QUESTION 2) How does your media product

represent certain social

groups?

Our opening sequence only contains one character, however, this character is a stereotypical representation of that character. We specifically made her character enormously stereotypical to follow both the idea of the story behind the film and to make the audience able to understand her easily.

The stereotypes we covered include ethnicity, age and gender. We did not go into anything like religion or education as we felt they were irrelevant factors within a fantasy movie. The ideal target audience would be much like her character, a similar age, race and gender to help them to identify with the character. This is assuming a great deal about the audience but we feel like this is a fair representation of what they would want to see within our movie.

Although we are only introduce to one character within our opening sequence it sets up the idea that this will be a fairly stereotypical film with the characters acting out what people believe them to be. If we had introduced other characters we would have followed their stereotypes.

This said however, the idea of other characters was introduce. As an audience would know Little Red Riding Hood was making her way through the woods to her grandmothers house, we are given visuals of the things she was taking with her to her grandmother’s house.

The gifts of cake and wine, set up the idea that the grandmother will be our stereotypical old woman. Unable to do much and thus replies on her granddaughter to bring her food and gifts.

A bad character was also suggested at through the use of handheld shots and a motif in the music to represent their presence. This character, as known by an audience is the wolfs character. The use of low key lighting and the low eerie music show the audience that this is our “bad character”. They therefore follow the stereotype of being scary and sneaking up on the vulnerable characters such as Little Red Riding Hood.

ETHNICITY/ RACE

Our actor chosen to play Little Red Riding Hood is white. This stereotypes that she is a vulnerable character who will need saving.

White characters, stereotypically, form our “good guys” in films, usually the hero of the film will be white. Recently this stereotype is challenged however we though it would be interesting to follow the idea and therefore our character is white as she is a “good guy” character and may end up as the hero of the overall film?

As she never speaks an audience cannot be sure where she comes from although it can be assumed that she is either British or American. This is because the majority of our “heroes” in British or American films are from their country. They will have articulate accents which represents that they are well educated, again another stereotype of a main, good character.

As main “hero” characters are normally white, adults and male we had to follow at least one of the stereotypes to make an audience understand that this character is our main character. However, we challenged the other two stereotypes to make it more interesting.

An example of following this stereotype is Alice from ‘Alice in Wonderland’ which is one of the movie openings I studied for its genre. The main character is female and blonde, following the idea of a “beautiful” main female character. She is innocent and vulnerable; I believe a contributing factor to this is her being white as white female characters are seen as unable to look after themselves and so normally form heron characters, waiting to be saved by a hero character.

The idea of race being used to represent different types of characters these days is seen as quite backwards and looked down upon, however, it is still a very large contributing factor towards a character as subconsciously an audience member will know the stereotypes associated with a certain ethnic group which will help them to make assumptions about the character.

Our “specific” target audience member is also white, female and of around the same age. This is because by stereotype white females have grown up with the idea of fairy tales unlike other ethnic/ gender groups. This makes it easier to capture the audiences attention as they can gather some kind of relationship or identification with the character which helps them to feel more involved with the product. We are assuming this of the main bulk of our audience but after doing our research we can believe this to be try for at least the majority of the audience.

Gender

The character we have chosen to introduce in the opening sequence is that of the female lead character, stereotypically a female character will be the heroine of the movie and therefore will form the “damsel in distress”.

We have chosen to have a female character, not only because she is the main character of Little Red Riding Hood but to introduce her instant vulnerability and innocence as a character. By using a female as our main character we are also helping the audience to be able to identify with her as the target audience are also female. By following stereotype she should appeal and be identifiable with a large chunk of the younger female population, making the film both more realistic and wanting them to carry on watching as they feel a more personal relationship with the character.

We have followed gender stereotypes fairly closely for this character, as a female lead will normally be blonde and pretty, both of which we have acknowledged within our opening sequence. She is also in good body condition as she appears to be in good shape which is another thing associated with female lead characters. They must be attractive. By following this stereotype we are hopefully allowing any male audience members to want to watch the movie as they will find the lead character attractive, by stereotype, and therefore this will raise their chances of them wanting to watch the actress. If this was a real movie we would use a well known actress to play the lead female role to also attract this male audience.

We have also slightly challenged the stereotype of female characters as she is our main character, although she is the “damsel in distress” she is still the lead character of the film, who is normally a man. By challenging this stereotype we are hoping that we would get more female viewership as we are showing that females can take lead roles and thus showing that women can be powerful as characters.

We have followed stereotypes on presenting this social group as she is a vulnerable character who will need saving from another character which follows the stereotypical female character.

Challenging female stereotypes is now very commonplace within movies as using the same idea that female characters are the “damsel in distress” is seen as old fashioned and unoriginal. Recently, the character of Anna from Disney’s animated movie ‘Frozen’ forms the hero character of the movie, especially from a “Princess” Disney movie this is something completely different and is something which would be fun to play around with, As we have only created an opening sequence we cannot fully see if Little Red Riding Hood follows stereotype or not and therefore contains elements of both to keep the audience thinking about what her character’s role is.

Female’s are also normally represented as being dumber than male characters, as this is only an opening sequence we cannot fully see this side to her personality however, she seems to have some kind of power (as shown by the one low angle, towards the end of the sequence) showing she has some kind of control in the situation.

Age

Age is also a heavily stereotyped factor of the character. Our character is a fairly young character. The stereotypes associated with this age group are that they are irresponsible and therefore innocent and therefore are more vulnerable characters.

The target audience are also around this age and therefore would find themselves more able to identify with the character adding to the idea that audiences need to be able to identify with the character to be able to full appreciate their situation. Making them more identifiable may also make them more easy to aspire to be like and therefore add this aspect to the film and shows that our audience wish to aspire to be like characters as researched through our secondary research on marketing.

We would have wanted to have a younger actor play Little Red Riding Hood to further the idea of innocence however we chosen the age group of our actor to give a more teenage twist on the fairy-tale to emphasise that this is not the classic fairy-tale and is a dark and gothic spin off for a much older audience. The representation of the character therefore follows the ideas of an older character in the fact that they are more individual and perhaps alone as well and vulnerable.

Stereotypes of teenagers are that they are dangerous, loud, stupid and have a lack of worldly knowledge. Our character appears to have none of these traits challenging the representation of this social group, this may help to attract the target audience as our film can be see to be fighting against these stereotypes and promoting a quiet, timid teenage character.

Our character also seems to have a fair amount of responsibility as they are making a dangerous journey all on their own which completely challenges the stereotypes of teenage characters. She is making her way through the woods alone, this not only emphasises her vulnerability but shows that her character is mature and this acts as an aspiration for the target audience as the wish to be like this character in this respect.

Normally teenage characters are represented negatively, by challenging the stereotypes we have created a character who represents teenagers in a more positive light.

An example would again be Alice our of Tim Burton’s ‘Alice in Wonderland’. The character is a young adult/ older teenager. She is rebellious but not to the extent as being seen as a “bad” character as the things she is rebelling against (such as wearing her corset) are not seen as things which have to be done. She is mostly respectful of the other characters which also challenges the representation of teenagers. She is also fairly childish and adventurous which is something we wanted to show within our own character to show that she is still, in some respects, a child and that the movie will be about fantasy and adventure.