Our film represents gender and age in its main protagonist. As is common in post-apocalyptic films, the protagonist is male and portrayed as strong, independent, and dominant. However, our protagonist is a teenager rather than the typical adult, in order to attract our target younger audience. The protagonist is presented positively as a lone survivor who is sad and emotional during flashbacks, eliciting audience sympathy. This challenges stereotypes of dominant male and carefree teenage protagonists in the genre.

1. Media Studies Evaluation - Question 2
How does your media product represent particular
social groups?
Our first representation was Gender. As the stereotypical post-
apocalyptic film utilises male characters to become the main focus
and protagonist of the film, showing them to be strong and
independent, therefore being dominant in a superior manner to
females. We agreed to stick with that general concept as we felt it
would benefit our film's narrative and be relatively simple to then
challenge other conventions whilst keeping the audience's interest
with the stereotypical protagonist, making it easy for them to relate.
Our film's main character took major influence from the films:
I am Legend and The Book of Eli.

2. As you can see our protagonist (middle) looks similar to the other
two male protagonists, clothing wise, in films that are of the same
genre as ours. We opted to dress our character as a clear-cut
survivor which can be clearly established in cargo trousers, boots and
a darkly-coloured open jacket. We then equipped our character with
a bag to influence the fact he is travelling and can fit all his
possessions in one small holdall, emphasising his deprived state.
However we did not use a gun as a prop as we feared due to the
actors age it would look unrealistic and stray from the narrative.
Another factor that influenced the portrayal of our protagonist is
how other characters similar to ours played a specific role in their
film. We noticed that in the two films mentioned above, both of their
protagonists were male and were lone survivors. This then
influenced us on having our male character as a lone survivor rather
than having him accompanied by anyone. However the two
characters above seem to benefit what's left of society whereas our
character is just 'another guy'. This gave us plenty of opportunity
throughout our opening that suggests he isn't a boring character and
does have interesting aspects about him.

3. Our second representation was Age. This contrasted the
stereotypical age of other protagonists that can be seen in
post-apocalyptic films as they tend to be adults. However we chose
to use a teenager or a young adult, some would say. This was
because we didn’t feel as if our film needed an adult character to get
the gripping storyline across. We thought by having a teenager it
could also attract and relate to our target audience of 15 - 25 year
olds which happens to be the predominant audience for this genre.
Our main character is presented in a positive way as they aren't seen
doing anything of a negative manner. They are seen touching the
walls of the house as well as stopping in several places to look
around which shows the audience they are reminiscing about the
house, implying he is sad to leave. They are also seen looking on
emotionally during a number of flashbacks that they seem to be
having during the journey which will add to the sympathy the
audience will have for the character. This contrasts the average
social group of a teenager that is portrayed negatively throughout
the media with carefree and arrogant attitudes.