HOW DOES YOUR MEDIA PRODUCT REPRESENT PARTICULAR SOCIAL GROUPS?

By Nick Gidley

In the opening scene of Green Street we noticed that the film was based on the stereotypes of football supporters (hooligans) which the majority of people these days would class them as chavs. It showed in the opening sequence that the football hooligans liked to fight other supporters. This worked well because we had a beginning of a fight scene in our film clip so we could relate to the Green Street film clip. Also in the film clip which I analysed all of the football hooligans where white men ranging from the age of 25 to 40. This was a problem for the actors we used as we all where aged from 16 to 17. But in the other films that our group evaluated the actors where aged 16 to 20 which means we could have the age of actors.

We chose to represent gangs and drug dealers because we believed that it would work well as we knew a bit how the drug game works. Also drugs is a bigger problem than people know about so we wanted to put out the fact that a lot of people these day either do drugs or are dealers. We wanted to show that if you get into drugs that it can end up very bad by either damaging your body or getting beaten up which is what we showed in our film. We chose social group E and D from Socio-Economic Scale. We chose E and D to be the target audience for our film because we believe that they would be able to relate to the film the best compared to the other groups, this is because group E is underworking class and group D is working class so these groups would most likely living in areas that are gang related areas (council houses or flats). Also these types of social groups tend to have many children so most likely their children are similar ages to the characters so their children will really be able to connect with the characters.

We represented the groups we chose to be ‘Chavs’ and Gangs members that sell and take drugs. Also we represented them to violent towards each other even though they are in the same position as each other which connotes that they aren’t very sociable to many people besides their other gang members.

Lighting helped us to create the characters because we used naturals lighting which made each character look dark and more edgy which is what we wanted whereas if we had used high key lighting it would have made the characters faces light up in a golden sort of colour which would be used in a romantic film so it wouldn’t have been suitable for our film.

Camera angles and movements played a big part in getting the affect that we want on each character which is shown in a dolly shot when you see Glyn (Tyrone) meet with Joe (Tris) then chases him down the alley. We wanted this shot because we thought it worked well and that it was affective as it shows that gang members can be aggressive and violent which this shot shows well. Also towards the begging of our film there is a good dolly shot of Glyn walking towards the camera this shows that the characters in our film are dark and mysterious which gives them the complex side to them which is what we want.

In our film we filmed when the light was darkening so it set the mood better. Most of the colours in our set were dark and the colours were oligochromatic (restricted colour palette). The colour in our film helped create that unsureness in what is going to happen so that worked well in the film clip. We believe that this was effective because it did create the mood we was aiming for but you could still see what was happening in the film. As shown below in the photos and videos.

The music in our film had a good beat but it was also edgy which connote the viewer to feel worried about what is going to happen, this was perfect because that is what we wanted as we knew that we was going to have the begging of a fight scene. If our music in our film clip was stereotyped some could say that it was ‘chavvy’ which then connects to our characters. The music could be described as masculine which again relates back to our actors as all the actors are male. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PsJlQLypCSc&list=UUCjMwmRm1_h77dZEyOmkOoA

The mise en scene in our film clip helped set the scene. The costumes we got the actors to wear where mainly dark colours because that is what you would see gang members wearing. We noticed that gangs wear dark colours through the analysis of the opening sequences we did. Also the area we used to film was perfect as it had graffiti which is associated with gangs and chavs so the spot was perfect. Also near the graffiti was a long alley which is what we want for the chase so the spot we used worked better than we expected. Another way we represented the social group we did was by the language we used, we used a few swear words as we noticed they did in the gritty realism films we watched also we used slang which is what gang members and chavs use in everyday conversations so we knew we had to use slang. When exporting our film for some reason the picture became extorted and didn’t look how we wanted it we have tried many thing to try and export it the way it looks in the film editor but it hasn’t seemed to have worked.

In our film we used straight cuts to create continuous editing which creates high levels of verisimilitude which is conventional in gritty realisms