How does our media product represent particular social groups?
We focused on two different social groups in our thriller and researched into numerous other films prior to the project in order to gain an understanding of how they have previously been represented. The two social groups we focused on were youths and homosexuals.
Youths
In modern day society, youths can sometimes be portrayed in the media as more mature and sophisticated than in reality. With actors in their 20's often playing the role of a teenager, the intellect is further emphasised, even though it is untrue. A perfect example of this would be the character 'Kim' in the film 'Taken’ by Pierre Morel. She plays a teenager who travels with her friend to Paris, suggesting a sensible and reliable attitude. This is unrealistic and would be
unlikely to take place in reality. This false representation is further emphasised by the fact -as previously stated - that the actress who plays 'Kim' was in fact, at the time, 25, almost a whole decade older than her character. As a result, we can conclude that the representation of youths is often a positive one even though it may not necessarily be correct; perhaps the writer and director are collectively trying to falsely represent the youth in a positive light in order to present hope surrounding this social group.
This is not always the case however. Other films such as 'This is England' by Shane Meadows adopt a different approach and portray youths in a very different light. The main character in this film is young Shaun, played by Thomas Turgoose who was in his early teen years when taking on the role. His character, along with his friends in the film, act in a very immature way, finding themselves in lots of mischief. This film, although set in the past, challenges a typical portrayal of youths of today who we wrongly assume to be 'young adults'.
Shane Meadows film was an inspiration to us and many aspects of his film are also included in our own (e.g. costume, setting). As a result, we decided to reinforce Meadows' representation in our own thriller and ensure that youths, who dominate our cast, are represented in a negative way, as we strongly believed that this was realistic and the truth in a modern day society. We focused on a clever use of camera angles in order to support the representation we were attempting to convey:
A regular use of close-ups enables the audience to take a closer look at what is in the shot. We felt that by showing the character of Robbie on screen through use of this shot it would highlight any 'boy-ish' features and therefore make the audience realise that this character is just a, young, naive, immature teenager. This shot of the character Shaun from 'This is England' shows his hand very close to the camera. The close-up shot allows the audience to see the smallness of his features and how he is still 'un-developed'. The irony of the shot is how the action that the boy is performing is very grown up but he is not. We come to the automatic conclusion that although he puts on a grown-up act, deep down he is still a child. We used a slightly similar shot in our own thriller opening. We had an extreme close-up shot of our character, 'Robbie's', hand when being washed in a toilet sink. This (much like the shot above from 'This is England') allows us to see, due to some child-like features that this person in the shot is just a teen. He is not powerful or dominant, but instead, an un-important, irrelevant youth.
We regularly used a high-angle shot. This displays the character(s) in the mis-en-scene as inferior and lower in a social hierarchy, simply because they are lower in the shot. It can also be seen to give the impression that somebody is watching over you, in this case the high angle shot could symbolise the youths being under the watchful eye of their superiors (police), thus underlining that their immature behaviour that needs supervision. As well as highlighting Robbie’s inferiority and vulnerability, this high angle shot
also allows us to establish location. In this case, Robbie has entered a bathroom, which is small and confined compared to the outside where he has just come from. This claustrophobic feel is a key thriller convention and is used throughout several thriller films, such as in Peter Weir’s ‘Witness’ where the young Amish boy enters a bathroom, much like
in our own thriller. By establishing location in our thriller it enabled us to highlight how Robbie is tiny and irrelevant to his wide surroundings, thus emphasising the inferiority of youths.
A mixture of camera angles/techniques (tilt shot, shaky camera work) and editing processes (slow motion, mixed transitions) helped to represent a feel of disorientation. This theme attempts to display how the youth of today as a general group are fractured due to the broken environment that they have been brought up in.
Location was an important factor to consider when attempting to represent youths in the way we intended. We needed to include some rural/gritty areas in order to show the kind of environment that many are forced to grow up in. The dark, gloomy exterior shots show the streets in the most dingiest way possible and I feel successfully show the grim reality that many youths of today consider as their everyday life.
Homosexuality
Although not explained in our project, we originally came up with the idea that the reason for the attack in our thriller opening was due to homophobia. It is a subject that is often not highlighted in the media, however when it is it can cause speculation and controversy surrounding the subject. Brokeback Mountain (although a drama rather than a thriller) attempts to make people more aware of homosexuality and encourage its audience to accept it as a result. After thorough research into this social group, we found that Brokeback Mountain was one of very few films that surrounded this. We therefore decided to challenge the representation in that film in our own project by portraying homosexuality in a negative way. There were not many ways in which we could give this portrayal to our audience due to the fact that it was only a two minute opening to a thriller and not a whole film. Also, it is not confirmed that this as the reason for the attack in the opening and therefore it was a difficult task. Were we ever to go on to film the rest of this project, various different techniques could be used within each mis-en-scene regarding homosexuality in order to give it a negative portrayal. For example, use of camera angles would be vital; much the same as when giving a negative portrayal to youths, high angle shots would be essential to display any homosexual characters as minors. Cast would also be vital. The vast majority would be heterosexual so that any homosexual references were minority and seemed abnormal as a result.
