This document discusses how the media product represents particular social groups. Specifically, it focuses on representing young teenage girls associated with fashion culture as the victim in a thriller opening. Locations like an abandoned wood and dark estate were chosen to suggest tension and lower social class. Dark lighting was used to metaphorically suggest the victim's feelings. The victim wears everyday dark clothes to appear vulnerable yet match the low financial status of residents. In contrast, the killer subverts expectations by also being a young female, challenging the male killer stereotype.

1. Question 2 -
How does your media product
represent particular social groups?

2. My Initial Aim
– My aim was to target a lower social group and deicide upon using the
stereotype of young teenage girls that associated with fashion culture. A
benefit of using this stereotype is that although the audience might not
agree with the stereotype it is unique to use a young female as part of
both the victim and the killer. After watching and analysing the thriller
film ‘Hanna’ I came to to a conclusion that this particular area of social
group are represented as innocence and the audience feels sorry for
them with frequent scenes with there being a high angle shot of the
young girl implying that were looking down on them and she's not as
important which then reflects upon my thriller opening where I use high
angle shots to suggest un-importance through her character.

3. Locations
– As an individual I decided that using the stereotype rather than challenge it as it
allowed a more dense style which is what I wanted from my thriller opening. To
make it clear that the young female in my thriller opening was a lower working class
I chose an estate which wasn’t very made up. I thought that this would then reflect
upon the characters within my thriller opening. I located my opening credits in an
abandoned wood which caused tension while the young girl was running through. It
made the audience think about why she is running through the wood. The use of a
young girl causes the target audience to think that she is innocent and then makes
us feel sorry for her. The voice over on top of the visuals causes us to think that she's
telling us her feelings while she is running however it all changes by the end which
then causes the target audience to feel uncomfortable and quite distressed with
who is actually talking to them.

4. Lighting
– I decided to use places which had quite dark lighting within my thriller opening because
it links to a typical convention of a thriller film. I made sure that I filmed at 3:00pm-
4:00pm as it started to get dark by then as it was the winter when I was filming. The use
of dark lighting metaphorically suggests the type of feelings which the young female is
feeling.
– I also then used my house as another location and made sure that it was light enough
outside to cast a light on the character so that we could see them when filming however
it couldn't’ be too light because it could loose it thriller film feel. However I had to be
careful to make sure that the lighting wasn’t ’cheesy’ caused by the lighting being to
bright and turning the lighting down on the camera (Nikon D3200). This causes the
footage to be grainy and isn't very effective. I had to re film some of my footage because
it was grainy.

5. The Victim
– The victim is dressed in relatively ‘everyday clothing’ compared to the killer. The
victim wore a blue jacket and black jeans with the scarf as a cover up. The dark
colored clothing (blue and black) reflects on her mood and suggests that she is
feeling down or worried about what might happen next and as the audience
you don’t know what might happen next either. Although, the victim is not in
new, flash clothes to show that she is still in the same low financial status as
other residents of the area. I am making the victim venerable and innocent by
using these colored clothes. Although it typical to use young teenage girls as the
victim, my intentions were to follow what my target audience would like and I
also think that thriller films are more effective and get to audience deeper if its
an innocent young girl who's the victim.

6. The Killer
– With my character who was the killer, I decided to go against the typical idea of
there being a male being the killer associated with big muscles who over stands
everyone and looks down on people. I decided to use the same character as the
victim in my thriller opening which makes the target audience think about
whether there is double, two different people who look the same or whether
there related... This red-herring is something I wanted to achieve within my
thriller opening because I think as a typical thriller convention they are very
effective.
– Using a young female as the role of the killer has meant that I was challenging
the stereotypical character of the killer being a male.