Eval Q2. Representations.

How does your media product represent 

particular social groups?

Scream's Scream Queen

Scream Queen (Stereotype):

BN Scream Queen

We chose to use the common conventions and have a stereotype with our scream queen by having her being blonde, an attractive figure and sexually active, and we were also influenced by the scream queen, Casey, in Scream (1996, Wes Craven ) as they're both blonde, sexually active and were vulnerable to the killer. Also they're of the teen age which relates to our target audience as the social group we're trying to address is the teenage social groups.



Final Girl (Stereotype):

Laurie Strode

BN's Final Girl

Also we stayed with the stereotype convention for the final girl character in our film, by having her brunette, academic, and virginal, and we took influence from the final girl character, Laurie Strode, in John Carpenter's Halloween (1978) because she is brunette and showed how they were academic with the books she carried whiles having no boyfriend, whereas her friends and boyfriends.

Killer (Stereotype):

BN's Killer

Jason Voorhees

The killers in slasher genre films commonly have a masked identity and have a psychological problem which leads to their motives of killing. So with our killer we've made it so that his mask covers his identity throughout the opening, and with the pictures on his wall we've used the mise-en-scene here to cannote his obsession and his psychological problems. We looked at the killer in Friday The 13th (1980,Sean S. Cunningham)  for influence, because the killer, Jason Voorhees, has a masked identity and has a psychological problem because as a kid he drowned at the lake where he kills his victims.

Jock (Stereotype):

Steve from Scream

 Then for our Jock character we also kept we the stereotype by having him being sporty, masculine, and dominate over his girlfriend, and we see these by him wearing a sporty hoody, and when he's leading the girl into the house. We looked at the Jock in Scream (1996, Wes Craven )  because Steve was a football player and had a girlfriend which was the scream queen , Casey.

Gender:

In the opening we have binary opposites within the gender representation as we have the male jock and the two female characters , final girl and scream queen, and we've used both genders here so that our audience isn't just limited with the male gaze that Laura Mulvey argues most media content has, where it's based round the Male's perspective for example having female characters wearing revealing clothing for it to be more appealing to the male audience. Instead we show focus on both the male and female character so we provide the female and male gaze theory.

Regional Identity:

BN's Location

In our film all the characters have a Yorkshire accent rather than the Southern accent which is recognisable more worldwide to be the stereotypical British accent, so here we're risking it by not appealing to a wider audience instead it more of a Yorkshire regional audience as they'd understand it more , as well as with the setting , however with the setting it's not necessarily recognisable to be Northern as we've used a location which could be seen as normal else where such as the south therefore here we're appealing to a wider audience. But also we looked at films such as Donkey Punch  (2008, Oliver Blackburn) , because this was a relatively low budget film at $700k that didn't have 'A list stars' that would be recognisable to audiences, instead they had actors from Leeds with a Yorkshire accent, so here it would be seen as a risk but they did considerably well at the box office making $700k.

Sexuality:

We didn't want to assume that our audiences were all heterosexual but instead we realised that it's the normative in our culture today for the common sexuality to be heterosexual, so by having our scream queen and jock in a relationship we're recognising this heterosexual appeal for our audience to relate to. But also it's common in slasher films that the killer is homosexual, however we didn't reveal any signifiers towards our killer's sexuality so we could of possibly gone back and altered this if we were to do this again.

Age:

The final girl, scream queen and jock are all aged from 17-18 and this is anchored by the clothes that they're wearing, for example with the jock he was wearing jeans and a sporty hoody, and with the scream queen she was wearing skinny jeans. Also the sexual activity that is taken part with the scream queen and the jock is recognisable from a wider audience as what the teen aged social groups do, with them stereotypical being seen as 'careless' and 'free'. But also we've chosen to use actors of this age so that our target audience can relate to the characters more, rather than having the actors of an older age where our target audience won't be able to relate. Then with our killer we wanted to have him recognised to be older than the teenagers and for our audiences to see that he was actually middle aged man, and we tried to signify this by having his costume with old black boots instead of what the teen boy is wearing (trainers).

The final girl, scream queen and jock are all aged from 17-18 we've chosen to use actors of this age so that our target audience can relate to the characters more, rather than having the actors of an older age where our target audience won't be able to relate. Then with our killer we wanted to have him recognised to be older than the teenagers and for our audiences to see that he was actually middle aged man so then this would contribute to appealing to our secondary audiences which is from 24-34.