The document discusses how the filmmakers represented social groups in the opening sequence of their media product. They aimed to help audiences identify the social status and groups of different characters through costume, personality, setting and other attributes. For the protagonist Grady, they dressed him in bright colors and designer clothes to represent a modern, upper-class teenager. For the antagonist Jacob, they used dark, old clothes and a mask to represent an insane, lower-class criminal. The filmmakers wanted audiences to react positively to Grady and negatively to Jacob to set up the story. The only major social group explicitly represented was teenagers, who made up the target audience.

1. How does your media product represent
particular social groups?
Tom Astle

2. Representation of social groups
In the modern film industry, is it important to help the audience to identity the
different characters social groups and status, to allow them to get their heads in to
the film. This can be done by, the use of costume, personality, setting and general
other attributes of the character. By doing this the film crew are trying to make the
audience react and understand the characters in a certain way for example by using
dark clothing the audience will understand the character to be evil, as black has
connotations of evil and corruptness, this allows the audience to react to the
character as the antagonist. We have tried to follow these conventions as to make
the audience react in the way we want.

3. Mask to hide
Jacob’s costume face
In our opening sequence, Jacob plays the main character in the
film, the Antagonist( pictured right), we used dark colours for Jacobs
costume as dark colours have connotations of evil and corruptness.
By doing this, the audience would instantly think that he is the
Antagonist as his costume causes this kind of reaction from the
audience. As well as using dark clothes we tried to use old tatty
clothes as well, to illustrate that the character is lower class and bellow
the poverty line, adding to the depth of the characters personality, and
maybe providing a motive to why he is committing the murder. We
also decided to use a mask, as this would show to the audience that he
wants to hide his identity, something that people who are about to do
a bad thing in films usually do, we used a mask of the USSR leader
Lenin, as this is mysterious and adds to the personality of the
character. We have used this character in the film (who doesn’t have a
name) to play the antagonist, but he also represents insanity and
evil, the audience can tell this from his costume, mask and the way he
doesn’t talk to his victim before he kills him, showing that he has no
morals and is a truly evil person.
We also tried to make it so that the audience wouldn’t understand him
completely as a character, as this added to the mysterious personality Dark
of the character. We did this by making it so you will never see the clothes
character without a mask on, and never not in dark clothing. We
to Gloves to hide
wanted the audience to react to this character by wondering who
he/she was, what they wanted, and why are they so clearly insane. show fingerprints
evil

4. Bright designer jumper
Grady’s costume
In our opening sequence, we got Grady to play the victim. We used Grady to
play the character as we thought he best reflected the target audience which
was 15+ males, by reflecting the target audience it would appeal more to
them as they can see themselves in the character. For Grady’s costume, we
wanted to try and represent the modern day teenager, we used a Jack Wills
jumper to show that he is upper class and young. We made sure that this was
a bright colour as well as his other clothes, as bright colours have
connotations of innocence and purity, showing that Grady is the
protagonist. We also used a iPod as a prop, we used this to show the
technological dependence that many teenagers (even including me) heavily
rely on technology in their every day life, and can’t simply enjoy walking the
dogs and the scenery with out music being played.
We also showed that Grady was from a rural background, as it is common for
rural people to walk their dogs in the woods/fields. We thought that using
common factors that related to our target audience e.g. Designer
clothes, similar age, MP3 players. That they would feel as if they could relate
to this character, we wanted the audience to react positively to this
character as the protagonist, and feel anger towards the antagonist when
he kills Grady, setting the audience up for the remainder of the film.
Grady’s character also has certain cultural signifiers which are certain
attributes that people from different cultures have, for example we can see
Grady is English from the fact that he is walking his dog through the Headphones to show
woods, something that in other cultures isn’t seen as completely common.
technological
dependence of teens

5. How does my media product represent particular
social groups?
Whilst planning we had a clear idea of the different social groups we wanted to
include and represent in our opening sequence. We represented teenagers by
the use of Grady, we used his costume, props and appearance to represent
this. We used designer clothes to represent teenagers as this is a common
stereotype that teenagers always want/ wear the latest fashions. Teenagers
were also involved in our target audience, so by representing their social group
they can see themselves in the characters and will want to watch it more.
With Jacobs character there isn’t really a social group represented as he is a
very strange and unique individual character. So the only particular social
group we have represented is the teenagers, who are also our target audience,
we represented teenagers through the use of Grady’s character and costume.