Q2. How does your media product represent particular

social groups?

Media representations are the ways in which the media portrays and presents particular groups, communities, experiences, ideas, or topics from a particular ideological or value perspective. It can also be a piece of work or a piece of acting that represent your ideas.

As films with a genre of Thriller (for example Shutter Island) usually include scenes of violence, screaming, and death to fit the theme, we have chosen not to target our opening sequence at younger people (primary school children) because we feel they would be less engaged and interested in the film or even scared, so we have aimed it at people who are slightly older so it is more age appropriate.

What is a representation?

Social groupsThe social groups that we expect to see in our opening title sequence are people aged between 16-25 year of age. We decided that this age group would be appropriate because we do not want people who are too young to be watching a horror film. My film is about a teenage boy who plays the role of the villain and who has just escaped from a prison and has moved to a new town and started college with a new identity. We included teenagers in our age group range because we play the roles of teenagers in the title sequence, and some of the scenes we included are based in and around college, which the viewer could relate to if they fit the target social groups.

Social groupsGender also comes in to our social group as both male and female viewers would be likely to watch my opening title sequence as it includes both male and female main characters in the storyline (members of group 28). It is relatable to many people because apart from the fact that the genre is horror, but the film itself also shows young people (teenagers) at school/college making new friends and forming relationships with other people. However, in this case the consequences for some of the characters are fatal as a result of them being unaware of their friend’s intentions and do not know that he is actually a murderer and has recently escaped from a prison in a different city. The two female characters are represented as friends who are seen to be the nice students who have no bad intentions whatsoever. The viewer sees them as close friends who make friends with a new student, who the audience know is the villain as the shots that were taken of him hint that he is not as nice as he seems. We have represented two characters in a positive way and the villain in a negative way, and we support the common stereotypes usually seen in thriller/horror movies.