HOLLY: EVALUATION: QUESTION 2

How does your media product represent particular social groups?
In our film produced, we have considered the social groups the characters belong to, thus being their age, social class, ethnicity and sexual orientation.
In our product we have the two main characters representing two large social groups, being young adults, and the police.
Our main character Elijah, is representing a male young adult/teenager, and although first perceived as innocent, the unrestricted narration of the film, through the mise en scene, editing camera and sound, show us that he actually is more, giving us a negative view of the character by the ending of the opening.

The first time we see the character, he is presented as smart, in a white and black button up, with the sleeves rolled, and slicked back hair, we put a darker shade under his eyes to make him seem tired, or in our case, give the first clue that he could be mentally deranged, as this is a usual stereotype for 'psychopaths' to have dark circles or eye bags. His costume gives off the impression that he is of high status or authority, as those types of clothes convey that sort of characteristic or lifestyle. We originally put the character in smarter neat clothing, presenting him with slicked back hair to contrast his actual mentally deranged state.
When we used sound around the main character, we used the audio of high pitched violins which although was used to create tension, it could also be used to show the mental state of the character, becoming more insane or smug as the volume and pitch increases, this technique is also used in The Dark Knight (which is a thriller/action film) but the rising pitch of the sound is something we took to use in our film.
Through camera shots we tried to communicate the mentality of the character, having him looking directly into the camera we thought would show him as confident and 'breaking the fourth wall', this shows him as able to break boundaries and leave the audience feeling uncomfortable, as it is something we are not used to seeing.



We used high editing frequency in the flashbacks to show off his mental state, the use of the unrestricted narration showing that he actually is not innocent, but the detective does not know that, leaving the audience with information on the character, causing us to have a negative view of the character in the stereotype. We decided to represent the character in this way to fit with the usual conventions for a thriller movie, having a white male antagonist, which is a typical stereotype, e.g. 'Silence of the Lambs' or 'Prisoners'

We looked at existing characters in these films to try an communicate the mentality of the character, in the film Prisoners we looked at the character's clothing and make-up to try and find similarities to use in our film. The character is dressed smartly, with dark eye circles to try and communicate his anxious tendancies and mentality. We used this similar idea to try show Elijah's mental state.





The detective Gareth is also another main character in this opening, he represents a stereotype of the police force, we showed this through the mise en scene, camerawork and editing.

When we first see the character, we see him in casual dressed clothing, we decided to do this to suggest Elijah's power over Gareth, as he is presented as more smartly dressed, his facial expressions suggest that Elijah holds more power over the detective despite him being in the police force. The casual clothing also suggests his lack of interest in the case, which is what we wanted to convey, to make it seem like a 'normal case' but as the audience are shown the flashbacks we see that it is not a 'normal' case, and the innocent man bought in for questioning, is not actually innocent at all.
As the detective is the protagonist in the story, we showed him in a positive stereotype of the police force, his voice is monotone, which could suggest enigma to the case or to show his 'professionalism'.

We showed him with reaction shots and shot reverse shot for most of the sequence, usually having a low angle shot, to show him in authority and the reaction shots with a slow editing pace, to try convey his interest in the case.

We wanted to have a positive representation of the police force as a stereotype so we presented the main character in this way, showing him as professional.

For reference to clothing, we looked at the film 'Prisoners' and gathered ideas for costume from the detective played by Jake Gyllenhaal, in the scene we looked at, the character was wearing casual clothing, and stereotypically detectives in modern day do not wear suits and ties when interrogating, unless in court. We wanted to reflect this in our opening, thus dressing the character Gareth in this way.


We used younger characters, as expected from  usual stereotypical thriller film, to use aesthetic characters in order to attract audiences.