attractive caucasian female protagonist is typical of the thriller genre, it allows women to relate to the role and typically a "beautiful" woman attracts men. Natalie more innocent, she had to be really convinced by Maggie and has more of a conscious about they've been doing. To convey this we used mise en scene and cinematography, we included close up shots of her facial expressions and had her body language as nervous, playing with her hands. She is British, this is communicated through her accent and dialect. Natalie was well dressed in nice clothes, she wore a smart/classy shirt and modern white high waisted jeans, designer Jimmy Choo high heel shoes. She also wore desinger jewellery such as Pandora earrings and a Dior bracelet. This not only represents that she is stylish and young, it allows the audience to see her wealth. Portraying her wealth was vital to the narrative of our thriller film opening and, if we had extended the text, to the entire plot. Her makeup was simple and her hair was down with the front clipped back.  These aspects combined, allowed us to represent a typical weak female character, so often conveyed in movies the 'damsel in distress'. Women are always known to be the victim within a thriller movie and women usually get dragged into the problem e.g.- the fight/argument happening within the movie. For example 'Drive' (2011) had no women within the opening on the movie clip, however the man within the movie was seen as always on the move, dominate and strong but also lonely. We chose to represent Natalie in this way, as a young naive girl who has recently come into money. 

The character of Maggie is a manipulative, ruthless, attractive young girl who will do anything for money. She is also a young female in her mid 20s and she is caucasian. We used Maggie's behaviour within the sequence, again with mise on scene, her body language, facial expression, makeup and props all helped to represent her class and financial status. Maggie enters wearing a stylish blue coat, a revealing crop top and modern high waisted black jeans. She is carrying a lot of carrier bags, all from different designer shops, these different elements connote she has been living the 'high life'. They represent Maggie as belonging to the upper class.

She had quite heavy makeup, emphasis on the eye makeup and blusher and her hair down. This ensured she looked like a stereotypical White rich female. This will convince the audience she has a lot of money. Maggie subverted the stereotypical representation of women in thrillers as she was strong, which we conveyed through her use of dialogue and overall demeanour within our opening. The cinematography of Maggie allowed us to show the audience her feisty nature, such as the long shot of her storming out the cafe. This clearly showed our choice to subvert the stereotypical portrayal of females in thrillers.