Question 2

Question 2: How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Our media product is successful at conveying the different social groups that we set out to convey. We tried to include a number of different social groups by representation. Representation is essentially an image plus a point of view about what they portray. A key issue centers around how some representations of people or issues become generic and attitudes of values and beliefs become widespread. However representation can be damaging as they can challenge and become stereotypes. Aimee's character "Ella May" was stereotypically a popular,outgoing and 'bitchy' girl. These characteristics and traits were shown in Aimee's character by the way she talked, acted and dressed. However the main way we represented these characteristics were through the choice of outfits. We decided to take inspiration from a character similar to Aimee's character in a teenage soap 'Hollyoaks'. This character wears a large fur coat and  has long blonde hair down. We tried to imitate this through the way we dressed Aimee in her characters outfit. This meant the audience can empathise with this character as it is a realistic real to life character. Stereotypically in a horror movie the blonde girl is killed first as they are seen as vulnerable. Therefore to follow the stereotypical conventions of horror movies Aimee became the first victim because she is a young and blonde girl who could portray the character best so we wanted to use this convention purposely. 

In horror films young people, another social group, are conventional characters as they are seen as free spirits, usually looking for adventure and enjoying life so they always seem to find themselves in inevitable trouble or in the grasps of the antagonist of the film. For example in films such as 'Final destination' , 'House of Wax' and 'Texas Chainsaw Massacre' a young group of boys and girls go away or out for summer adventure and find themselves in circumstances such as camping in the woods or lost in the dark somewhere when something  such as an antagonist like a murderer or in the case of Final Destination: death. Also young people are used in horrors as they are the main target audience. This means the audience can relate to the characters and empathise with them as they go on through the film and get in all sorts of mischief. We tried to show our young characters through the outfits, actions and small dialogue.

This was shown through Aimee and Chantelle's outfit choice of wearing wellies to demonstrate their fun and young bubbly sides and that they was walking through the muddy woods. Also Aimee wore a big fur coat to show her character was very out there and stylish with a bright coloured scarf to show a bright personality as young people try to stand out, especially the character that Aimee was playing.
Accents and language play a big part in the expression of social groups. Our media product is filmed in England and the cast are all British therefore you expect them all to have British accents, which they do. Also the accents and slang used in the dialogue of the film show that we are from South East London.

Another way the social group was highlighted was by how Aimee's character 'Ella may' picked up the camera she found and put it in her bag, as you can see from her actions this could be seen as being nosey or stealing which is typical 'stereotypical' misconceptions of young people.