How does our media product

represent different social groups?

Our thriller opening contains three main actors; this was partly due to budget and our time scale. However, we believed as a group that the correct amount of actors were used for the scene. The entire cast were male, with two antagonists acting as the supposed ‘hit men’ and one protagonist who has clearly been tortured prior to the scene and therefore appears weak and inferior. Furthermore, the audience can clearly see that the hit men are dominant in the scene due to their use of weapons. The two men act clearly thuggish, however being smartly dressed they could be considered as possibly upper class working men. The use of dominant and weak characters were essential in helping with the authenticity of the film. The described ‘protagonist’ can be seen as reluctant to give up the information displaying his inner strength but eventually having to give up the information in fear for his life.

The tortured character represents a rather normal person who seems to have been caught up in a dangerous situation in which he may have entered the wrong line of business. He is represented as weak and vulnerable as he is the victim of the two hit men and therefore the audience have no clue at this point whether or not the victim has done anything wrong. The hit men do not tell us much about themselves - they are seen as mysterious characters and this assists in creating the intimidation effect.

Our movie doesn’t necessarily appeal to any particular groups as we wished to attract a wide range of audience and race. However, it is clearly seen that this is not for children which is why we rated it a 15. This is due to the use of torture processes which may be to frightening and inappropriate for them. There was a lack of ethnic minorities and other ethnicity's in our thriller opening, purely on the basis we thought it was unnecessary. We also refrained from all ethnic restrictions by not using any inappropriate or racist language. Although the hit men are seen to be doing something wrong we perceived all the characters positively and at this stage we don’t know an awful lot about their personalities or life's outside of what they are doing.

We used very little stereotypes in our thriller opening to help give a realistic and original look. However, the antagonists had the typical ‘gangster’ feel about them. We did this so it fits the conventions of other thriller films, such as ‘Pulp Fiction’. Our characters were dressed in suits and the victim in a bloody T-shirt which also goes along with typical conventions. The suits of the hit men give the smart and possibly high status of the hit men and may also tell the audience its there profession. One of the hit men also carried a gun which goes along with the typical stereotypical conventions of ‘gangsters’ and ‘thrillers’. However, our ‘gangsters’ go against the typical conventions in some ways as well, for example they use quite untraditional torture methods, such as drowning and verbal torture. This goes against the typical conventions as a lot of the time ‘hit men’ won’t have any time for this long winded methods of torture.