This document discusses how different groups are represented in a student film thriller. It notes that the film features both a female victim and hero/villain to show women can be vulnerable or dominant. All the cast are young to represent a lack of wisdom and relate to the target audience. One character has a mental illness, though the film could have shown this sensitivity better. The rural setting isolates one character and follows thriller conventions. Both main characters are white, which risks the film only appealing to white audiences despite aiming for equality.

1. How different groups
are represented?
By Niamh Barrett

2. Women
 Our 'victim' is a woman. This is a common stereotype because women are
usually seen as vulnerable and in need of protection. However, our hero and
villain are also women. Proving that women can also be dominant and heroic,
as well as being deceiving. There are different types. - copied from my
question 1.
 In my thriller I counteracted women, showing that they can be good and
evil…this could apply to males too but our film was more focused on women.
 A stereotype that we have used to show women is that they are in need of
protection, however, she is in need of protection from herself and not from
others.
 We have diversified from old films, where they were all male casts and made
it an all girls cast for the opening.

3. Mental Illness
 So we originally said that we were going to be sensitive around this topic.
However, I feel as though we've strayed a bit from this idea. On the other
hand, the sensitivity could be shown through out the rest of the film and show
Iyra's motives and background. But how we have betrayed her in the ‘film’ is
as evil with currently no morals.
 We could have shown this better by having voices in Iyra’s head, which we
were going to do, but we decided not to speak. This was to create mystery.
We also didn’t like the sound of our voices on record.
 A point mentioned on the next slide too

4. Age
 All of our cast are young. This represents a lack of wisdom. May suggest that
the younger generation are not as careful as they should be. Even though Iyra
looks suspicious, the runner still unties her.
 It also means that the target audience can relate more because of the similar
the characters are of the same age. Therefore, this may better target our
audience.
 We have used a convention by using teenagers because most thrillers have
teenagers and young adults starring. We could have used an older person to
be the one with the mental illness because a lot of people this age have an
illness of some kind. On the other hand, we did not have anyone available or
willing. Plus there is a growing mental illness in teenagers.

5. Rural
 People in rural areas are usually seen as isolated, which is shown in our film
by the lack of people. This was done to make it more dramatic, as though Iyra
is targeting the runner.
 The location (woods) is very conventional for a thriller and tells the audience
what genre the clip is. This could reflect how Iyra is feeling, isolated.
Ethnicity
 Both the characters in our thriller are white. This may mean that the thriller
may appeal more to white people because they can relate more, however, it
shouldn’t because we are equal and this is not a good representation of the
whole film. I didn’t want to include a token character for no reason in the first
2 minutes.