In my film introduction, I made sure that the audience were straight away able to

relate/acknowledge what the film is about and what’s going on (mischief). We want the teenage audience to straight away guess that the film is

targeted at them. Some key areas of representation:

Location Regional Identity

GenderEthnicityCostume

ClassAge

There are key elements used in real world social realism films, such as using an estate for location, the use of tracksuits are used for outfits a lot of

the time or by focusing on working class to fit the stereotype. Therefore, in order to get our media product to match these real world products, we

planned ahead and made sure of what key aspects we need to focus on in order to match

correctly. We did this by researching and watching several social realist films e.g.

Adulthood and One Mile Away and making notes on them.

By dressing our actors up in hoodies and tracksuits, it is

portraying the teenage stereotype ‘correctly’ as this is how many young British boys represent themselves as it perhaps brings a sense of intimidation to the public.

To have our film appear conventional, the main

protagonist is mixed raced. This portrays the

stereotypical look of a violent teenager up to no

good.

The location right at the beginning shows the area

in a dark setting with street lights on and a

grey, dusty fence. This is so that the working class ‘look’ of the area is clear

to the audience and signify negativity or

trouble.As you can see on the right, we’ve made use

of young faces and dark costumes. We decided to choose black costumes as it

connotes intimidation and evilness. This fits in well with the behaviour of our characters

and our genre of media product as it matches the other key elements of social realist films. As you can tell between the different media

products, the age, gender (male) and ethnicity is very similar. Many of the

protagonists in British social realism films are of a different background other than white

British. In Kidulthood, the main protagonist is of Turkish/North African decent and in One

Mile Away he is black. Therefore we believed that having our main protagonist mixed raced

made it look more conventional

Anuvahood; Kidulthood; One Mile

Away

The Way Out

It is clear to us that the media tends to represent teenagers in a negative and usually, awful way. I have gathered some right wing vs left wing news papers and how the two

differ when it comes to teen representation and clips from movies giving a clear demonstration that it is targeted at them by using some key elements to fit the negative

stereotype. Examples of left and right wing UK newspapersLeft wing- The Mirror

- The Guardian

Right wing- Daily Mail- The Times- Daily Star

- Daily express

Neutral-The Sun

- The Independent

Left wing newspaper (mainly targeted at working class) beliefs usually look to the future, aiming to

support those who cannot support themselves and believe in equality. Whereas right wing

(mainly targeted at conservatives) beliefs usually lean over to a traditional point of view and believe

in survival of the fittest, meaning they believe that we should all look after ourselves and believe

they shouldn’t have to pay for other peoples education and health service.

From my research and prior knowledge coming across newspapers, I’ve found that right wing

newspapers tend do portray teenagers in a much more negative way. Left wing newspapers

attempt to avoid representing teens in such a dreadful way however they frequently do.

In the next slide, you will see the ways in which the two represent teenagers...

Right wing: Representation of teensThe sub-heading ‘Thugs and Thieves’ written

beside the young male fit the rest of many other teenagers stereotype and representation in

society.The flames firing behind the boy whilst he’s showing no reaction but a relaxed and laid back attitude show that he’s

careless just like other teens. This brings about a very negative image amongst

British teens.He’s wearing a tracksuit with trainers and his hood up. This sort of look reflects the majority

of what young people wear in teenaged dramas (example on previous slide)

‘The Times’ another newspaper leaning towards the right wing,

refer to the young rioters as ‘Mobs’. Suggesting teens are

troublesome and violent. The word ‘Rule’ implying that

teens are threatening and want to take charge.Again, associating a teen issue

(rioting) with fire, connoting that they are dangerous and warning.My media product fits in very well with the representation of teens in

terms of costume, age group, use of language, ethnicity and location. My general knowledge and research of teenage representation has

allowed me to gain more information than before, to be then creating a successful media product by putting all of this information into use

(our final piece.)