Evaluation - Representation of social groups.

In relation to social groups, the main message of our film is vulnerability. Our Thriller opening portrays how vulnerable typical teenagers can be while on their own in the streets. Age was key in the making of our film, a teenage boy is a lot more likely to be kidnapped than a middle aged man, that is how the vulnerability factor comes in. On top of that, we purposely chose a teenage boy to play the lead role as opposed to a teenage girl. Teenage girls are a lot more typical in all genres of film to be kidnapped than teenage boys, so the fact that we chose a boy as a lead role in itself challenges the expectations of the audience when viewing our Thriller opening.

The screenshot above portrays the vulnerability of the teenage boy that we used in our film. We tried to challenge the conventions of a Thriller by using a boy instead of girl to be kidnapped.

We used a male as the kidnapper in our Thriller film. We felt that using a male would ultimately make our film more sinister and more frightening as using a female would have been quite cheesy. By using a male as the lead, we could include the Zippo that he constantly flicked which made for a slightly more eerie and scary feel. Stalkers normally are of the male genre also, so using a male as the kidnapper was a convention to the Thriller genre that we adapted to our production. The fact that we had the kidnapper dressed fully in dark clothes (mise-en scene) also helped to give out a more scary feel, this is due to the fact that traditionally not only in Thriller films but in all films the villain would wear dark and black colours. The face of the kidnapper is also never conveyed, which builds the tension for the audience as they do not know the kidnapper as the person kidnapped doesn't, although the audience is omniscient at the park when the person kidnapped is being stalked.