Q2: How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Typically, thrillers have three main categories of characters; a protagonist, whom is the main character. An antagonist, the villain and a victim usually vulnerable from the antagonist.

We decided to stick to the conventional image of a protagonist and chose Harry Thornburn to be the main character in our thriller opening. One reason we decided Harry would be a good choice is from his appearance. In comparison to the other actors throughout the film opening he is oldest looking and most bulky/muscular looking, giving a more mature look to the thriller and therefore appealing to older generations also. Although our protagonist does not represent the hero normally seen in a thriller, in our opening we made Harry look more vulnerable we did this through our scripting and camera shots.

Throughout, the majority of shots taken of Harry are at eye level, Dan & I felt that this would be more effective on the audience as they would feel like they are on the same level as the protagonist and would engage and empathize with him more, therefore making them more interested in what will happen to him throughout the storyline.

A film which inspired us to go with the vulnerable protagonist idea was The Dark Knight Rises, sequel to The Dark Knight. The opening to this film shows Bruce Wayne looking a lot older and more worn than the last time the audience saw him in the previous movie. This is due to the loss of someone he loved dearly. Throughout the whole of the film we see the story of Batman becoming stronger and more powerful again to the hero which protagonist conventionally are. In our thriller, Harry has lost his girlfriend and is in the same fragile position as this. If our thriller was a whole movie, I believe that Harry would also get back to grips with reality and then seek revenge.

 

When it came to thinking of a victim, (Harry’s Girlfriend) we were stereotypical with our choices, the victim needed to be someone vulnerable, weak, possibly naïve and powerless. We decided to use myself as the victim as a petite female (which is the expected norm). Our story line shows a woman whom has been stalked, then kidnapped when she was out. Because of this we decided that the costume should be quite regular and casual, plain t-shirt and jeans, furthermore we used high angle camera shots  to look down on the victim to show her as powerless and looked belittled.

Another film that helped us with our decision was ‘I Spit on Your Grave’. In this we see the character Jenifer Hills retreat to a small town at her summer cabin by herself to concentrate on writing her novel. Until her presence became known to a few of the morally depraved locals. One night they break into her cabin to scare her and teach the ‘city girl’ a lesson, although it soon escalates into a night of physical abuse. The beginning of this film also uses the vulnerable girl cliché and moreover, uses the idea of setting the film within conventional reality.

With our antagonist, we decided to use Dan Harris, choosing an antagonist for our thriller was quite simple, as our task is to create a thriller opening, we didn’t want show his face. This was because if it’s only the opening two minutes, you don’t want to be giving everything away instantly, you need to keep the audience hooked in some way so by keeping the villains identity unkown you then want to know who it is. We still wanted Dans character to be known and stick out in some form though, so we did this through his costume. We dressed Dan in a suit, not only does he now appear different to the other characters being introduced in the opening of this thriller, but he is now also shown as a figure of authority, power and hierarchy. Films that inspired us to do this was ‘The Dark Knight’ and ‘James Bond; From Russia with Love’.

In The Dark Knight we are introduced to the antagonist of the film called ‘The Joker’. The Jokers costume consists of an unusual suit and clown inspired make-up. The suit is cleverly used in that conveys power, but with it being out of the ordinary with green and purple so it looks like a bit of a joke furthermore we do not know his true identity because of his full-face of make-up, (which is on throughout the film). Although, Donald ‘Red’ Grant, in From Russia with Love also wears a suit, it’s concept is entirely different. Red looks smart, sharp and in power/control which is how we wanted to perceive Dan towards Beth for our audience, although at the same time we wanted to keep his identity hidden.