Question 2: How does your media product represent a particular social group?

In our film we focused mainly on adults from less privileged backgrounds that consist of a lot of crime. We portrayed our characters with an Italian-American accent, as this is common convention of criminal organisations in different media pieces. An example of this would be Goodfellas (1990). For language choices we used a lexical set that fit with the Noir genre, including intertextuality from the film The Godfather (1972) by using the line ‘Sleeping with the fishes’ said by the boss of the criminal organisation [Tony Pensiero].

For location we used an everyday street, and office and Jack Waterman’s house. We used the office to try and portray the police officer as professional and to establish him as the higher up to the detective [Dominic Hudson]. For the gang hideout we used the house of the actor who played Tony Pensiero. This was effective as his house had a Noir look to it and also had a pool table that we could incorporate into our film and it helped us to match more conventions of the Film Noir genre.

We chose to represent this social group within our film as we wanted to closely follow the conventions of the Film Noir genre and therefore represented our characters and settings in a way that is commonly seen in other media products in the Film Noir genre.

Dominic Hudson is represented as a new and non-experienced detective trying to crack the biggest case he has ever been given. To show this we purposely chose older actors to play the roles that required more experienced characters (E.G Tony Pensiero and SGT Larkin). We represented Dominic quite shyly and regretful in the scene

where he walks down the street to show that he was new to the concept of murder, in contrast we portrayed him as confident in the monologue to show how the power has corrupted him throughout the course of the opening.

Matt Appleyard played the part of SGT Larkin in our film, as stated before, he was older than the actor who played Dominic Hudson, to add to the idea of him being more experienced. In contrast to his look of experience, he had an informal register with only subtle hints of formality. This represented him as a friendly character who was considering of the work force that he commanded but also a man who plans to get the job done.

In our film we enforced the stereotype of the calm mobster boss that still comes across as frightening. We used this as it was a very common convention of the Film noir genre and helped to develop the character of Tony Pensiero, although he is only seen for a very short amount of time. We also used the stereotype of mob members that ‘suck up’ to the boss and always try to get onto his good side. Again this followed conventions and developed the characters but also helped to enforce the idea that Tony Pensiero was the leader and that he was in charge. We also had Dominic Hudson portrayed as an anti-hero as this is commonly found in the Film Noir genre, rather than just having a hero. Firstly we have Johnny who instantly describes Tony’s idea as ‘a great idea’, in the hopes that he will respect from Tony and to try and make up for being late to their meeting. This idea is taken the wrong way and in fact causes Tony to get angry with Johnny over his recent comment. Johnny also wears a black suit and is very formal, almost as if he looks up to Tony and wants to be like him.

This leads on to the representation of Paulie. Paulie is a more laid-back character that doesn’t wear a suit jacket and instead only wears a shirt and tie. He is more experienced

than Paulie and almost like an older brother for Johnny. This is evident as he calmly tries to defend Johnny from Tony’s aggression by saying ‘No boss, he was just saying’ and instead turns Tony’s aggression onto him.

In our film we are trying to get the audience to understand exactly what 1950s New York was like concerning crime.