I am Yolanda Wallbanks, candidate number 1232, and this is my AS Media Level blog.
These 105 blogs have documented my progress through the research, pre-production and production of the two minute film opening, 'Hide & Seek', that me and my group have created.
I worked in a group with Lauren Ramsden, Winn Kan and Kirsty Bryan.
I have worked extremely hard both individually and as a group on these blog posts and I really hope you enjoy them.
In creating our final media product we looked at how we would
and have represented different social groups. There is a large variety of
social groups that the group focused our characters on, and I believe that we
have effectively presented particular aspects of these groups.
In our two minute film opening we had quite a focus on age.
The two main protagonists are depicted as teenagers, when we were in the
process of creating the idea of our film we knew that we wanted to have our
protagonists are teenagers not only to relate it to our primary target
audience, but to create an idea that they are both vulnerable but independent
and able to make decisions at the same time. I believe that in the film we have
both challenged and conformed to the stereotypes of the ‘typical’ teenager.
Teenagers are thought to be loud, obnoxious, rebellious, out of control and
always up to no good. In the character of Charlie we have challenged these
stereotypes as we have presented her a rather nice quiet girl who is worried
about breaking the law and getting into trouble but is being pressured by her
friend to. However the character of Tyler was presented as opposite to this and
fits with the negative stereotypes that come with adolescence. She is
demanding, rebellious and up to no good as she is coercing her timid friend to
break into a abandoned barn and break the law. The character of Charlie creates
a link to the idea of the negative dominant representation of young people
being shows as disrespectful and exhibiting ‘yobbish’/anti-social behaviour,
however the personality of Tyler goes against this idea.
Another point to make is that the way we effectively
portrayed two opposites of teenagers, this helps prevent the idea of moral
panics (Stanley Cohen 1972) surrounding teenagers and put them in a generally
more balanced light. In addition the contrast between the two teen characters
creates a slight feel of unrest in the audience adding to the overall enigmatic
and uncertain feel of the opening, similarly the antagonist character creates
an enigmatic quality centred around age as he causes the audience to question
how old he is compared to Charlie and Tyler.
In our media product we have a mixture of both men and women
presented, we did this not only because our target audience are made up of both
males and females, but because we wanted to have a equal representation of both
genders.
We had decided very early on that our antagonist was going to
be a male. The way we presented the antagonist is rather stereotypical as males
are usually the antagonists in thrillers, we did this because we wanted to have
the contrast between the male antagonist and the female protagonists to make
him seem all the menacing and scary.
We gave Tyler and Charlie gender neutral names because we
didn't decide on their gender until we cast the two actors (Yoli and Tyler). As
a group we made a conscious decision to both challenge the stereotypes that the
film industry place on women however not straying too far from what our
audience would see as the norm. We did this by creating two extremely complex
and intriguing characters that made the whole opening sequence realistic and
interesting.
We presented the character of Tyler as small but feisty, she
is very dominant and is happy to do whatever she wants with no regards to what
happens to those around her, this is not normal for female characters in a
conventional thriller film as they are usually portrayed as feeble and weak
minded. The reason we decided to make the flash forward at the beginning of the
sequence show Tyler as panicked and hysterical was to not only show that women
can be both leaders and victims but also to create a sense of unrest in the
idea that the character who the audience would believe to be the final girl of
the film has actually been captured and made to face unimaginable torture. The
contrast of the two completely different emotions of confidence and terror
creates trepidation in the audience throughout as they know that something bad
will happen however they do not know when.
We decided to create a more timid and uneasy personality for
the character of Charlie. As a group we decided that the contrast between
Tyler's dominant, fearless attitude and Charlie's apprehensive persona would
create a feeling of foreboding and distrust in the audience as they would not
know who they are supposed to side with or believe. We have depicted women as
both strong and independent but also as victims and feeble, however we made a decision
to make sure that they are not just passive objects of male desires, as
described in Mulveys ‘Male Gaze’ theory, or as women who are solely there for
objectivities as John Berger observed in all forms of media.
A small point to make is that we made a conscious decision to
leave out certain aspects of social groups. For example we made a decision to
not indicate what sexuality our characters are so that we take away the idea
that women are just sexual objects.
I believe that as a group we effectively took on the idea of
gender in the film industry and made sure that we gave a balanced and
appropriate view. Making our final product all the more powerful and enigmatic.
I generally feel that as a group we have effectively found a
balance between challenging the unnecessary stereotypes that the film industry put on specific social group but at the same time we kept certain stereotypes
that are important when it came to making specific aspects clear to the
audience.
