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

In order to target a broad audience, we looked at a range of representation areas, including age, gender and social status. I think that the most important one of these was Social Status because it enabled us to magnify the concept that our protagonist is a social outcast.

Social Status

As you can see from the still above, Angus is sitting by himself engrossed in his drawing, while everyone else has someone sitting near them. We purposefully placed the actors like this in order to emphasise visually how isolated the hero is. To demonstrate it clearly to the audience we used a Master Shot to not only highlight the isolation but also where everyone was sitting in relation to him. It also points out the different social groups that exist in the scene.

Of course we would not be able to draw attention to how isolated Angus is without demonstrating the stereotypical social groups in a school. We decided to include three of the most conventional character types that are included in superhero films, these were:

• The Jocks

• They are usually the sporty type
• They 'run the school'
• Normally pick on the vulnerable

• The Popular Girls
• Very feminine characters
• Prettiest girls in school
• Everyone wants to be them or with them

• The Outcasts
• Isolated from the others
• Usually quite 'nerdy'
• Picked on regularly

Gender

Gender is mainly represented in our opening sequence through the costumes and the interaction between the hero, Angus Archer, and the damsel-in-distress, Jessica Butler.

Jessica's costume is conventionally very feminine

The Bullies have stereotypically sporty and casual clothing

The interaction between the two main characters reflects something similar to the situation that many males and females find themselves in at school. It is evident throughout the opening sequence that Angus is uncomfortable and nervous about talking to Jessica due to how clumsy and hesitant he becomes. The main ways in which this is demonstrated is the ‘clumsy clamber’, the slight hesitation when handing back her coat and the shot-reverse-shot of their conversation.

To demonstrate the idolisation of Jessica we have used the voiceover and a comic book freeze frame effect. Jessica is the girl that Angus has been crushing on for most of his high school life, and following the conventions of other superhero films, she is the popular girl at school who is very feminine. When brainstorming ideas for the character of Jessica, we took inspiration from Mary-Jane Watson in the Spiderman Trilogy. 

Mary-Jane Watson