RE-DRAFT: How does your media product represent particular social groups?

There were various different ways I represented the social groups in my thriller opening. One of these was through the use of costume. I looked at examples such as Clover field to see what kind of clothes the characters wore. This helped me and I chose to represent my characters in a similar way, in the hope to represent the middle class by the characters wearing clothes such as jeans, jumpers, t-shirts and trousers. These are all stereotypical of the middle class. 

I represented these characters positively and stereotypically as a loving family who put emphasis on spending time together as a family. This is shown when the characters are taking time to talk to each other in the kitchen and again when they are all sitting in the living room together. The family in my thriller were stereotypically portrayed, through the plot,  as the middle class victims of a seemingly random attack.

Charlie, the main character, is representing teenage girl but more specifically the stereotypical sporty girl as we are shown her out running in the beginning of the opening. This is important as teenagers make up a large part of my target audience of 15 to 24 year olds. This representation of a main character also goes against the stereotypical conventions of thrillers where men are usually the main characters.

I wanted to challenge the idea that men are dominant over women, I think I did this by making both the lead ‘good’ character and ‘bad’ character women in my product. I think I also achieved this by not having any low angle shots from men looking down on to women. This means that the women weren't weakened or shown to be weaker by any men.

The bad character in my thriller challenges the stereotype of most thriller as it is a women in stead of a man. Not only this but the woman is taking control and coming back to get revenge on a man and his family. The women is being portrayed as powerful and in control instead of stereotypically weak and powerless. Making a man a victim of a women challenges the conventions of thrillers. The bad character doesn't really represent a particular social group as we don't know enough about them this early into the thriller to give them a social group.

The costumes, props, actions, plot, camera angles & shots help to represent the family in my thriller positively and as a stereotypical white middle class traditional nuclear family. When you break the family group down you can see that there are different age groups being represented. The younger ages, around 11 years old,  are slightly represented by the younger brother This could attract a younger audience than I originally intended especially as my product has a content that could be seen as suitable for parental guidance as there is no gore or violence

The older age groups from about 30+ are also represented by the characters of the mother and father. This could make my thriller opening more appealing to the older age group as well as the original intended audience of 15 to 24 year olds.

I tried to have a younger cast as I thought it would be easier for my target audience to relate to the characters if they were around a similar age to themselves. However I was particularly trying to target more women than men as when I did my audience research I had a bigger response from women, this helped to influence my choice of having women as the main characters over a man.