Saturday 23 April 2016

Payback: Final

Greetings

After some feedback, myself and Dan have made a few changes and have finally produced the final copy of Payback. So grab that popcorn and feast your eyes... on this.

Saturday 16 April 2016

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

The opening of Payback introduces some character that can be seen to represent certain social groups, such as age and gender.

Victim:

The first character that we are introduced to is the victim; a teenager girl played by Amy Heald.
The choice of having a female victim was because it  felt more fitting than a male victim, due to how, especially within the thriller genre, females are represented. For example, similar to Payback's opening, Scream begins with Drew Barrymore's character alone at home. She, like in Payback, is attacked by the antagonist. Her character is shown to be very sacred and vulnerable by the obvious fear and lack of attacking the antagonist. Secondly, Maggie Grace's character in Taken is shown to be a scared and vulnerable female. Therefore, having a vulnerable female victim in Payback appears more conventional, thus leading the audience to realise within a few moments of the opening, that what they are watching is a thriller. This would have been harder to suggest if, for example, the victim was a male because, stereotypically, they are conveyed to be fearless and tough.

Antagonist:

Providing brief shots of the antagonist that collectively sum up his appearance whilst still hiding his identity clearly imply that he is male. This sticks to the conventional appear of men in thrillers being violent, and sometimes evil, individuals. For example, male antagonists such as The Joker from the Dark Knight and John Doe from Seven. Female antagonists are so rare that it is mostly unexpected, such as the Mrs Voorhees being revealed to be the killer in Friday the 13th. Furthermore, the antagonist is clothed in black. This stereotypical suggest that this character is dangerous and to be feared. Therefore, representing the antagonist in this way is conventional to the thriller genre.

Protagonist:

Payback's protagonist is a detective, as suggested by his suit and the police tape in shot beforehand. This effectively represents him as the law and all that is good. In addition, we only see this character during the day time, symbolising him as 'the hero'. Also, having 'the hero' as a man is very conventional to the thriller genre. This I believe is mainly due to the fact that statistically mostly men watch these types of films, thus making the protagonist a man makes our target audience understand and fell more related to the character. Many examples of male protagonist/'heroes' are John McClane in Die Hard and Bryan Mills from Taken.

Question 1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Hey Guys

Here it is! The first question to the evaluation of Payback done between myself and Dan.

Apologies that my audio quality is not as well as Dan's in this: