[updated] Q2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Gender

In our thriller opening, we used the convention and representation of women as the victim. Vulnerability is a theme often portrayed in thrillers, especially portraying women as vulnerable. We used this stereotype in our thriller as it would work better with a female, instead of a male victim, as people tend to sympathise with women more and feel sorry for them more than males, it also fits the genre as women are often represented as fragile and weak in other thriller films. Similar to our film, The Disappearance of Alice Creed portrays the character of Alice Creed as vulnerable and a victim, as she is kidnapped, put in danger and is hurt. In our film the female character is kidnapped and hurt, reinforcing the representation that women are victims. Women are often used in thrillers to emphasise the morality of the antagonists, as hurting or kidnapping a woman helps reinforce the antagonist's danger and inner darkness. In terms of camera, the camera often cuts out part of the character's face in the first and second parts of the opening, which could imply that she is powerless as part of her is cut our of the shot, and usually to imply power and dominance, the camera includes the whole face of the character in the centre or with the use of the rule of thirds. In our film the character is often off centre in the shot or central but part of their face or their entire face cut out. However, this character challenges usual conventions regarding women in thrillers, as she is given more time on screen than the other character who may or may not be male, as usually male characters are given more screen time, this could represent her as dominant, but other aspects of the film clearly show that she isn't.

However, in our film we challenged stereotypes of gender in a way, as our antagonist's gender isn't revealed, which takes away the identity of the character and makes them more mysterious as well as dangerous. Usually in thriller films, the antagonist is male, which reinforces stereotypes of men as being violent and dominant as well, and the female characters are used to reinforce this. For our film, the antagonist is used to portray the idea that anyone can be a villain and rough and violent, which challenges stereotypes of the thriller genre and creates a sense of danger and unease and creates tension in our thriller opening. The antagonist's costume helps create a genderless and mysterious character, as the hoodie, gloves and trousers are fairly gender neutral as they are black and help hide the character's figure, and the gloves and hood hide the character's face and hands. the colour of the antagonist's clothes also create a sense of danger and unease, which is reinforced by that the antagonist is placed at the far right side of the shot and half of their body is cut off by the edge of the shot, which also creates a sense of mystery as well as unease. The character is also not given very much time on screen to reinforce the mystery which adds more danger to the character and reinforces the idea that anyone can be a threat, as the character isn't given enough time on screen to have an identity.

Age

Our film reinforces stereotypes that young people are naïve, as our main character is a young adult or teen and gets kidnapped in the opening, which also helps portray young people as vulnerable. However, we have tried to challenge representations as young people are often represented as innocent, which we have challenged with our character's mysterious background reinforced by the location in the first half of the opening and her clean clothes in the location, as well as certain shots of her which hide the top part of the character's face, these help challenge stereotypes of young people as innocent. In addition, the character is also represented as a typical teenager, as she wears clothes typical of that age, as well as representing the naivety and vulnerability of teens and young adults. A few shots to represent this show her from behind, emphasising vulnerability. This shot shows our young female character from the back, unaware of a potential danger, representing her and young people as powerless as well as naïve This is also similar to films of this genre as the opening of Essex Boys represented the young driver as naïve as well as powerless and the film The Disappearance of Alice Creed uses a young character to be kidnapped and reinforce fears of young people getting kidnapped or harmed due to their vulnerability and possibly lack of awareness, similar to our thriller film opening. The editing also reinforces the lack of awareness of the young character, as it gets faster and faster, implying that something bad is going to happen to her but she is oblivious to the threat.