Social Representaion Media Studies

1. How I represented social groups
in my production

2. Representation of a social group is a way of
representing a group of people through
stereotypes of what the group is assumed to
do or be like from and outsiders perspective.
For example a person from a higher class
background would be more educated than
someone from a lower class background.

3. Character 1: Burglar
A social group has been defined as two or more people who interact with
one another, share similar characteristics and collectively have a sense of
unity. We used social groups so that the audience could have an idea of
what the character was going to be like from looking at their
clothes, location etc. The burglar is represented as a criminal who is up to no
good. We know this because he looks quite a young male, who maybe has
nothing else to do. The biggest give away however is his clothing. He is all in
black with a balaclava to hide his face which connotes misdoing. This is a
stereotypical person who is going to burglar a house. Using this social group
has given young males a bad name as we show them committing crimes.

4. Character 2: Detective
The Detective in our production is represented as quite a big, important
character. The stereotype suggests that males occupy the higher up jobs,
such as detectives. His entrance into our production showed the audience
his importance. He has a nice, big car so obviously is quite wealthy. He is also
well dressed wearing shirt and tie and a long black coat. This coat is also the
clothing you would expect to see on a detective. On his entrance we used a
media technique call a low angle camera shot. This made him look big,
powerful and most important, in charge.

5. Character 3: Murderer
Although the murderer is only in our opening sequence for a matter of
seconds, he still has a huge impact on the film. This is due to the way they are
represented and the mystery of how and why they are on this killing spree,
harming everyone he sees. We wanted to present the murder as a dark,
scary and mysterious person, in the few seconds you saw him for. The
murderer is a man which follows the stereotype that males are more
aggressive and therefore more likely to commit crime. Also, he is wearing a
jumpsuit which suggests that he is from a working class background similar to
the burglar show people from lower class backgrounds are more likely to
commit crimes. One media technique we used was mise-en-scene (lighting).
In the one scene we saw the murderer we used low key lighting to represent
darkness and fear.