The document discusses the representation of social groups in a thriller film opening scene. The scene contains three male actors - two antagonists portrayed as intimidating "hit men" wielding weapons and dominating a protagonist who is clearly tortured. The protagonist is represented as weak and vulnerable. While the scene lacks diversity, it was meant to attract a wide audience and avoid offensive language or stereotypes. The hit men have some stereotypical gangster traits but also subvert expectations through their drawn-out torture methods.

1. How does our media
product represent
different social groups?

2. Our thriller opening contains three main actors; this was partly due to budget
and our time scale. However, we believed as a group that the correct amount of
actors were used for the scene. The entire cast were male, with two antagonists
acting as the supposed ‘hit men’ and one protagonist who has clearly been
tortured prior to the scene and therefore appears weak and inferior.
Furthermore, the audience can clearly see that the hit men are dominant in the
scene due to their use of weapons. The two men act clearly thuggish, however
being smartly dressed they could be considered as possibly upper class working
men. The use of dominant and weak characters were essential in helping with
the authenticity of the film. The described ‘protagonist’ can be seen as
reluctant to give up the information displaying his inner strength but eventually
having to give up the information in fear for his life.

3. The tortured character represents a rather normal person
who seems to have been caught up in a dangerous situation
in which he may have entered the wrong line of business.
He is represented as weak and vulnerable as he is the victim
of the two hit men and therefore the audience have no clue
at this point whether or not the victim has done anything
wrong. The hit men do not tell us much about themselves -
they are seen as mysterious characters and this assists in
creating the intimidation effect.

4. Our movie doesn’t necessarily appeal to any particular groups as we
wished to attract a wide range of audience and race. However, it is
clearly seen that this is not for children which is why we rated it a 15.
This is due to the use of torture processes which may be to frightening
and inappropriate for them. There was a lack of ethnic minorities and
other ethnicity's in our thriller opening, purely on the basis we thought
it was unnecessary. We also refrained from all ethnic restrictions by not
using any inappropriate or racist language. Although the hit men are
seen to be doing something wrong we perceived all the characters
positively and at this stage we don’t know an awful lot about their
personalities or life's outside of what they are doing.

5. We used very little stereotypes in our thriller opening to help give a realistic and
original look. However, the antagonists had the typical ‘gangster’ feel about
them. We did this so it fits the conventions of other thriller films, such as ‘Pulp
Fiction’. Our characters were dressed in suits and the victim in a bloody T-shirt
which also goes along with typical conventions. The suits of the hit men give
the smart and possibly high status of the hit men and may also tell the audience
its there profession. One of the hit men also carried a gun which goes along
with the typical stereotypical conventions of ‘gangsters’ and ‘thrillers’.
However, our ‘gangsters’ go against the typical conventions in some ways as
well, for example they use quite untraditional torture methods, such as
drowning and verbal torture. This goes against the typical conventions as a lot
of the time ‘hit men’ won’t have any time for this long winded methods of
torture.