Film Opening Coursework. EVALUATION - TASK TWO.

Question two: How does your media product represent particular social groups? 

                                                            

The character on the right is called Michelle Richardson and she is played by April Pearson in the hit UK social-realism show Skins. This character on the left is called Lucy Jones and is played by Chloe Brock in my film opening, Revenge.  The character at the bottom is called Helen Shivers played by Sarah Michelle Geller in I Know What You Did Last Summer.

Similarities they share: 

1) Appearance 

Despite having different colour hair, Lucy and Michelle have a lot in common in terms of their appearance. Both of the girls are very attractive which is a very prominent stereotype in the media representation of women. Popular women in Media are almost always attractive and lusted over by men. Lucy and Helen are very similar in appearance as well because they both have blonde hair and wear similar clothes (jeans and a vest top). Vest tops show quite a lot of skin, not exactly promiscuous but they're quite tight and very typical of teenagers. 

2) Role in film 

They are both the girlfriends of the "popular boys". In Skins, Michelle is dating the popular boy of the school called Tony but she is lusted over by many men, mainly Tony's best friend. If Revenge were to be made into a film opening, a sub-plot would be that the reason Lucy had a part to play in the death of Marcus was because although she was/is dating Christopher (see character profile blog post), her and Marcus had a drunk "one night stand" and she wanted to make sure he never told anyone. This also helps support the genre as my film opening is a social realism/thriller. Lucy and Helen have very similar roles also because they are both girlfriends to the hot, popular guys. Helen is a beauty queen and very popular herself and quite ditzy which, if we were to make the film feature length, would be the same case for Lucy. 

3) Life of character

All three characters are in college or the US equivalent (high school). This is very typical of teen horror and thriller movies where characters are usually around the age of 16 or 17. It's also typical of teen social realism films. This helps promote our film to our target audience of teenagers because its rather easily to relate to if the characters are teenagers and the audience are teenagers.