Evaluation How does your media product represent particular social groups

We aimed to follow the majority of the stereotypes as we didn’t want to alienate our audience by not making it explicit that our film is in the horror genre. However we did challenge some of the horror conversations to get an accurate representation of our audience so that they can relate to the character.

Our media product represents women as positively as the lead character is female and she is also the protagonist. My rationale is that by using mise-en-scene such as costume we have made the main character dressed in appropriate clothing instead of hypersexual clothing  as ‘Casey’ from ‘Scream’ answers the phone she is dressed to be presented hyper sexually and when she is asked about having a boyfriend she lies by replying with ‘no’, the caller knows she is lying as her boyfriend is tied up outside in her back garden.  Having our protagonist dressed in non-hyper sexual clothing allows the audience to connect with the character as she is more respectable. She also isn’t shown as the ‘damsel in distress’ as she calls out for the killer and goes up to the tree with blood to try and determine what is going on.  We were inspired by ‘Laurie’ from ‘Halloween’ as she defends the children she is babysitting from Michael and she believes she has killed him until Dr. Loomis shoots him six times we were influenced by women exhibiting strength and power.  Our film is quite feminist as the protagonist is female this shows we intending to have a feminist ideology.

Our media product represents the youth as innocent but clumsy. My rationale is that by using mise-en-scene such as the props for example we the phone we used has cracks on the screen which is a subtle message that shows the audience that she is a typical teenage girl. This was important as it is important to have our hero relatable to the audience so they can have a connection with the character. We have also presented the youth as being independent in our media product, my rationale is that she is walking in the woods without a group of friends or a sexual partner. We were influenced by ‘Samantha’ from ‘The House of the Devil’ as she is walking alone to her destination.

 

(Screenshot of 'Amelia' walking through the woods)

 

 

(Screenshot of  'Samantha' from 'House of the Devil' walking)

 

Our media product doesn’t represent men in the opening as they would have been too much going on in the scene however when we were planning for our other initial idea men were presented negatively as the male character was the antagonist. We would have represented men negatively in our film as we influenced by the two killers in ‘Scream’ and ‘Michael’ from Halloween as it is a horror convention to have a male antagonist.

(Screen shot of 'Michael' from 'Halloween')