question 2 of evaluation

1. Thriller opening sequence – Evaluation: Question 2
‘How does your media product represent particular social groups?’
Within my thriller there are many, differing representations of socialclass, age, and gender.
In terms of gender its men who I focus on representing. The first idea is that within the
male gender, the men are always fighting to be in the alpha position. This is a common
stereotype that is often explored within the entire thriller genre. To put it simply, the
stereotype is that men are always fighting to
be leader. This idea is explored and portrayed
in my thriller opening. For example, the scene
whereJoe Blaxall’s character is looking up
towards the antagonist(over shoulder/high
angle shot) the idea that Harry Ames’
character has taken chargeas is in the lead in
the fight to be top dog, is
made clear as Joe Blaxall’s character is literally looking up at him. And this
whole idea that Harry Ames’ character is in chargeis clearly portrayed.
Another gender stereotype within my thriller opening is the idea that men
are more violent/ more confrontationalthan women. In my thriller, I made
surethat I excluded the useof female characters, this was becauseI
wanted to conformto the common stereotype within the genre that the
leading protagonistand antagonist are male. This is common within the
genre mostnoticeably in mostof the Batman films (the battle between Joker and Batman).
Age. Age is another social group that I represented in a few different ways, within my
thriller opening. The first idea is that teenagers are a group of kids who are independent
and live in their own world. For this representation, I used the character of Harry Ames. The
whole idea is that teenagers are people who are very cut off from each other in terms of
mentality, by this I mean every teen is individual and is does their own things for
themselves. I used cinematography and lighting to explore this idea within my thriller.
During the dialogue scene, between the characters of Harry Ames and Connor Southwell,
Harry Ames’ character is placed on one side of the
screen and there is dark, dead space next to him. This
represents the idea that he is cut off from everyone.
Literally, but also metaphorically. The dead space
connotes the idea of the gap between him and the
other characters, as well as the metaphorical gap
between teenagers.
I’mnot too sureif you can class ‘society’ as a social group but I’m going to. As I previously
mentioned, the dead spaceon screen during the dialogue represents teenagers. But, not
only is it there to representteenagers, but is also to represent the structureof society. The
idea is that there is a dark and light side within society. The dark side is the idea that within

2. society there are patches you don’twant to come across. This could be literal dark places
that seem unsafe, butalso the idea that there are people within society that you don’t want
to come across. Whether that be gangsters or members of the government. This idea may
be a bit unclear at first, but once close attention is given, the idea becomes clearer and
more vivid. This idea is not a particularly common one within the genre itself, but is almost
common within the sub-genreof crime thrillers. Again, referring to Batman and the idea
that Gotham City is like whatI am trying to projectsociety as. When I say the ‘light’ side of
society, I mean the people in society who pay their taxes, contribute to society, and don’t
causeany harm, and get on with life. This should make the idea a bit clearer.
Another socialgroup who I wanted to touch on, rather than give full attention to, is middle
class people. This representation is through dialogue and plot, rather than editing
camerawork etc. The idea is that middle-class people are
very hard working, and mustdo everything themselves. I
projectthis idea to the audience, again, through the
character of Harry Ames. The idea is that he has gone out
by himself and planned this interrogation himself and
kidnapped his rival himself etc. I wanted the audience to
use inference to figure out that he is a representation of
middle-class people, and potentially for some of the audience to mayberelate to the idea.
As I said, this idea is a brief one, but an idea that could be important to the audience.
Going back to age, another representation that I created was that teenagers are very
rebellious. To give somebackground, the plot of my thriller is that a ‘deal’ has fallen
through and caused the collision between two teenage gangs. The plot alone, directly
represents teens as rebellious. A very common stereotype in general as well as in thrillers.
Most noticeably in the action-thriller Kickassand its sequel. The chiaroscuro lighting that I
used within the shed represents this representation/ stereotype. The idea that one
character has taken another and surrounded
him in complete darkness suggests thathe
does things his own ways and controls himself.
This idea is crucial to my thriller as teenagers
who watch it may be able to relate to the idea
that they can do stuff themselves, but also
adults/ parents can relate to this idea that they
are rebellious and somewhatnaïve.
Another gender representation would be the stereotype that men always useviolence
between each other to achieve supremacy. I mentioned earlier, the stereotypethat men
are always fighting for the alpha position, and want to expand on this. The stereotype of
male violence is very common within the thriller genre. The diegetic sound of the punch in
my thriller, obviously, conforms to this idea of violence being used to achieve supremacy. In

3. the thriller genre, itself it is explored in many action-thrillers. For example, in the Bond film
Skyfall. The battle between bond and the antagonistSilva.
To conclude all of this, I used representations of particular social groups to create an
informal and potentially relatable effect on the audience. I focused moston male and age
stereotypes, to create and projectthese representations.