Question 2: How does your media product represent particular social groups?

To compare to the characters in our opening sequence, I have chosen two characters from horror film "The Orphan".

 I chose "The Orphan" as a comparable film to our opening sequence not only because it is a clear horror genre, but because the main characters are children. This posted a link between the two films. The screen grabs I have selected were from school scenes in the two films, therefore it gave me a good opportunity to compare the two.

When looking at screen grabs from "The Orphan" one can see that the children are of a younger age than the two characters in our opening sequence. The mise-en-scene, in particular the costume is representative of a childlike nature, particularly through the hearts on the girls jumper. In the below photograph of the other character, the child's social group is represented through seeing her frilly dress, and also that she is clutching a book. It is clear that these images are attempting to show a child's and perhaps naive social group. I took these elements as inspiration when trying to represent the adolescent social group in our opening sequence.

In a similar context, our opening sequence is representative of an adolescent social group. It wasn't that difficult in representing this age group when filming because the actors, one being myself, are part of that age group. However in order to represent this social group through filming, we purposely added elements, particularly within the mise-en-scene that would make the audience aware that they are teenagers. One of these was through the use of costume. One can see through the screen grab that the girls were dressed in school uniform; this not only adds to the narrative that they were on their way home from school, yet shows how young and perhaps innocent they are through seeing their scruffy presentation. Another element is the body language. The girls, through alot of the opening sequence were linking arms and in some cases holding hands. When putting it into perspective, adult friendships dont do this, therefore it could be somewhat representative of a childs social group.

Our opening sequence also shows a teenagers social group through knowing the context of the actual plot; knowing that it was all a matter of 'dares' that the girls ran in there. When looking at the teenage stereotypes, they are known to gain a thrill and excitement from daring and intimidating things. It adds an element of immaturity knowing that they find it 'cool' to go into an intimidating woods; it is all very naive and childlike. When contrasting it to adults, they do not gain any thrill from doing intimidating things such as running into the woods. This creates a clear representation of the teenage social group.



Above is a screen grab from our opening sequence, showing two characters in full costume.