How Does Your Media Product Represent Particular Social Groups?
How Does Your Media Product Represent Particular Social Groups?
The expressionism used in this shot was meant to convey happiness through the vibrant
colours during the flashback. This effect on the shot has allowed us to represent the
young couple as a joyful pair of characters when together. This method of minimising
the space between the characters, bringing them closer created more characters in
contrast to when they were more distant apart in the present time where the colours
are more dull and low-key lighting is used. This conveys the social group of young
couples to be more vibrant, bubbly and joyful when with their partner which can be
argued as an archetype or an ideology, as it depends on the couple and the relationship.
Therefore this use of distance between characters and framing to bring them closer is
meant to support the ideology that a couple is happier when they are together instead
of distant when they are individuals.
Other media texts in the past such as the well known Shakespearean drama: Romeo and
Juliet, are similar to our text as it conveys the emotions between the characters through
actions and sound just as it has here.
Mise-en-Scene
This shot of a Jack Daniels bottle was used as we expected our
audience to know that Jack Daniels is a distinctive brand of Whiskey.
Due to this prop in the mise-en-scene, it represents our audience as
a social group which has had alcohol and Jack Daniels before. This
represents our character as a stereotype of young adults which is
that they drink and party when they’re young, and become more
responsible as life goes on. So is it a stereotype that 18-40 year old
people would know about this brand? To an extent, this age range
would be the perfect range to represent a society which has
knowledge on famous alcohols, especially the younger end of the
age range as 18 is the age you can legally drink in Britain.
This shot of the knife relies on the fact that the audience
have a past media consumption of genres such as crime,
horror and thrillers. This is because the effect we have tried
to get across is the assumption that the male character has
killed the female with the knife, hence the blood. Therefore
this shot gives the representation that the target audience
have a media consumption of past thrillers, crime and
drama genres. A person who watches this thriller due to
personal interest in it is likely to have a past media
consumption of thrillers, tv programmes with genres of
romance and crime as part of a drama e.g. CSI. Therefore I
believe that this is an archetype as it is likely someone who
is interested in my thriller is also knowledgeable on other
media with similar themes of violence and romance. This
whole murder scene is similar the Othello, and therefore
past media consumptions may allow the audience to
acknowledge this if they have ever seen Othello.
The shot of the phone was to emphasise a new
character into the opening. This shot is meant
to represent a young person in society who has
a new and expensive mobile phone. This is
representative of the new generation of
society, the younger people who rely solely on
technology to become more interactive instead
of the past generation who do more without it.
It can be seen as a stereotype that the younger
generation rely on technology too much, but it
can be argued that it is actually and archetype
as people now create blogs, surf social
networking sites to meet new people and over-
use their phones.
• The voiceover is from the male character in the opening. It is representative of his emotions looking back at his past
moments and what has actually happened. A voiceover is important as we mimicked the film noir style. The voice is not
too deep effective at conveying emotion through the selection of words, tone of voice, and pace of speech. The voiceover
is used to make us as the audience feel vulnerable, as if it could be us, creating verisimilitude in the scene and allowing
you to feel as if the situation in the opening, could happen to any of us. This young male voice talks about his emotions
and how he had made the mistake, and lost his love through paranoia. Even though it is still very mysterious to us as it
creates questions, its is supposed to be a representation of a young male character. In society, young male character are
stereotyped to have a big ego and therefore never talk about their emotions, in contrast to what is happening in the
thriller, therefore this challenges that stereotype and creates a representation of sensitivity in the male characters of
society which can be seen as a positive stereotype.
• The music in the opening sequence is used to create emotion and sympathy towards the male character and create a
sense of forgiveness for him. This slow and emotional music is meant to represent a males more hidden side, which has
sensitivity. This is challenging the ideology that all men are strong hearted and hard to talk to when it comes to emotion.
• The sound effects of rain in the background are used to convey pathetic fallacy, creating the mood of depression and
sadness along with the shots used. The sound can be representative of a young adult audience and couples of this certain
age, similar to the characters. It may convey that couples are always sad and depressed through the pathetic fallacy but
then this stereotype is challenged by the use of saturated red, green and pink colours and sound in the flashback.
•The music during the flashback is used to pick up the pace of the slow shots before the flashback, and to create a more
happy feel which contrasts to the sound afterwards. This music represents these characters to have a slow emotion,
maybe a slow heart beat, and as the flashback picks up the pace of the editing, the female characters heartbeat speeds up
and the female wakes up in opening. This is representative of how the music can control the scene, and speed it up
through its pace, followed by the pace of editing.