JW - Evaluation Question Two

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Our media project portrays several stereotypes that are very common in horror movies, particularly in the sub-genre of 'slasher'. Firstly, we have used a very stereotypical 'scream queen' as the main character in our opening. She is a busty, blonde and sexually active girl who meets her fate at the end of our opening. We chose 'Megan Claydon' for this role, as we thought she fits that criteria. To the right is a picture of a stereotypical scream queen that appears in many slasher movies, we have hoped to emulate this is our production.

To the left, is an image of our scream queen (Megan Claydon), and to the right, an image of our ideal scream queen, as you can see they have very similar features, such as blondeness, attractiveness and several others.

The other minor role in our production was that of 'Carl', or 'Amelia's boyfriend', we picked 'James Crowther'. We did this because he can represent the 'jock' stereotype that is often portrayed in slasher movies, usually (as we have done) as a scream queen's boyfriend, who is very naive to fact of the killers presence, perhaps even oblivious to it. Below, is a picture of a jock of which yet again, we have tried to emulate with our 'Carl' character, although since he leaves very early on in our production, little can be known about him apart from that he has sexual encounters with our 

scream queen, Amelia.

To the left, is an image of our jock character (James Crowther). As you can see, he fits the desired criteria to portray a stereotype of a jock, this being muscly, tall, sporty and outgoing. To the right, is an image of a muscly character with a shotgun, however, from the image we cannot connote that he is the sporting type.

Gender does have its place in our production, due to the fact that it was a slasher movie and slasher movies genuinely have a strong  reliance on certain gender stereotypes. Such as the scream queen, final girl etc. Due to us only creating the opening two minutes of a production, we didn't have a chance to develop a final girl, although in Plot Overview post, you can see that given the chance to make an entire production, we would establish a final girl.
Slasher movies genuinely focus on a teen to young adult age range (ie. 15-24), our cast members are both ages of 17. Our target audience is therefore, ages 15-24 (predominantly male), see target audience post. Age is also used in our representation of characters, since both of our characters are teens, our audience would be able to relate to the production more, and this would also intensify the 'fear' of it because it would be easier to envision yourself in the situation if someone similar to you was in it.
The ethnicity in our production is mainly white dominant. Although you only see two characters (both white British), if the rest of the film were to develop, perhaps a more culturally diverse cast would be introduced, this is party reflected by England, which in this present day is becoming a lot more of a culturally diverse country; currently the British population consists of 90% white, this could be reflected in our full-length production.
Sexuality is quite a strong bit of representation for us, both of our cast members are heterosexual. We also feel in our plot overview summary, all of our characters would remain heterosexual throughout our production, there would be no homosexual representation. This would be due to several reasons, firstly, that homosexuals very rarely appear in slasher movies, and we wish to keep to this convention, and secondly it would be very hard to ask of our heterosexual cast (who are not professional actors respectively) to perform homosexual antics, this would be very demanding.
Class and status isn't really given a chance to be represented in our production, since you only see one location. However, we feel that our location would probably fall under the socio-economic class of upper-working class. It is quite a rich looking house, given the rooms inside that are shown, however little is known about the class of the characters, their clothing is rather average and no props are used to suggest a special socio-economic class.
Both of our characters seem to be in a rather normal physical state, they are no portraying any kind of mental or physical disability. During casting, we were not looking for anyone who had a disability, for several reasons, firstly, they are very rarely shown in slasher movies (especially in the opening sequence) however, in some cases such as The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, one character does have a disability as it shows him/her as being vulnerable to the killer, if our film were to develop into a full picture, we may have used a disabled characte, such as Franklin Hardesty, above is an image of him from 'The Texas Chain Saw Massacre'. And secondly, it would be rather difficult to find actors who are willing to 'showcase' their 'disabilities' or pretending to be disabled in an a production that would go public due to embarrassment etc.
Due to our filming being filmed in Yorkshire, you would expect it to bare some representation to this location, or have some regional identity being portrayed by the characters, location or props etc. However, I feel that our production has very little evidence to show it's from Yorkshire, our characters do not present a particularly strong Yorkshire accent, and there are no clear clues from props or locations as to where to the film is being set, as of the opening two minutes of our production.