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

Social Group: Teenagers

In our final opening we decided that we wanted to represent a specific social group which was teenagers.

Our main character was a female teenager and we thought by picking this we could get the audience interested into our thriller opening. During our planning we had a look at thriller movies with a female lead and they turned out to be successful so we used it.

Other female protagonist from thriller movies.

Schizophrenic Patient We decided to challenge the conventions of

a male protagonist by having a female character in ours as we thought it was interesting and unique. Also we found out from our audience research that most people liked thrillers that change stereotypes and conventions.

The movie “Beautiful” mind helped us to plan how we wanted our character to be, although the difference is that the schizophrenic patient in that movie is a male.

Our opening portrays the life of a person living with schizophrenia and everyone around them are disrupted by the symptoms of her mental illness. There are some differences between the two characters as we changed it by having a female schizophrenic patient and they are much younger in age so our audience can easily engage with our opening.

How are teenagers represented in the media?

Teenagers in the media are portrayed as: - Emo’s- Nerds- The Populars Teenage girls are usually represented as emotional

and rude. The representation in our final product may be used to show the reality of situations such as schizophrenia. We were trying to challenge the audience by showing the female protagonist going through a mental illness. This allows the audience to see it from a female perspective.

Camera, Editing, Mise-en-scene

We used many close-up shots to show the full expression on our female character. The audience will be able to see how teenage girls cope with having problems such as schizophrenia.

The flashbacks within our final product is a more dull colour which clearly shows the audience what was happening before. The use of clothing is exactly what the fashion for teenagers is now. E.g. Black and white converses. We used this as it would engage our audience and it represents her age (16 yrs.) as they are modern clothes.

This shot shows the audience that she is talking to herself due to her mental illness and is represented as being a loner.

Soundtrack

The soundtrack we used was from a online site which was free. It was a slow piece but built up towards the end which made it quite mysterious. This engages the audience into our thriller and keeps the audience waiting for something to happen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Hm6a-brYCY