Evaluation question 2

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

In recent society teenagers often give each other labels based on their appearance, interests, attitudes and lifestyles, so we decided that we would use 3 main characters that each represented a different social group/label.

The character of Chloe is a stereotypical nerd/geek. We have represented this by her very shy and innocent attitude throughout the film, Maddy who played Chloe did this by speaking very quietly  and shyly with a stutter meaning that she didn’t quite know what to say or how to react to the other characters.  Through mise-en-scene when allowed her to look uncomfortable and show a lack of care in her appearance, as she had no make-up on, her hair wasn’t done and she had very baggy clothes on, this represented a nerd as she is hiding her body away and doesn’t want to stand out. Nerds often are bullied therefore we included the fact that she is bullied and peer pressured into taking the drugs and eventually gives into the bullies even though she knew it was the wrong thing to do. The mainly dark lighting on shots of Chloe foreshadowed the fact that something dark and bad was going to happen to her in the scenes to come.

The character of Beth is very laid back and casual. We have represented this by her careless attitude towards the drugs as she is willing to do and try anything.  She spoke confidently and wasn’t afraid to stick up for Chloe when Lola was bullying her.  Through mise-en-scene we showed how laid back she was as she was wearing a slouchy jumper and a pair of jeans as she doesn’t make much effort towards her appearance. The typical older relative as she sticks up for Chloe and has a go at Lola for even suggesting it.

The final character of Lola is a stereotypical girly-girl this can be seen from mise-en-scene as we looked in fashion magazines to see what the latest fashions were at the time of filming which we crop tops and skater skirts. We can also see that she cares about her appearance with her face full of make up and hair done nicely with a lot of her skin showing on her legs and stomach.

Through the use of expressionism - lighting and colour we could show that stereotypically teenagers are seen as dark and dangerous. By turning the lights of and closing the curtain we could create an atmosphere full of tension and create a sense of death. Usually older people seem to think that teenagers spend all their free time sitting around smoking, taking drugs and basically throwing their lives away so by using the lighting and body language we could prove this to be true.

In editing we used different effects such as blurred vision and double vision this allowed us to show people what the real effects of drug use are like and that its not all as exciting as it usually is made out to be on films.

 

We used a plain and simple font for the title sequence as we thought that the effects we used – fade and smudge would make it much more eye catching than using a fancy font and the ideas of our film weren’t happy and energetic so the editing pace was fairly slow and as their natural reactions are slowed down from the drug use.

For the typography of the film we juxtaposed the opposite colours of a black background and white writing – we first got this idea from Alfred Hitchcock’s Pyscho as he used black, white and grey. The black background represents the dark behaviour and secrets, whereas the white explosive writing represents the unexpected events  that the characters did not anticipate.