This document summarizes a film opening that uses and challenges conventions of the urban drama genre. The opening initially portrays a young black boy dressed in stereotypical "street" clothing as intimidating and possibly involved with drugs. However, it subverts expectations when he enters a hospital and is revealed to be a doctor. This challenges the genre's typical portrayal of youths as constantly getting into trouble. The film also represents the social group of young people from run-down areas through the protagonist's clothing and settings involving housing estates, buses, and alleyways. It acknowledges that this portrayal reinforces stereotypes about those who live in such areas.

1. 1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media
products? (i.e. of film openings)
The genre we chose to do as our film opening was Urban Drama. In the opening we have a stereotypical
young black boy dressed in a black jacket, dark coloured jeans and he is holding a gym bag. The
beginning starts off with time lapses and then there is a still shot of him coming out of an estate
building, he comes out in the dark and starts making his journey. At this point the audience realises that
he is a thug and is maybe associated in the world of drugs. He has this almost fierce look on his face,
which highlights authority and danger. We then see the character get on the bus and give a very stern
look to a passenger on the bus who then gets off and changes his seat.
This bit of the film opening conforms to the stereotype that young boys are very intimidating and can
get aggressive. We then see the character walk towards the hospital and go inside a room. He then
comes back out with a doctor’s coat and a stethoscope, which highlights the fact he is a doctor. This
subverts the stereotype of young people with ‘street’ clothing and bags are up to something bad or
something suspicious. Our film opening challenges the genre that we chose to do because in usual
urban genres there is almost always a group of teenagers of young adolescents getting up to no good
and getting themselves into trouble.

2. 2)How does your media product represent
particular social groups?
Our media product represents the characteristics of young adolescents from run down areas as quite
dominant and aggressive (representation is the way someone portrays themselves). This is
represented through the costume we decided on for our character to wear during the scenes he
was walking up to the hospital. He had a black hooded jacket, with light coloured jeans, dark shoes,
a black gym bag and a big pair of headphones. This made him look like a ‘street’ boy as the
stereotype for them is to wear quite dull coloured clothing and to be quite detached from anyone
else outside their social group hence the headphones he is wearing. We also chose to cast a black
actor because stereotypically they are seen to be a lot more street and violent, therefore it would
have added to the point we wanted to put across, the fact that a black adolescent is travelling at
night with dark clothing and a suspicious gym bag in his hand; it makes it look a lot more suspicious
because again stereotypically black people are more likely to be portrayed as drug dealers and so
forth.
Also the settings we chose were very specific in showing the type of area our character comes from-
this gives his character more meaning and it also adds to the revelation at the end of our opening
scene. We filmed him coming out of an estate building, getting onto the bus and walking through a
very dark alleyway. This again represents the stereotypical view that it placed upon people who live
in these areas and dress the way they do.