Question 2 Evaluation

how does your media product represent particular social groups?

"The Hanging" is the title of our opening to a horror film. Its starts off with the 3 girls walking home from school, one of the characters being a jock and the other 2 just casual American school girls. They walk down the alleyway that leads into the dark woods which is joint onto the school. The 2 casual girls leave the jock to walk into the woods by her. After these girls are separated from the jock we cut into the woods where we see the jock character by her in the opening woods. Creating the tension and the atmosphere from the setting and from the soundtrack that has been played underneath the whole opening scene. When the jock is walking through the woods we see two different sides of this characters personality. One being the stereotypical hard kind of American jock, and the other being a vulnerable side who is paranoid of someone watching her in the woods. We see this through the use of characterization of this character. As the walk goes on through the woods we see camera angles showing points of view from the killers eyes, we see iconography that has been used suggesting as to what his weapon is and how we as an audience can identify it. We see the killer stalking the jock character and the jock character becoming a lot more worried and paranoid and hiding, suddenly there's a scream and the attention goes back to the 2 girls walking home showing them as either one of the final girls. The camera goes back to the woods slowly panning up the jocks body to show danger-ling feet then blood dripping. 

Our media product "The Hanging" represents different social groups in certain ways. One way we have done this by is by using the idea of stereotypes in horror films. A massive influence towards are characters and characterization was the horror film "Scream" by "Wes Craven" having watching the film a couple of times I could easily pick out different stereotypes for each character and how their costumes and characterization presents there characteristics. These characters in the film "Scream" have been stereotyped deliberately for the audience’s purpose. 

For starters, in the film "Scream" they play a lot along the lines of the dialogue and the costumes they're wearing to show what kind of character they are playing. This influenced our film to do the same thing. For instance one of our characters played by Ericka Yabut was given the stereotype of the jock. Usually when you see a jock you automatically think American football, someone well-built usually played by guys. However we didn't want to portray the jock character as a tough character which it could have been, there for we challenged this stereotype of social groups by using a girl to play the jock. The reason for this is because usually jocks are played by boys but in our film we purposely used a girl because a killer would have more a chance at killing the jock and also girls are viewed as vulnerable and fragile compared to boys.  The jock as a girl creates this image of innocence however because of the costumes she is wearing it brings out a more harder strong look on her, but this is then twisted again as we see through the characterization of the character once she is in the woods. 

First opening scene Jessie in "A Nightmare on Elm Street

Jessie Becoming a little bit paranoid about the deaths.

Jessie's final scene - death scene. 

However I feel that our jock stereotype character goes along well with one of the characters from the new version of “A Nightmare on Elm Street” which is the boy at the start of the opening called “Jessie”. He starts off as a hard jock type character that boss’s his friends about. Again his style of costume brings this out by what he’s wearing, also the looks and characterization gives off an unwelcoming vibe too. However in comparison to the way we produced the stereotype of the jock we portrayed her as a nice welcoming friendly character who likes to have banter between her friends. Which gives off this image of innocence yet again and it shows that we played against the stereotype. The reason that this certain character “Jessie” From “A Nightmare on Elm Street” relates to our character is because in some way they go off track. They build these big images around each other then suddenly they play against it and become paranoid and start to over think every situation which is what our jock does in our opening to a horror film. The idea of becoming to paranoid will lead to a death.

The video relates to our short opening due to the fact of how you see the change from the characters mood. This is something we used well with our jock character. This character in the "A Nightmare on Elm Street" influenced our character "Ericka the Jock" because of the way he is paranoid and then suddenly overcomes that and then becomes paranoid again. This happened a lot in our opening.

(below is a link to Jessie's Death)

We used stereotypes with all of our characters in the best way we could someone them being a lot clearer to see than others.

What stereotypes have we used,

• 3 girls - The reason for this is because girls are shown as a vulnerable weak character compared to bigger built men. Mostly in horror films it tends to be the girls that men go after to kill at the start. - Halloween, 
• Chloe - Represented as the final girl, "watch out for the boogie man" - only line sums up her character, arrogant, sarcastic... However played against these horror film stereotypes and becomes the final girl challenged the stereotype 
• Erica - Represented as the mysterious one... Tricks the audience into thinking she might be the final girl but really it's not. Challenged the stereotype
• Ericka - Played the victim. Stereotyped as a jock. She's the girl jock we did this purposely done to show the eye candy for then men; she's judged by the way she dresses in basketball wears a baseball uniform. That implies she is some kind of cheerleader or represented as sports characters. She changes her ways when in the woods and becomes this paranoid, scared jock (usually doesn't happen, usually a jock is pointed out to be cool and stay strong and not be scared of anything)
•  Influence of the characters stereotypes were from the horror films scream, how they were represented was through their use of dialogue and their costumes - influence of this was "Halloween" and "A Nightmare on Elm Street."

For the other 2 girls in the opening scene Erica and Chloe they had a different outlook on the social groups. Our influences for these 2 girls were just random character stereotypes from other horror movies such as “Halloween”. We portrayed these 2 different characters 1 being arrogant and sarcastic the other being the mysterious one. Usually the mysterious one leads to being the final girl and the sarcastic/arrogant one usually ends up dying somewhere along the story line  We didn't like this idea as a group and decided to trick the audience into thinking that. However we knew that we wanted to twist it around so that the arrogant character becomes the final girl. The arrogant character was played by me. This character was influenced as the stereotype of Laurie from the movie “Halloween” arrogant, quirky and bright. Our props and costumes were also influenced by this character such as carrying the folders and books to show that there is some sign of education. Laurie’s costume in this one scene is jeans, purple top and glasses. Wearing glasses as a character shows that your smart, now in some cases it could show that Laurie knows how to deal with the killer and will get away from him. We didn't want to use glasses for any of our characters because we felt like it would give the twist away to the audience about these 2 characters.  Also from this particular scene we liked the idea of involving the script by saying “Boogie Man” to show the arrogant cocky side to the character. 

- Below is a link to a clip of the scene with Laurie and her friends walking home from school. This scene influenced  a lot towards our horror opening, it shows the different styles of costumes used for each character and there personality also when listing to the dialogue carefully it shows what kind of character these are playing which is something we also took into consideration when working on the script.

Halloween - Michael Watches Girls Walk Home

The 3 girls in our short opening are around the age of 16/17. The reason for this is because if the killer sees the girls as younger people it shows the girls as vulnerable and fragile. In most horror films the age of the group of teenagers are around the age of 16-18. The reason we decided to go with 3 school girls is because it creates the feeling of innocence for each of these characters. Which makes the death of the school girls a lot more tragic and realistic/haunting to watch because most deaths now days are at the same age. The Killer we wanted older because it gives that horrible feeling of being disgusted when you watch the opening. This is the reaction we wanted. 

Halloween 2007 Movie

Our own opening (comparing the similarities) 

So how does our media product represent particular social groups?

Well, we stereotyped all of the characters in the opening. One more than the others. Also we played against some of them by twisting them into something the audience think they might have been but in reality their not. We chose certain age ranges which were related to the school aspects, and created different images/characterization for each personality of the character.