Evaluating our opening, Question 2.

1. EVALUATION QUESTION 2
How does your media product represent
particular social groups?

2. Both characters are of similar height
and build, and they are both
wearing grey jumpers.
In both films, they are young outcasts who are trying to escape the superior,
majority group. For example, ‘John Smith’ from ‘I am Number Four’ moves to
a new school and doesn’t have many friends whilst simultaneously trying to
prevent himself from being caught by people from his ‘original planet’.
Similarly, ‘Tony’ from our opening is attempting to escape the capture of
‘the government.’
The differences
between the
characters is that
this one has
supernatural
powers to defend
himself against the
majority.
We chose
George to play
the character of
‘Tony’ as we
believe he looks
most like what we
pictured a
minority
character to look
like, and we used
influences from
other films (For
example ‘I am
Number Four.’

3. We made one of our members of ‘government’ appear to have higher
authority as he is seen sitting down and has other people working for him. We
made sure the mise-en-scene was empty of anything related to school as that
is where we filmed. We also made the area dark, to make it clear to the
audience the difference between the two areas in which we filmed. When
filming the government character walking, we did it hand held so it wasn’t as
steady as the rest of the film to increase the tension.
The similarities
between these
characters are that
they are both wearing
dark suits to assert their
authority and are both
older than the main
character, again
making them more
intimidating.
Their roles in the
film are similar as
they both are
trying to track
down a minority
group. (In ours,
they are tracking
down Tony and
in ‘Divergent’
they are tracking
down
Divergent’s.)

4. THEORIESBarthes’ theory of Semiotics
includes The Hermeneutic
Code (when clues are
dropped throughout the film
to help create mystery) which
we have aimed to do by not
giving all the answers away
straight away. For example,
leaving clues such as Tony
missing ‘Barcode Checks’,
hopefully leaving the
audience wondering what
they are and what this means Another aspect to his theory is The
Enigma Code (the audience is left
guessing what’s going to happen
next) which again we aimed to
create through our opening by not
giving everything away straight away.
The audience may be left asking: Why
is packing his bags? Where is he
going? Why are people after him?
What’s going to happen to him?
We also aimed to
include Stuart Hall’s
theory of
Encoding/Decoding
(encode certain codes
which the audience
then decode) by
introducing flashbacks,
which the audience can
then try and work out
what happened, why it
happened and what it
will lead to.