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

1. Q2. How does your media product represent particular social groups? Thrillers have a highly stereotypical view of social groups, which is used to suggest to the audience why a certain person acts, dresses or behaves in such a way. It is also a useful tool to apply when you want to shock your viewer by going against a stereotype.

2. Tom Burke is a member of the Police Detective duo who are assigned to a mysterious and devastating chain of brutal murders of young women. He is a clean cut, routine perfectionist, with an eye for details and being on time, as well as an obsessively compulsive need to keep things in order and clean. He’s a middle class, Caucasian male in his late twenties, who’s spent a few years on the force and has pursued his career attentively to get to his current position and state of respect. Whilst he isn’t a stereotypical villain in some types of Thriller film, his character profile suits our genre and sub-genre perfectly. Many psychological thrillers include the use of a schizophrenic personality in their Tom Burke plot lines as the thought of someone being unable to control a part of themselves is a frightening prospect to many people. This also allows the killer to walk amongst the public and in this case even the law enforcement itself without the knowledge of what they have done or the fear of being caught. Through our opening title sequence we have aimed to connote this by showing his solitary morning preparations and his obsessive nature in making sure everything he does is perfect, as well as mix of jumpily cut shots with the smoother, continuous ones to connote two different narratives and personalities. Later in the scene when the pair are together we ensured that Burke was far more animated and led the way, yet held a lot of respect for his partner, to denote his love for his profession and respect for his superiors even with his secret condition.

3. Charlie Miller Charlie Miller is the second half of the Police Detective duo that was assigned to the serial offending murder case. Unlike Burke, Miller is disorganized, lives with his wife and son and has been on the police force since he was 18. His experience of his work has wizened him and whilst he trusts his partner, he is cautious of him by nature. He is an honest and, in comparison to Burke, a peaceful man, who will always try his best when at work or home. He is slightly older than Burke by only a few years and is also a middle class Caucasian male, who fits the stereotypical description of the ‘good-cop’ police detective. He’s an open and passive character with a calm persona, which we tried to portray in his friendly but professional greeting to his co-worker. His attitude towards his work is proficient and skilled, representing to the audience a capable, family man who will be the justice throughout the film. By having a character that is the ‘beacon’, the audience will have some faith in the law, regardless of what happens to him towards the end of the narrative. The positive characterization also works well to shock and invoke fear into the audience, as many will not be expecting a happy ending due to the genres usual conventions. This leaves the viewers feeling on edge about Miller as a character as something negative is expected to happen to him throughout the course of the film. By only including shots of Miller in open/crowded surroundings it denotes that he is a more public figure than Burke, which helps to stereotype our characters and give hints to the audience about their personalities.

4. Mise-En-Scene Mise-En-Scene is one of the most important and crucial aspects to any film, especially within the opening sequence. It allows you to establish class, nationality, traditions, beliefs and backgrounds to your characters without the use of long winded dialog or description in a short amount of time. For our opening sequence we felt it important that Burke, as he has severe OCDs, should live in alone in a clean, well kept and relatively masculine environment. We made sure that the space we were using in the kitchen was clear and clean as well as organized. We thought about moving the cleaning products out of the shot in our first scene, however we felt that it added to his personality as an obsessively clean and tidy person. The bathroom was a similar setting, so we made sure that everything was neat, orderly and clean. However, we changed the lighting within this setting, as well as making sure the characters figure expression was rough and angry to connote an aggressive side of his personality. The outdoor scenes were a lot less controlled, although we spent a lot of time considering train stations and fields, eventually settling on a slightly rougher, quieter platform, as well as a tucked away corner of the nature reserve, just off the main road. We were lucky when we filmed as it had snowed recently, which added cold, bitterness and pathetic fallacy to our scene, fitting perfectly with the genre. Another thing we had to think about when filming was props and costumes. To get an authentic Detective look, we couldn’t have overly young actors, wearing tracksuits and hoodies. To ensure this, we made sure both our police officers had smart coats and trousers, shirts and perhaps even a tie, not to mention smart dark shoes to complete the look. We also felt that the coffee flask would be appropriate in the later scenes to follow the continuity of the previous shots with the titles and kettle. Smaller, yet necessary things included milk, coffee and spoons, toothpaste, toothbrushes, combs as well as bags and flannels, just to make it feel more authentic. We also dressed our victim in a school uniform type attire to connote youth and innocence to the audience. Kitchen Setting: clean – orderly. Bathroom Setting: sterile, routine layout. Train Station: dramatically different, run down. Crime Scene: cold, snowy, barren and secluded.

5. Character Links and Film Similarities IMDB Character Links Emily: Victim in Brick, features in the opening sequence. Leonard: Lead character in Memento, one of the films we took inspiration from to create a complex personality. John Doe: Serial killer from Se7en, another source of inspiration for creating a dark, misleading character. Tyler Durden: From Fight Club, one of the most famous plots to contain a schizophrenic and use it successfully. Norman Bates: Schizophrenic, serial killer from Alfred Hitchcock's famous ‘Psycho’, another highly successful split personality film. Patrick Bateman: Cannibalistic serial killer from American Psycho, who lives a double life as a broker on wall street, which was inspirational when creating Tom Burke in our own piece. Hannibal Lecter: Chilling cannibalistic serial killer with supreme intelligence and knowledge of the human mind from Silence of the Lambs. In our initial research stage we looked into a variety of thriller films that we thought were effective, along with good title sequences from any genre for inspiration and ideas on how to represent a character and storyline within only a few minutes of footage. Some of the films that we looked at included ‘Brick’, ‘Se7en’, ‘Memento’, ‘Catch me if you Can’ and ‘Fight Club’. From this we were able to conclude that; cross cutting between timelines can make for an effective and time saving sequence, a wide variety of close ups and long shots are good for establishing a scene and focusing on little details, negative space and fonts relative to your genre are crucial for grabbing the audiences attention as well as making sure you have a strong set of characters to present their personalities with.