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

Victim

Our finished media product seemingly represents various social groups in many different ways.

To begin with, with our first character in the opening sequence, this being the male victim he is represented as being fit and healthy, generally happy and sociable. These characteristics are very much represented in the way that the character looks and acts. In the opening he is represented as being fit and healthy due to the fact that he is presented to be trekking through the countryside, walking obviously being an active hobby therefore this can imply he is of good health. Also, he wears an official branded mountaineering rucksack, this connotes that he treks regularly and it is indeed a hobby.

Secondly, he is also represented as possibly being socially connected with other people, he is fashionable and is active socially. The idea that he is represented as these things can mainly be due to what this character wears. This character wears clothes such as trainers, jeans, a t shirt, jacket and as mentioned the mountaineering rucksack. These items of clothing can be considered as popular standard everyday clothing, this represents the character as being fashionable and socially active as the choice of clothing is that of standard fashion.

In the opening, this character is the victim of a kidnapping and presumably torture. Typically, you would presume that someone weak or of little power would allow someone to kidnap them. This character in our opening is represented very differently to this, our victim is physically fit and presumably strong. Overall, we wanted to represent this character in this way because these features have an impact on the features of the second character, the villain. Many of the aspects of the victim have been so the audience can relate to him.

We chose the gender for this role to be male, this was mainly due to the fact that stereotypically men are more likely to go on long enduring treks on their own. We use the character’s appearance to mainly represent social status and class, this being most likely middle class. The main idea here being the items of clothing he wears and what social class would stereotypically wear them. With costume, we chose the items of clothing we did so that the idea is reinforced that this character is presumably wealthy and socially active, this was represented by the use of fashionable types of clothing, warm types of clothing and clothing related to walking or a specific activity. This character was filmed in two locations, one which was in the countryside showing him walking and the second location was in the abandoned building where he awoke after being kidnapped. The lighting in the countryside location was simply the outdoor natural light. In the second location there was artificial light used, this light was ceiling beam lights that gave off an almost clinical feel. This lighting was chosen in this location because we wanted light to be as apparent as possible in this room but particularly on the victim.

 

 

Torturer (Villain)

 

The second character in our final media product is the torturer and this character is also represented in many ways.

This character in the opening sequence is male, quite skinny and seemingly weak, therefore quite a contrast to the other character. These representations just like the first character are very much seen in the way the character acts and looks. For example, physically, this character is very skinny and moves in a very rigid way. This implies that this character could possibly be very weak and unfit or even ill. With what this character wears-dark, muddy overalls the connotation is that he is very isolated from society, it can also suggest that he lives local to this countryside location therefore this type of outfit is possibly a lot more practical than something else. We also wanted this character to not be of full sanity, therefore having him move around in an odd way and having him quite reinforces this idea.

We tried to use these features and implications as much as possible because in the opening itself this character’s face is actually never shown therefore the audience can never know for sure whether or not the character is male or female, so using masculine features of clothing, movement and body type was vital.

Significant props used by this character was the baseball bat, knife, crossbow and a wide variety of tools that are implied to be used to torture. He uses these tools by either just touching them, picking them up or actually using them on the victim or taunting the victim. The use of these props was important in representing the character on the whole, the main representation we wanted to create from this character was that they are insane, weak and very psychologically unstable. We intended the age for this character to be relatively old, around 40 or over, although the audience never find out the age of the character we intended to give indications of both his age and gender through body movement and costume. We used the character’s appearance mainly to paint a picture to the audience of the character’s personality traits, his mental state and his personal motives. We used the costume of the overalls to possibly represent this character’s occupation or general everyday life, this representation being that he could live in the countryside or works at a countryside location. The costume can also imply that he has little contact with society outside of where he appears to be seen in the opening. Using these implications for this character was very important due to the fact that our use of camera angles and shots frame out the character’s face. We filmed this character in the exact same both locations as the victim character. We presented the villain in these ways due to the fact it Is very stereotypical for his presence to be very sinister thus being very conventional for thrillers.