Evaluation Question 2 - Representation

How Does Your Media Product Represent Particular Social Groups?

One of our film locations

Our media product firstly is aimed at a target and secondary audience that will still be at school or college. This is important as for our film opening we have set it in a school to provide some relatability which in turn brings out stereotypes and outcast that are portrayed in a school environment. In a school stereotypically there are the cheerleaders, jocks, geeks and nerds and the misplaced.

We thought in our media product it would be important to address and show people these different social classes but also social groups. 

Our protagonist

We wanted to portray our character as the outcast so we cast her to have ginger hair as we thought this is one of the reasons sometimes that people consider them outsiders. However we enhanced her character to be not stereotypically an outsider except the fact that she wears clothes that don't match.

Film poster

We cast our male character to be popular but not in the stereotypical sense. We wanted a twist with some a-normative representation as we wanted our character to be different.

We cast him to wear a top hat and a waist coat with a shirt and trousers with smart shoes to signify his geek but we wanted him to be a character that people look up to, not a character people dismiss examples of this can be found in Pretty in Pink (1986)

Film poster

However we chose our male character to go out with the cheerleader type which does not reflect his and her character as we wanted a twist. As it would normally be represented that he would go out with our protagonist. We wanted to create a film with a twist as this is what indie companies do as they do not follow the structured conventions like the big 6 who use a formula to produce the same films over and over. Companies that do not follow this structure are warp who create social realist films with a twist this being the rom com in Submarine (Ayaode, 2010) for example

We cast the cheerleader character to be tall with long blonde hair giving off the fact she is popular by wearing a dress and wearing make up. this enabled us to then show a range of binary opposites (Levi-Strauss' concept) between the characters as we also incorporated social class between the 2 female characters the outcast being of a middle class background having more wealth and will show this by where we film as we cannot show this through her clothes as we have cast the protagonist to wear clothes that are not fashionable therefore showing her outcast and outsider look and do not signify her wealth. Whereas the cheerleader is presented to be from an upper working class background.

The binary opposites therefore we have chosen to include are:

• rich and poor
• man and woman
• popular and unpopular 

My ident showing I'm an indie production company

We also have to be aware of the fact that we don't have a lot of funds as we are a micro production company which in hand has had an impact on the way our footage has turned out. 

If we were to repeat the process we would try pick a different location to film the protagonist in her house as we didn't feel this worked looking back with retrospect we wanted to portray her as more from a working class background rather than from a more middle class background which seems to be conveyed in the film. 

However we didn't have a lot of time and therefore what we had is what we utilised which hasn't cost us greatly but has cost us in the sense that we haven't (we think) portrayed her as best we could. Genre and character types were something that we considered greatly in order to get someone that we thought would work and also look good. 

However it was something that we had to deal with as iterated before we are a micro production company and therefore we were lucky to get the characters that we did. Although not a conventional Rom-Com we feel that the indie twist was something that we wanted and we were after. 

One of the big 6 who can afford to make large productions

If we had had all the money and time in the world a stereotypical Rom-Com would have been nice to do. One of the reasons we chose to do our rom-com in the way we did was due to lack of cast and funds however it would have been nice to have been able to accentuate the outsider with glasses and bracers with freckles, but we think these are just minor adjustments. 

It would have also been nice to have the 'bitch' character as someone who was possibly taller, with longer hair and possibly wearing more make up however not everything can be achieved due to our production size. 

Duckie Style Character

For our narrative we took ideas from Pretty In Pink (1986) which we thought worked well as it didn't convey a stereotypical Rom-Com which we thought was important as we wanted to portray something that was different and contrasting but kept to the same format in some ways, we thought pretty in pink and Submarine (2010) portrayed this well and therefore we thought it could be something that we could take inspiration of because of these differences therefore showing off our indie theme and our creative flare. 

Pretty in pink

Therefore we took inspiration by using and trying to recreate the characters from pretty in pink as we thought this worked well and was a-typical. One of the characters that we took inspiration from was Duckie who was a geek who wore sunglasses, waistcoat, smart trousers and shoes, shirt and a top hat. We portrayed our version in the same way but changed the sunglasses to reading glasses to reinforce the geek character.

Pretty in pink

We also did the same for the binary character. Who wore clothes that were floral print and were contrasted in many ways which made it look like nothing matched. 

Pretty in pink

However because the film was made in the 80's we thought it would be better if the characters outfit was brought more up-to-date.

Protagonist

Therefore we chose for her to wear bright red jeans, a multicoloured checked shirt, black trainers and a long toffee cardigan over the top. We also cast her to have ginger hair which we thought really added to the anchorage of her character. However in retrospect, to really anchor lauren's (our actress) character a change of location would be necessary to signify a poorer background. Which again challenges her outcast state and represents her in a social group that would be appropriate for this. 

Theory of Uses and Gratifications:

Film Poster

In stereotypical Rom-Coms they use a variety of theories and use gratifications. They do this in order to attract an audience that will be interested in this, this is due to the fact that Rom-Coms stereotypically contain personal identity which is some way relatable in their own life but also add aspirations such as glamourous figures, which we haven't which makes ours more relatable than aspirational. Rom-Coms that follow these theories are usually referred to as the teenage/adult fairytale and this is what attracts them to the audience. An example of a film that is stereotypical to this rule would be Wild Child (2008) a binary to this would be Submarine (2010)