Evaluation question 2 (Blogger)

How does your media product represent particular social groups?


My thriller does not really show a particular social group, class, gender or ethnicity, despite the actor being a white male, in a specific light, but represents students as a whole. The clothing within the film is representative of the typical, moody teenager with the weight of peer pressure heavy on their shoulders with minimal variation to the general style throughout the production. The location, sticking with the theme of students, is in a school in empty hallways, classrooms and social areas to also keep with the horror thriller theme with both props and actor strategically placed for POV shots and blind spots, which add a certain kind of suspense to the product. The character in the product represented students through realistic responses to finding weird notes everywhere you look telling you to commit crime i.e. transitioning from mildly creeped out to mad that someone is playing a joke on them.

I chose to represent students in the most realistic manner I could, so I attempted to make the actor look moody and reclusive, I did this by filming in empty halls and having them wear a hoody to make the character seem isolated and reclusive. This follows through to the stereotypes that I am using. At the beginning of the production, I portrayed the character as sceptical, apprehensive and unwilling to accept something they don't want to be there. In the middle, it transitions into disbelief and then onto anger as most "broody" teenagers would. The end lacks any further portrayal of the character as it includes a montage of previous shots and the title screen. I decided not to try and intentionally challenge any stereotypes as I wanted to make my film as generalizable to teenagers as possible, even if it means offending a few actual teenagers in the process.
Messages to the audience? Primarily, I am trying to convey the reality of peer pressure on society's members, it's youths in particular and I am doing this because teenagers are the most susceptible to peer pressure and the bandwagon and awareness of freewill and choice must be raised. Where peer pressure festers, drugs and alcohol more often than not, follow en mass.