Evaluation Question 2

Evaluation Question 2:
How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Representation in all media is very important to creating a moving picture that can go out to the right audience. Representation refers to the aspects of reality; this may include place, people, objects, events, cultural identities, regional identity, disability, class, ethnicity, gender and age.

For example an elderly person may be represented as fragile, kind and gentle, compared to a young teen who may be represented as ruthless, care-free and have a ‘whatever’ attitude.

Men may be represented as strong and active and the breadwinner whereas women may be represented as passive and as the weaker sex.

Representation means that these areas are composed, written and captured and branded by the media producers, some of these representations of the different groups may be partially true though some others may not be. As constructed by the producers the representation of a group may vary as it is someone’s view on that groups being, put into a series of signs and symbols to connect this view to its audience.  Although some views on representation may be artificial, with it in our media texts we are able to make and formulate our own perception of these groups for ourselves.

In our film opening The Voice Behind, we have used social groups including, a disturbed young girl (who hears and sees ghosts) and also a young innocent girl. In a real media piece the disturbed young girl would be represented as troubled and distressed and would be represented in a bad light, compared to the innocent young woman who would be represented in a good light as naive, youthful and guiltless.

Our film also featured some children in the beginning on swings playing. We represented then to be innocent carefree, worry free people who were naive to the troubles ahead.

In our piece we have likewise represented our characters in the same way. The disturbed character is seemed to have a dark way of life as shown through the music, actions and lighting reflected upon her and the other characters innocence is shown through the light reflected upon her ( mid natural daylight) and the actions she does. In representing the characters like this i think we have done it in a fairly positive light though looked in deeper it can be discussed what mental issues the troubled character has and if the young girl is really that innocent? It could be that Ethel (the killer) had had a troubled life before she started hearing ghosts and seeing them and that her victim had in fact had a previous lawless life for Ethel to be given further motive to kill. Overall i believe that our groups represented our social groups in a fairly good way and it is a way that other media products would represent them also.