Question 2 How does your media product represent particular social groups ?

Lesson Learnt, to which myself and my group KingsFord production team, created the opening to there are several representations of gender, age, sexuality and class. The antagonist in the film that I produced is a male, who is around the age of 26. He is a lower class man that works in a garage, throughout the film he is seen in dirty overalls which further indicate his social standing. The killer in my film is represented as a shy, un-accusing character that does not really have a place in society and is seen as some what of an out cast. There are other types of class represent within the open of my film, part of the film is a news report which contains to high class news reporters. The social standing of the reporters is shown by the clothes they are wearing and also their presence and how they speak. In the film most of the characters are around the same ages, Therefore representing them to be similar. However the characters in the film are all shown in very different lights, whether it being the powerful antagonist of the weak victims at his peril. Although there is not much separating the characters other then gender and class, they are very different.

The characters in Lesson Learnt are represented in stereotypical ways, especially stereotypical for the horror genre. The killer in the film is powerful with dark hair, pale skin and is male, which is very common in horror films. Also one of the victims in the film is a young and innocent female, who is shown in the film wearing light clothing which further connotes her purity and innocence. Below is a picture of fuchsia (a victim in the film) and Douglas the antagonist, we have chosen the clothes they are wearing in order to represent them in ways stereotypical to the horror genre. Douglas is wearing all black which connotes his darkens, whereas fuchsia is in neutral and pale colours which connotes her naivety to the killer. Above is a picture of the actor Keegan Featherstone, who plays Douglas the antagonist in lesson learnt. Keegan was chosen to be the killer for several reasons, his scruffy dark hair add to the image of what we wanted the killer to look like and represent.

The way that we have made the film, and the way that we have chosen to represent the different social groups within our film, was done in order to produce a film that attracts the target audience. The social groups presented in our film, are the type of social groups that we made the film for. Lesson Learnt was made to appeal to a target audience of teens to adults and this is represented in the ages of the characters within the film.

The film that I created lesson learnt is told through the killer, it shows how the killer commits his crimes and throughout the rest of the film it would be made clear to the audience why he is killing his victims. We chose to make the film like this as we thought it was not really stereotypical of horror films, so we went against the normal conventions in order to show the real antagonist to the audience. On the left is a picture of another of the killers victims, he is killed right at the beginning of the film, but he is still a main part of the story that the film is based on.

This is a link to the target audience profile that my group KingsFord productions created for our film Lesson Learnt . Target Audience Profile