Evaluation - Question 2

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

For our film opening my group and I decided to use a few of the AS Drama students to act in our product to represent the kind of social group we was going for and also to portray exactly the kind of image we were going for and show how the characters really are in our product.

We used Shanice Kurup as the main character’s girlfriend and be the ‘damsel in distress’ because she fits that stereotype. She is very small and petite and which fits the typical stereotype of women who are usually the ones that are in need of some sort of help from the villain. The type of colours used and clothes worn by her shows that in the film opening she is very innocent and oblivious to her boyfriend’s wrong doings with the thugs. Also her facial expressions and body language shows the audience how much she trusts her partner by the way she is holding onto him. By doing these particular detailed things at the beginning, our group wanted to show that Shanice was the ‘damsel in distress’.

Another character in our film opening that we have matched the ideology and Propp’s character types in his theory is the villain, and the fact that we used a male to be this villain. This is because we thought about how most villains are seen and whether they are male or female. We decided not to countertype the villain but match the stereotype it. By stereotyping our group thought about the various things such as clothing, colour, different shot types and angles. By doing this our audience would immediately be able to tell that that particular character is the villain. The type of clothing he wore were very dark simple clothing. This is to represent and reflect on the villains emotions and to also show the type of male he was, which we portrayed him as this daredevil and no-remorse about the things he will do kind of male. Additionally this was clearly shown when he kidnapped the girl as a ransom.

To further elaborate Propp’s theory which majorly relates and links in with our film opening. Propp’s theory is a theory where he came to the conclusion where he believed there are 31 functions and 8 character types in every story. In our media product we had 3 of the 8 character types which were – the hero, the princess (damsel in distress) and the villain. We went by Propp’s theory and used these character types so that our film has a good structure. Also so that the audience will be able to follow through and possibly enable them to have some kind of understanding of it.