Question 2 - How does the media product represent particular groups?

There are only two characters within my thriller opening, the first being a blonde female teenager. My group chose to use this as she is a very conventional character to the thriller genre, this is because blonde hair is seen as innocence, and the light colour then goes onto portray the colour white, which has the connotations of good. This is then complimented by the fact that the victim is a teenager, this again shows innocence, as teenagers have not had to get jobs and live by themselves, this represents vulnerability, therefore by making our victim a teenager we can appeal to our audience as they will begin to emphasise with the character. Also my target audience are teenagers the audience can relate to the character, allowing them to feel the character’s fear, which is important in helping the audience becoming more involved in the opening sequence. The fact that my victim was a female was because females are often depicted as being weaker than males, like age, it again portrays vulnerability, this again allows the audience to emphasise with her situation and begin to fear for her wellbeing, therefore once the killer is seen the audience begin to build some fear, therefore making conventions for example a chase scene more effective.

The other character I have included within my thriller opening is the killer, he is a hooded male dressed in black. From the fact that the killer’s identity is hidden it represents that the killer is going to do something bad, this is due to the fact as people want their identity hidden it means that they don’t want anyone to know it was them who did it, from this assumption the audience will believe that the killer is going to do something bad. Therefore as soon as the audience see that the characters identity is hidden they will automatically begin to build a fear for the character. Also because the fact that the killer is wearing all black this carries the representation that the character is going to be bad. Black carries the connotations of bad, evil and death, so therefore the audience will automatically think this of the character as he is dressed in all black. This again builds on the audience beginning to fear the character as they automatically assume that he is going to do something bad, this is the reason why we chose to use this character.