1. Question 2
How does your media product represent particular social groups?
In our film opening the characters that star in it are teenage males of a working class
background. This is normal for this type of film because this is the group of people who are
stereotyped as trouble causing and getting involved in all sorts. Because of this, they give off
a negative representation to the audience as they will think that these characters are the
antagonists.
However, the stereotype we have challenged is the ethnicity of the characters. Usually in
this genre of film the characters are of black or Asian ethnicity, however, the characters in
our film opening are White British. This gives off a more positive view of the characters by
the audience because usually blacks/Asians are stereotyped as being trouble causers but
whites are less likely to be stereotyped under this.

2. Because of the genre of our film it is easy to show the stereotypes. As it is a crime and
action film set in a city suburb the audience will already be able to spot that the characters
are of working class. But through the film we showed the audience that they were from a
working class background first of all with the establishing shot. In this shot you can see the
dark streets and the council houses which tell the audience that it’s set in a poor area.
Second of all from the clothes they wear. The characters both wear hoodies, one of the
characters (Leon) wears jeans and trainers as he is one of the gangsters but the other (Jay)
wears chinos and smart casual trainers. This makes the audience wonder why this character
is not wearing the usual stereotyped gangster clothes which are jeans and trainers. But this
character is new to the area and is originally from a middle class background which is why
he is wearing slightly smarter clothes. The way that the characters walk is a slow swag walk
with their heads down and hoods up. This shows the audience that these are trouble
causers and likely to have aggressive behaviour.

3. The technical choices we made to give the audience the correct feeling is through the music
and the lighting. Once it gets to the part at night when both characters are walking through
the streets we have used slowish grime music which is what these types of people usually
listen to. This music also has an aggressive feeling to it which fits in with the characters
behaviour. We have also used natural, low key lighting from the street lights. This is because
it is set at night and the dark also makes it seem more aggressive. It can also create more
enigma because it gets the audience wondering what’s going to happen such as‘Is there
going to be an attack?’ etc.
In our film opening we were mostly able to represent the character’s social groups through
the area that the film is set in. Also through the clothes they wear. This is because these are
what the audience usually notice about the film at first.