Education-Media Studies

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

2. Victim
The first character we see is a young teenage girl who the audience learn
to be the victim. We make it quite clear of her position with mise-en-scene
including the young-adult styled bedroom, make-up & physical
appearance. We foreshadow her situation with the book she is reading –
the Famous Five In Trouble; before the victim is murdered she flips over to
the chapter ‘Trapped’. Indicating her own circumstance as she herself is
trapped.
It's quite stereotypical in thriller films for a young woman to be the victim
with examples from successful thrillers including 'Scream' and 'Psycho'.
In fact our thriller follows several characteristics from Scream with the
victim being alone at home and the antagonist preying upon her. Even
though our film does not seek to encourage violence against women, the
formula has been used by countless other successful thrillers and so we
aimed to replicate that in our own.

3. Antagonist
Horror/thriller films also tend to follow the same narrative structure of a
male killer on the rampage that kills his victims one by one until he is
killed. Our villain is made clear from his dark demeanour and the fact
that we cannot see him. He is mysterious; which is another element
from ‘Psycho’ which also has a mysterious antagonist.
In our own film, we intended for the killer to be a former victim of cyber
bullying who has taken it upon himself to take revenge and seeks out
each of the bullies one by one. The inclusion of ‘cyber’ is intended as
we wanted to link it to the modern day – where the internet has far
more involvement in our lives than it ever did before.
The killer’s own backstory would be revealed slowly throughout the film
– with an overall message woven in that killing is never right. However
it would show how harmful and damaging bullying is and that we should
always think before we do anything.

4. Protagonist
The protagonist is a Detective, who represents the law and the
opposing force to the antagonist. This is quickly made apparent with his
immediate comparison to the killer by being in broad daylight, whereas
the killer was only seen at night. His uniform and curious body
language all indicate his connection with the law.
This character was implemented to show the balance; without it, there
would be very little interest in the story as nothing would change nor
would there be any climax. Which is common in thrillers.
Our Detective is a male, again as in many successful thrillers, the ‘hero’
is shown to be a male who stops the antagonist from causing more
harm to society – in this instance, the ‘hero’ is a police officer whose job
is to actually capture criminals.

5. Payback Opening
Although the opening is very short, the audience is able to quickly
establish which character is the victim, the antagonist and the
protagonist.
With our use of stereotypical social groups within a matter of two
minutes the audience is able to identify the type of character on screen
and what role they’ll play.
For now, we do not try and challenge any social groups or stereotypes
as we are presenting the characters. However later on we might show
how vulnerable the antagonist actually is with the introduction of his
backstory.