How does your media product represent

particular social groups?

The BrideWe have chosen to use typical stereotypes to represent our characters; this is because we are only filming 2 minutes so people will be able to understand the characters quicker if it’s a stereotype. Our main character is a representation of a teenage girl in the Victorian times, but we also have to represent her after she has committed suicide and came back from the dead. To set the time we have chosen an old fashioned wedding dress, her age is young suggesting a more old fashioned look as it was normal for teenagers to be married whereas its law that the teenager must be 18 now so this is also a sign of the times. Although there is no speech involved in the first scene, which means we cannot show more of the time its set, we have located it using old wooden steps which makes things seem a lot less modern. We have also chosen to style her hair by researching hair styles people would have worn in those days, and picked one where half the hair is pinned back, this makes Anna seem more mature for her age, which was a hidden sign that she is young but getting married and is in love. I think our representation of a teenage girl is Victorian times is quite natural and true, even though we cannot be certain of how they acted we have the knowledge to understand how people lived back then, we have chose to place her in a higher class, which can be seen by her posture as she walks with a straight back, in a dress that would of been considered ‘posh’ and her makeup and hair suggests wealth as we see she is hygienic, made up and pretty.

Our girl is first portrayed as a weak character, as males were seen as being the most important back then, we see that she is weak because she is left crying after her Fiancé ditches her at the wedding. She hangs herself, this is showing her emotions as she is broken hearted; however it also gives the look of a strong mind, because even though it’s overruled by emotion she is able to go through and end her life which many people couldn’t actually do. Finally, she is represented as a strong and powerful character once she is a corpse, this is because she starts to kill people which shows she is in control and causes fear amongst other people, this is due to her feeling like see needs to show that she isn’t a weak little girl, and she wants people to feel pain like she did.

How did we portray

our character

How we represented the dead bride

Because a dead person coming back to kill people isn’t a natural, true life scenario, it’s hard to make a representation, however with knowledge from other horror films and images from Google, we are able to base her on what we’ve seen before. For example, her makeup is done to make her look like she’s been buried for hundreds of years, by the grey, dead features. Her hair is no longer neat; instead it’s a wild mess. And she moves with a painful expression, as she doesn’t feel remorse because of the resentment for love that she has and she is dressed in the wedding dress however it’s dirty, ripped and has some blood down it. We have made a bruise around her neck which reminds the audience of her hanging herself, and have decided to have her strangle others, so the bruise around the neck is the consequence of love.

Teenage couple representation

The other two characters in our opening sequence is a boy and a girl who are in a relationship, this is where speech is included so we are able to see more about the characters. Our representation of a boy is stereotypical for a relationship; he is the ‘knight in shining armour’ as he tries to save her life, after walking her partly home. He is wearing casual clothes, jeans, a t-shirt and a jumper which is typical teenage guy clothes. He speaks to his girlfriend kindly, and he wants to protect her.

The teenage girl is also a stereotype, she doesn’t want her boyfriend to leave her but tells him that she’s fine, so she puts in her iPod to stop herself feeling alone. When she screams she shouts for her boyfriend which shows she wants him to help her as he is the ‘saviour’ however he dies too. The girl has casual clothes on, she is wearing a white T-shirt, which is also used to show the blood more.

In most horror films the guy would be the murderer and almost every time, so we have changed the conventions of horror as the murderer is a girl, this surprises the audience as they don’t expect it.

Camera shots/ anglesWe started our film using a low angle shot of our character walking down the stairs this shows her power as she is high up, It shows the importance of that moment for her as she walks down to go to her wedding.

When she is crying the shot is just a medium shot, that gets closer and closer, this helps to build the tension as the audience are unaware of what has just happened.

We chose different camera angles for her walking through the woods, we have low shots, high shots and shots from behind, this was good as the different camera angles makes it seem confusing, and hazy which is kind of what the bride is feeling as she’s walking through.

We used a low shot of her hanging herself so we can only see her feet, this makes tension build as we are unable to the emotions in her face, so it lowers empathy for her.