TASK TWO: How does your product represent particular social groups?

This screengrab of the young girl swimming was chosen to represent the social group of teenage girls. 

We chose to shoot this underwater shot fairly close to our actor (Bethany) in order to make the audience feel uneasy as if they are swimming alongside her. The point of the underwater shot was to emphasise her isolation. As anyone who has been swimming will know, when you are underwater, what you hear gets distorted and is much quieter. Therefore, for the case of our thriller, as the man approaches her in the pool, she had no idea that he was coming as she was underwater and could not hear him.

This picture shows the vulnerability that is often associated with teenage girls through the idea of her wearing only a swimming costume. Nowadays there is a stereotype for the kind of girl who is considered vulnerable in society. This girl, in general would be:

-alone

-distracted (perhaps by an iPod or mobile phone)

-dressed provocatively

-often around 15 or 16

This particular screengrab accurately shows aspects of all of these signs of vulnerability amongst teenage girls. The girl in the pool is:

-alone

-distracted (focused on her swimming and beating her best time)

-dressed in few clothes (because she is swimming)

-around the age of 16

It can therefore be seen that our main character in the opening of the thriller is the perfect target for a murder (which will later be the main plot of our thriller) and the screengrab represents the social group of teenage girls.

This is a screengrab from the film 'Scream' where, in the opening sequence, the girl gets stalked and eventually killed by a mysterious masked figure. This girl is similar to the girl in our thriller as she is also alone, young and at first distracted by the cooking. 

The main difference is that she is not shown to be dressed provocatively, however this film was made in 1996, at which time it was not such a craze as it is today (2011) for teenage girls to go out in clothes showing a lot of skin.

This film was a great success and a number of sequels were produced. This suggests to me (due to the large number of similarities between this film's opening sequence and my own) that my film would also be a success as it meets social stereotypes of teenage girls which prepare us to be scared.