2. Which social groups featured in our film?
In our film, we represent children, buskers, parents and business women, all of which
are white and two of which are male. This means that we represent two genders, one
ethnicity and two occupations.
The business woman (seen in the second half of the film intro) is of the highest class
and the busker (also seen in the second half of the intro) is of the lowest class.
This presents the contrast in society between those who need and those who have.
This is particularly poignant as both of these people are siblings and started from the
same place but have each clearly made different decisions in their lives.
In our film, there is no representation of sexuality as at no point does it mention any of
the character’s sexualities.
3. How did we portray these social groups?
To be able to portray the children, we had to dress them in what we thought they would
actually be wearing on a normal evening. This meant that our representation of youth
was accurate.
The business woman had to be wearing clean, tidy and relatively smart clothes. This
was because it was important that we portrayed the divide in class between her and the
busker.
The busker was wearing very normal and simple clothes but we ensured he didn’t look
homeless, this meant not making the clothes too shabby. When we got the busker’s
costume correct, it made the division in class much more evident.
4. Positive or negative representation?
Our representation of all the social groups in our film was positive and none of them
were painted in a bad light.
The busker had the most negative representation but he still wasn’t painted in a
particularly bad light. He was mild mannered, polite, clean and he called after the
woman when he realised she had left the monkey behind. This meant our
representation of buskers was positive.
Equally, the business woman was positively represented as she was kind enough to
stop what she was doing and give the busker some money (which most people don’t).
There was no gender portrayed in a more positive or negative way than any other
gender. This is partially because we only had two genders in our film and also because
we were careful to not conform to or rely upon any gender based stereotypes.
5. Stereotypical representation
In terms of gender stereotypes, we didn’t actually conform to any (but we didn’t subvert
any either). The mum and the daughter were female and the son was male. The mum
was only on screen for a matter of seconds, which meant there was no time for her to
be stereotypically representing gender and although none of the clothes used in the film
were gender neutral, they weren’t excessively feminine or masculine.
Although we represented kids in our film, they didn’t conform to any age based
stereotypes. In addition to this, we didn’t represent any elderly people and the grown up
siblings didn’t conform to any age related stereotypes either.
