Evaluation Activity 2

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

The key character I have chosen from the opening of my film is the main character Charlotte who plays the victim of a school girl walking home and getting kidnapped. When examining this character we thought about characters from other films who the character was similar to. We aimed to look at films with similar genres such as horrors and thrillers to get a more accurate match between the characters. After researching these genres we came across Taken, we then chose to compare the female victim from this film. We found this was the best match as it is a storyline about a teenager girl who gets stalked and then attacked leading to upcoming events in the film providing more action based around the character which is the same with Charlotte. They both provide suspense and tension and help female audiences relate. This is because young female audiences will feel sorry for the girls as they could possibly be more open in putting themselves in their shoes due to them being more vulnerable to being taken in real life. This would especially make the female audiences more horrified and shocked when watching. However, this would make the male audience interested and engaged in the film but with different intentions. For example, they could be attracted towards the female characters as they provide the eye candy of the film. This is known as the ‘Male Gaze Theory’ and influences male audiences to watch a movie e.g. Megan Fox starring in the transformers influences more males to watch the movie. Another similarity of the two female victims are that they have similar costumes. As you can see Charlotte wears a school uniform and the victim from Taken is wearing comfortable clothing that a teenager would wear; both of these costumes would help the audience recognise the characters as teenagers. If you look at the screengrabs you can see from the close ups of their facial expressions that they are both expressed as vulnerable which is a stereotype for teenagers. Both characters are placed in irrecognisable settings as Charlotte is placed in a forest providing a more threatening atmosphere and the female victim In Taken is placed under the bed waiting to be found and grabbed providing more suspense. The differences with this is that the female victim from Taken links more with Takens genre of a thriller as our opening is just a horror so the setting we have chosen is much more fearful and relates more to our genre, which could mean our film is most likely to face more horrific events as the thriller could contain more action. As well as the characters both being placed in irrecognseable setting another difference is that our character Charlotte is placed in more of an open space where she is open and surrounded by danger however, anything can happen such as somebody seeing her being attacked. This helps keep the audience on the edge of their seats. With the other female character she is in a more private setting but is still surrounded by danger in her own home which we would expect her to be safe in.