Question 2

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

In our film opening the characters that star in it are teenage males of a working class

background. This is normal for this type of film because this is the group of people who are

stereotyped as trouble causing and getting involved in all sorts. Because of this, they give off

a negative representation to the audience as they will think that these characters are the

antagonists.

However, the stereotype we have challenged is the ethnicity of the characters. Usually in

this genre of film the characters are of black or Asian ethnicity, however, the characters in

our film opening are White British. This gives off a more positive view of the characters by

the audience because usually blacks/Asians are stereotyped as being trouble causers but

whites are less likely to be stereotyped under this.

Because of the genre of our film it is easy to show the stereotypes. As it is a crime and

action film set in a city suburb the audience will already be able to spot that the characters

are of working class. But through the film we showed the audience that they were from a

working class background first of all with the establishing shot. In this shot you can see the

dark streets and the council houses which tell the audience that it’s set in a poor area.

Second of all from the clothes they wear. The characters both wear hoodies, one of the

characters (Leon) wears jeans and trainers as he is one of the gangsters but the other (Jay)

wears chinos and smart casual trainers. This makes the audience wonder why this character

is not wearing the usual stereotyped gangster clothes which are jeans and trainers. But this

character is new to the area and is originally from a middle class background which is why

he is wearing slightly smarter clothes. The way that the characters walk is a slow swag walk

with their heads down and hoods up. This shows the audience that these are trouble

causers and likely to have aggressive behaviour.

The technical choices we made to give the audience the correct feeling is through the music

and the lighting. Once it gets to the part at night when both characters are walking through

the streets we have used slowish grime music which is what these types of people usually

listen to. This music also has an aggressive feeling to it which fits in with the characters

behaviour. We have also used natural, low key lighting from the street lights. This is because

it is set at night and the dark also makes it seem more aggressive. It can also create more

enigma because it gets the audience wondering what’s going to happen such as‘Is there

going to be an attack?’ etc.

In our film opening we were mostly able to represent the character’s social groups through

the area that the film is set in. Also through the clothes they wear. This is because these are

what the audience usually notice about the film at first.