Ethel-May is the 12-year-old main character who was abused by her father as a child. She was lonely and bullied in school with low self-esteem. Ethel-May is now fostered by a middle-class family after her mother's death, which she influenced. She isolates herself and acts older than her age. Ethel-May is similar to the main character Esther from the film The Orphan in having a troubled childhood and foster home placement, but Ethel-May is younger. The title sequence focuses on Ethel-May and hints at her killing her mother through dramatic irony. Other key characters are her therapist and foster brother.

1. Task 2
How does your product represent
social groups?

2. Main Character
Ethel-May is our main character, she is a 12 year old girl, who had a low class. When she was a
young girl she was abused by her father and her father also abused her mother, therefore dad
was dominate and controlling, she felt unloved and not wanted by her parents. Ethel-May’s
mother left her father at a young age due to the abuse. Her abused childhood affected her at
school, she was very quiet and lonely, making herself unpopular with the other pupils, as she was
unpopular the other pupils would bully her for this as well and this lowered her self esteem. As
her father was very controlling and dominate, Ethel-May picked up on this then becoming
dominate and controlling over her mother which lead to the death of her mother, Ethel-Mays
dads action influenced her into taking action and killing her mother. Ethel-May then became
fostered by a middle class family, which was a big change from her lower class original family.
Ethel-Mays loneliness is showed in our opening sequence as she does a lot of activities by herself
such as, going to the park and using the skipping rope. She comes across quiet old for her age, as
she pours herself a cup of tea when stressed. We made her look more dominant by filming some
of the over the shoulder shots to see from her point of view.
This links into our target audience as Ethel-May is a young female and our target audience is
young females and males.

3. Esther
Ethel-May

4. Comparison
Esther, is the main character in the film The Orphan, and Ethel-May are similar as they have both
had a troubled childhood and both been into care and then put into middle class foster homes.
Esther and Ethel-Mays personalities are similar, they both appear innocent and isolate
themselves from others causing both to be unpopular and do a lot alone. Esther and Ethel-May
have a very similar expressions, the blank non caring expression, but also the same stressful face.
We have not got many shots of Ethel-May in our opening sequence though, so it is hard to
compare the expressions etc. they are both similar as when with the foster family both girls come
across caring but also show dominance and being controlling as Esther is controlling over the
father and Ethel-May is controlling over the whole family.
Some differences are that ethel-May is 12 years old and Esther is a 33 year old woman pretending
to be 8 years old. Ethel-May and Esther’s appearances are very different, Esther’s appearance is
more unusual than Ethel-Mays and she wears a lot of dark clothing.

5. Characters in our film.
Our title sequence only includes our main character as we thought that we should focus on her as
the montage sequence of events is about what happens with her and is based around her and
what she does. The storyline of the title sequence links back to the killing of her mother, it gives
the audience a brief idea of what happens before the film actually starts. Dramatic irony is used
in our title sequence as the audience know that Ethel-May has killed her mother before her
foster family and therapist know.
Other characters in the film include the therapist who is there to comfort the young girl, his main
role is to find out what she has done and to tell the foster family before its too late. The therapist
is the only person she can trust, Ethel-May does not tell the therapist what she has don’t but she
drops hints and uses certain phases which makes the therapist suspicious.
Another key character is the foster brother, who Ethel-May is not keen on knowing as she likes to
keep herself to herself, he realizes something is wrong with her, so she kills him.