How does your media product represent

particular social groups?By Lewis Lloyd

What is a social group? A social group is a group of people

who can be grouped together because they are aware they have something in common. Not only are they grouped together but they interact together.

Social groups that are in our film

There are four main social groups that have been portrayed through our film. These are villains, heroes, detectives and the police force and victims. Using these four social groups, we can pinpoint what we want to get across to our audience. This includes things like stereotypes, body posture, facial expressions and the general elements of mise en scene. Once these things were chosen and put into action, we could begin to create similarities and differences between characters from different films. These similarities and differences have each been put onto a slide each, displaying what we based our characters off. The following slides tell you about social groups in our media project.

VillainsOur inspiration for our villain was to have someone who is willing to do anything to get what they want. We took our main inspiration from John Doe from the thriller film “Se7en”. As we needed his identity to be concealed, we looked at the opening to the film where we see John Doe crafting a notebook. Although we know who he is by the end of the film, we have no idea who he is at the start. Use of names also help us draw similarities. Our Villain and Doe’s names are never told. This is what we wanted from our villain, someone who's identity is concealed until the end of the film. The idea of committing violent acts also drew our attention. This was mainly conveyed through how I acted while I played the part. I had to ensure that my body language showed that I was the biggest thing on the screen and that I overthrew anyone that got in my way. The scene where I punch Dan across the face and onto the stairs conveys this very well as it shows the villain physically overthrowing the hero of the story. This is the only thing that is different about our villain and John Doe. We never see Doe physically commit any violent acts, we are only lead to believe that he has. In our film, it is shown clearly that our villain commits crimes. The intensity of the crimes also mirrors because both our villain and Doe commit murder. Although one is done in a more twisted way, the general theme stays the same. In terms of costume, Mise en scene played a big part. We needed to give our villain clothes that would purposefully hide his identity. Doe is also given the same treatment. He is always given basic clothes like a white shirt or a orange jumpsuit.

HeroesWe drew many similarities between our hero and Gary Oldman’s portrayal of Commissioner Gordon from “The Dark Knight”. The first thing that can immediately be talked about is the costume. Smart suits are given to both and shown to look quite respectable. Their postures also mirror each other as they stand with their shoulders back and their chests out. When acting, we told Dan to make sure that he maintained the same pose, or near enough, through out to continue these similarities. We can then move onto the actions that they perform that show these similarities. One of the main things are that they are both willing to do anything for their families in order to protect them. Commissioner Gordon fakes his own death in order to protect his family from The Joker. Our hero takes on and armed gunman in order to attempt to save his daughter. These acts could have both ended their lives yet they carried them out in order to protect the ones they love. Putting their own needs in front of their jobs is a common trait between them also. Gordon took a bullet for the mayor, even though he was no instructed to, and our hero chose to protect a criminal even though is could have put his job on the line. There are then the obvious similarities such as them both working for the police force and both having families that they care about. They both also instinctively take the role of protector in both of the films. Again, Gordon protects the mayor from the gunshot and our heroprotects the criminal girl who the police force are trying to capture. These traits add more to the effect that these are the heroes of the story because they put other peoples needs before their own.

Detectives and the police forceWhen we began to create the “Chief of Police” character, we struggled to find someone who was like ours. However, when we looked through other mainstream media, like TV, we found the perfect comparison. Quentin Lance is the chief of police in The CW’s “Arrow”. His characters narrative involves him getting into a lot of stress over his family life and his work. This is shown through the series by the use of arguments and his general body language. Although we didn’t have time to expand our chief of polices’ personal storyline, we tried our hardest to portray his stress through his mise en scene. Using the costume, we dressed him sloppy, like he had been standing over the board for hours trying to get the right answer. We can compare this to the amount of hours the Lance has to put into his job in order to try to capture “The Arrow” which puts him under immense stress. A second similarity that can be pulled together is the giving of information. Lance often gives information to “The Arrow” in order to help him take down some of Starling City’s most wanted. Likewise, our chief of police gives the information to Walter in order for him to attempt to capture Lisa. They both also use police files to back up the points. In regards to posture and facial expression, we never really see our chief of polices’ faces long enough for use to draw comparisons but we do see hisposture enough. Both of the chief of police stand slouched and bent over. Whenfilming, I had to make sure to look stressed and as if I needed to get the informationout as quick as possible.

VictimsVictims are normally people who are weak and defenceless and have something bad happen to them, one way or another. The victim in our film was a small child and it is hard to find films where a child is murdered in cold blood. However, we did find one similarity in the film “Face/Off”. During the opening sequence, the small child is killed and his father left grieving. This mirrors the sequence that happens in our film. The victim in both is a small child who has done nothing wrong, yet still has their lives wrongfully taken. Mise en scene similarities work really well together in comparison. Firstly, the costumes that both children have been dressed in both portray the innocence that they clearly have. Our victim has been dressed in generic girl pyjamas and the boy in “Face/Off” is dressed in small child's clothes that don’t really show anything special. The second similarity is that they both get shot near the end of the flashback. Both are killed and they have both done nothing wrong. The way that the child acts also bears resemblance to how we got Thea to act. Posture and body language were both portrays as if nothing had gone wrong and as if nothing was going to go wrong. This way, the impact of both of the shootings was harder on the audience than if they would have acted as if they had done something wrong. Finally, the children don’t get a chance to defend themselves.our films shows the child getting grabbed then killed straight away and, in “Face/Off”,The child is shot from nowhere because of the assassinationattempt.