1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? (i.e. of film openings)

The genre we chose to do as our film opening was Urban Drama. In the opening we have a stereotypical young black boy dressed in a black jacket, dark coloured jeans and he is holding a gym bag. The beginning starts off with time lapses and then there is a still shot of him coming out of an estate building, he comes out in the dark and starts making his journey. At this point the audience realises that he is a thug and is maybe associated in the world of drugs. He has this almost fierce look on his face, which highlights authority and danger. We then see the character get on the bus and give a very stern look to a passenger on the bus who then gets off and changes his seat.

This bit of the film opening conforms to the stereotype that young boys are very intimidating and can get aggressive. We then see the character walk towards the hospital and go inside a room. He then comes back out with a doctor’s coat and a stethoscope, which highlights the fact he is a doctor. This subverts the stereotype of young people with ‘street’ clothing and bags are up to something bad or something suspicious. Our film opening challenges the genre that we chose to do because in usual urban genres there is almost always a group of teenagers of young adolescents getting up to no good and getting themselves into trouble.

2)How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Our media product represents the characteristics of young adolescents from run down areas as quite dominant and aggressive (representation is the way someone portrays themselves).

This is represented through the costume we decided on for our character to wear during the scenes he was walking up to the hospital. He had a black hooded jacket, with light coloured jeans, dark shoes, a black gym bag and a big pair of headphones. This made him look like a

‘street’ boy as the stereotype for them is to wear quite dull coloured clothing and to be quite detached from anyone else outside their social group hence the headphones he is wearing. We also chose to cast a black actor because stereotypically they are seen to be a lot more

street and violent, therefore it would have added to the point we wanted to put across, the fact that a black adolescent is travelling at night with dark clothing and a suspicious gym bag in his hand; it makes it look a lot more suspicious because again stereotypically black people

are more likely to be portrayed as drug dealers and so forth. Also the settings we chose were very specific in showing the type of area our character comes

from- this gives his character more meaning and it also adds to the revelation at the end of our opening scene. We filmed him coming out of an estate building, getting onto the bus and

walking through a very dark alleyway. This again represents the stereotypical view that it placed upon people who live in these areas and dress the way they do.