The document discusses how social groups are represented in the opening of a film through various elements of mise-en-scene including location, characters, costumes, age, gender, and ethnicity. It notes that the location of a lower class shopping area helps portray the characters' social class. The aggressive behavior of one character helps identify her as being from a lower status background. Including both male and female characters of various ages broadens the potential audience. Representing different ethnicities could make the film feel more relatable to diverse cultures.

1. How are social groups represented in our
opening?

2. Location/ setting
We found where are opening was located, was a very important aspect.
It is a visual method used to portray people living in lower class
society, the location help audience visualise the characters
surroundings. Important to choose the right location to mirror the
characters, a lot of scenes were shot at Tesco shopping place, like
other social realism films important to place characters in areas that
are familiar to audiences. The simplicity of the surroundings really
help represent the characters social class.

3. Characters portrayal
The way the characters are portrayed
can mirror their own social class
background, such characters like Tay
who consists in the first shots speaks
in an aggressive manner and tone.
This instantly creates an image of an
obnoxious, loud character which can
be associated with people from a
lower status. Her public outrage
insinuates that this might be a climax
to all her anger. Situation you might
not find from some one with a middle
class background, this contrast is
clearly shown when the young girl
collides with another passer by. The
mannerisms and behaviour also help
represent this character in bad light,
throwing a cigarette on the floor could
show she has little respect for herself
and her environment.

4. COSTUME
The character Danni
her costume is very
relaxed could show
she has very little
care for self image.
The use of dark
colours could
foreshadow the girls
personality.

5. AGE GROUP?
When it comes to distributing are film we needed to have consideration of what are
target audience should be, looking at how to make the audience at home be as
varied as possible. Are first consideration is how to attract the audiences looking at
the age group, we all agreed that age group would be young adults we specified it
to 16-20 years old. However we realised by doing this we were creating a small
audience for are film, to create a wider audience we knew we all age groups from
20 over should want to see our social realism film. To entice older ages we felt that
we needed to involve different characters of different ages, this will take the focus
off young teens and more into the older age group. When looking at are film we
agreed that the narrative was broad enough to involve all ages and even all
classes, though the mise en scene appears to be aimed towards the lower class
society we feel that the narrative is strong enough to attract any class at any age.
Me and my group feel strongly about this as we all agreed that domestic violence
can touch any person in any class of any age, when researching domestic violence
we found in 12 minutes 3 women will be physically attacked by a partner. This
inspired us even more to concentrate on this issue throughout the film as it could be
touching many peoples lives.

6. Gender :As a group it was very important we felt both genders could relate and connect
to the characters. By having an all female cast in the opening which was the groups
original plan, we knew that this may instantly create to the public audiences that this
was an all female oriented film. Therefore we realised we had the threat of losing
audiences of the male gender, when considering this we knew even though the main
character was one of a female, including a male character would let the males have
more interaction to the film. That is the main reasons as well as creating variation
why we involved the minor character Dan in the opening, who would also later appear
in the film including more male characters, creating a cast of mixed genders. Dan not
only allowed males to feel more included to the opening. As main character was very
aggressive we felt this might make girls feel more unease about wanting to watch the
film as it may be something they aren't accustomed to. Allowing to create a dislike to
the character. Having the disconnection to the character, made us want to show the
male characters in a more positive light breaking the sterotype of the male
masculinity. The male characters being the less aggressive gender may create
interest to the girls as they may want to break away from the typical traditional film,
where the women are the innocent character, the man the more dominant and
powerful. On the other hand the main character being so aggressive might make girls
want to watch the film as they like the control and dominance the character Tay has
about her, the strength she has even facing the male character Dan. Her confidence
might make girls find Tay likeable and interested in her character to watch the film
further.

7. Ethnicity
Ethnicity and culture also has a massive impact on the target audience, it is vital that you
include all ethnicities into the filming, broadening different cultures is important to
making the film have a massive variety of audiences. In are opening we didn't include a
different ethnic group, if we were to film again I believe we would as we want all
different cultures to feel they can relate and understand the film. Again all ethnicities
can come across the issue of domestic violence and suicide, we feel that by adding the
different ethnicities we can direct the film towards them. We found that other social
realism films like Bullet Boy and Fish Tank had a very vast majority of one ethnicity. Are
group felt that this could easily exclude other cultures that might find interest in the
British Realism side of production, however feel that the film is not aimed at them as
there ethnicity is not included, Fish tank consisting of a major white British cast. We
also think ethnic variation is important to a film as you can then add different cultural
issues, by doing this you are opening up the minds of the audiences, having the
experience of seeing cultural diversity as well as hitting on a range of issues across
different societies of whatever race or culture they might live by.