Evaluation Question 2 (Essay)

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

There are 7 different areas of representation, these include gender, age, ethnicity, sexuality, class and status, physical ability/disability and regional identity.

Firstly, we had 3 characters in our film opening; Agent Cross (protagonist), the antagonist and Niamh. Agent Cross's role in the film was to transport a package which was located at HQ. The antagonist was to try to intercept Agent Cross and act as a 'baddie', hence the use of light clothing on the protagonist (good guy) and dark clothing on the antagonist (bad guy). Niamh was to a-sign missions for Agent Cross, acting as an 'Em' like character from James Bond. 

We focused on our target audience, the type of characters we used was to reflect who we targeted. Using a teenage protagonist and antagonist signifies that our target audience was 16-25, typically male. This is a general convention of action film openings, as the activity portrayed in the films generally appeals to this category of people more. The protagonist represented that of a stereotypical British actor in this genre. The antagonist, is a counter-type for an English thriller. There are very few examples if any of a long dark haired antagonist. The protagonist represented that of a stereotypical British citizen.

The gender of our characters are predominantly male, with 2 out of 3 being male, and one being female. The only characters on screen in the film opening are male. This is not representative of this particular social class, which is why if we were to carry on this film in terms of the whole production, we would incorporate more women, and maybe romance to attract more of the female audience. We did have stereotypes of gender in our opening, as the girl was allocating the missions, whereas the male actor was physically doing the missions.

The age of our characters does represent the target audience. With our protagonist and antagonist being in the age range between 16-25, this reflects and represents our target audience, therefore this particular media product represents this social group. I did a previous blog post on our taggert audience which you can see here. By using characters within the range of our target audience, it makes it more relatable therefore more effective, and also representative.

The ethnicity is White British, which is stereotypical of that of a British thriller due to it having a direct influence over how it performs at the box office. White southern and male characters are those who act in big budget films. We followed this general convention of using 'White British'. However this is not multicultural. This is mainly because we didn't have access to a further cast to chose from, nor did we have the time. If we were to have access to a bigger cast we would incorporate a further range of ethnicities and backgrounds to make it more multicultural and representative. In our production we did not incorporate any non-caucasian characters, so we may not appeal to a multi-ethnic audience, but as I said this was down to not having access to a further cast.

Sexuality is not expressed in our film opening as no romance occurs. If we were to carry out the rest of the production, we would incorporate romance to represent this more. Both of our characters were straight. This reflects the stereotypical action thriller genre therefore representative of this social class. Finding a protagonist and antagonist happy to express their homosexuality in our film opening would also be difficult and its easier to follow the general convention which has proven effective.

In relation to class and status. We used British White, southern accents, to represent a middle class, stereotypical English citizen. In our production, we filmed in a middle class area. In the film opening it states where the location of the chase takes place, Ilkley. This is a West Yorkshire Middle-upper class area, gaining representing class and status. The clothing of our protagonist and antagonist is tracksuit, this isn't a representation of middle class, but more so lower class. We chose Niamh in particular to do play the 'Em' like character as she has a southern accent, this was also the case with the protagonist. 

Physical ability and disability is represented in our film opening as it is contains a high speed action chase and a training scene, proving the physical ability of our characters. This represents this particular social group well. In terms of the disability, there is no representation of this, so if we were to fulfil the production of the whole film we would look to incorporate perhaps a disabled character, something in relation to a wheel chair, as proven effective by X-Men.

Regional identity is represented in our film opening is represented through the use of titles, as shown in the pictures below. We use Leeds and Ilkley for our locations. Ilkley is a posh, middle class area. Leeds is a large region in Yorkshire. By locating our film opening in these areas, we relate to higher proportion of our audience who may be from these areas, making the film opening more effective and appealing.

Stereotypical white British fair haired.

Daniel Craig, James Bond... Stereotype.

Example of Regional Identity

Example of Regional Identity