1. Task 2
How does your product represent
particular social groups?
2. The characters in our film
From our opening sequence, only one character is shown; ‘Ethel-May’, she is our main
character and the plot of our film, is mainly revolved around her. Later on in our film
you see other characters involved; the therapist and the foster family. They also play
important parts. By only showing ‘Ethel-May’ in our opening, it will not give much to
the audience, they will have to keep watching to find out about the other characters.
Ethel-May’s role in the film is to try and keep the secret that she killed her mum. The
audience will find out she killed her, before the foster family do, this is creating
dramatic irony. She also gets very jealous of the foster families children, so she tries to
kill them as well. She is very manipulating and secretive.
The therapists role in the film is to comfort Ethel-May and to help her recover from
the death of her mum, when Ethel-May confides in him and tells him she killed her
mum, he has a different outlook on her. He is very worried she might kill him as
well, he doesn’t tell the foster family she killed her mother.
The foster families role in the film is to give Ethel-May a safe home, but they do not
know all that happened in her past, this makes the film more tense. Once strange
things happen to the house and their children, they begin to worry, what Ethel-May
might have not told them.
3. Ethel-May
What are the social groups represented in terms of gender, age, class, race .etc?
Is gender represented in a stereotypical way?
I.e. men dominant and women passive
Ethel-May’s father was very controlling and he
dominated the household in her early childhood.
Ethel-May picked up the dominating, controlling side.
This is why she was dominating over her mother and
killed her.
Ethel-May, looks and seems like a happy
child, but inside she is very unhappy, and lonely.
Her family was in a very low class, and had a low
income. Her mum and dad had a very bad
relationship, which made ‘Ethel-May’ feel very
unloved and unwanted. When she was little, she
was abused a lot by her father, this lead her to
being very insecure and having a low selfesteem. This effected her school life, she had no
friends and got bad results. Her father
dominated the household, her mother was
controlled by her, this lead to them separating
and Ethel-May had no father in her life. From
her early childhood, she developed her
controlling and manipulative side. I think this is
good, so other families and young children can
relate to it. Comparing it to ‘Esther’ she also had
a bad upbringing, which lead her to be the way
she is now.
4. Main Character:
We based our main character on ‘Esther’ from ‘The Orphan’, she is a 33 year old women disguising as
a 9 year old girl. By the way she dresses and presents herself, she looks very innocent, cute and
sweet. But throughout the film, she acts very nasty and does a lot of terrifying things to try and kill
the families children. This is just like our character ‘Ethel-May’ as she kills her mother and then tries
killing her foster family, so I feel they resemble each other very well.
The pictures I have chosen to compare; are both showing the spooky, mysterious side to them, but
the way they act and dress, portray an innocent, sweet side, but on the inside they are very different.
Our main character ‘Ethel-May’ doesn't’t show her face a lot, but in some shots you can see the
dark, frightening emotion shown in her eyes. They both have a twisted mind, and are very
manipulative towards other characters, for example Esther presents a innocent side towards the
orphanage lady and to the parents of her foster family, which makes them think she is very sweet. On
the other hand Ethel-May also shows an innocent side to her therapist and her parents of the foster
family.
But there are a few differences between the characters; Esther is younger than our character, she
also wears a lot more darker colours and wears her hair differently. Ethel-May killed her mother at
the beginning, whereas Esther came from an orphanage.