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

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

AGE

In our media project our actor’s ages vary, the youngest actor being 5, who is in the first scene. This instantly gives the audience sympathy, as he’s a young child and sitting in the dark in the middle of an unlit pathway. Using a child actor in a horror film is an affective way to portray the child’s innocence and loneliness. This normally makes the audience feel sorry, and makes the viewer want to continue watching. Teenagers are usually represented as violent, loud and trouble making and the opposite of how children are represented yet in this the child actor is the violent or the ‘cause’ of this disaster. We then have the rest of the actors, which ages are 16-18 as they are the typical ‘teen age’.

GENDER

We have 4/5 teenage actors ages 16-18 who divided in to two groups the bitten victims and the non bitten victims, the non bitten victims are female actors, normally female actors in a horror are portrayed as innocent victims, in our media project we stuck to this tradition as it instantly shows what genre of film it is. The other group is constructed of male actors, normally male actors in a horror are portrayed as the violence ones and usually the last to be attacked or the survivor, yet in this horror all the male actors have already been bitten. When we first see our male actor after he’s been bitten he opens the door, this shows power or a higher status, this gives the film an unusual twist from a ‘normal or classic horror’.