Evaluation - Q2

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

We have main three protagonist characters in our film, the mum, the dad and the son and the only time we see them fully is in the family photo which is shown near the end of the opening.

The family that we cast for our film opening shown in this LS.

In our research, we look at the opening of Insidious which follows a similar plot line to ours. This gave us a lot of ideas on the characters we should use. Below is a similar shot that was used in their film opening of a family photo featuring the main characters.

The family cast in Insidious shown in this LS.

We decided to base our family on the one featured in Insidious as it not only follows the conventions of most supernatural horrors but it also represents the social group that we wanted to show to our audience. Characters in supernatural horrors are often portrayed as being normal everyday people as this means that the audience can relate and identify with the the characters and make them feel as if what is going on in the film could happen to anybody. This meant making our family look like an everyday middle-class family as this can relate to a large part of the population and the target audience of our film.

We made the family wear normal, casual clothes that represent what a stereotypical parent and child would wear. We can see they are wearing casual clothing due to the baggy shirts and jeans that they are wearing. They are all smiling and we did this to show that they are a happy family and how this is slightly ironic due to the juxtaposition of their happiness in the photo and the horror they are going to go through throughout the family. This makes the audience feel sorry for the characters and gives an insight into what they are like. We can see that this is the same in both of the photos of the families, ours and the one from Insidious.

One difference between the two is that the child in our film has been scratched out in the photo whereas in Insidious their children haven't been scratched out. We decided to scratch out the child in our photo as this is a conventional happening in supernatural horrors and is seen in films such as Paranormal Activity. It also hints to the audience that he will be the main victim throughout the narrative. Children are often stereotyped as being quite naive and too trusting towards people and don't understand the danger that they can get themselves in and both films show this. Children are also represented as being generally vulnerable people anyway as they are not old enough to fend for themselves.