Evaluation Task Two: How does your product represent particular social groups?

As our task only had two characters, not many stereotypical social groups were represented on mass. However, within our two characters, strong stereotypes are represented using costume and mis-en-scene even though our budget did not match the scale of our film.

Firstly, our first character was the 'killer' As he was undercover, and breaking in to someone's house, we decided to follow the stereotype of wearing all black, with a black hat over his hair. We also only shot this character from the back, creating suspense and also hiding the fact that it was a seventeen year old student who was a member of our group. If we had a bigger budget, we would have kept the costume fairly similar, as all black is the standard clothing for an 'assassin.' However, we would have hired someone who was older, a bit taller (6 foot and over) and picked someone who looked rougher and tougher. The clues we give the audience that this character is in a 'shady' social group, and one that is 'up to no good' were obvious through the fact we had a POV shot of his looking at a house and also a shot of him breaking through the window. This character fit well into the lower-class, 'always wanting more' type of social group.

Our second character was the 'victim', who we have decided is an oil-baron and high class business man, was played by our media teacher. However, if we had a higher budget, this is not the type of person we would have chosen. Our character is late thirties, but is still very slick, with gelled hair and wears suits. Our teacher has a shaved head. We tried to get the idea of our character across through mis-en-scene, by having a close-up of his wedding ring, creating the stereotype of a married man, and then we used a mid-shot of a photograph of Adam (our actor) dressed in a suit, looking very much like a gang-leader. This showed the audience the overall idea of the character.

We chose to film in Adam's house, which looks middle class, modern and fairly large. This fitted the stereotype of a successful businessman as the establishing shots we took of the house created this idea in the audience's heads. We added many things around the house to add to this stereotype, such as business papers on the kitchen table, to show he was a hard-working man and fit into the middle-class social group comfortably.

Overall, I feel like we have created two specific stereotypes of a businessman and an assassin well, considering our budget. However, if we did have a bigger budget, many of our ideas would change, mainly to do with the character of the 'victim' like his hairstyle and stance. Our 'killer' would look older than he does however his costume would stay similar. I felt we achieved the social groups and stereotypes we wanted very well considering we had no budget.