Post 12.2: Question 2

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Our opening mainly presents people of two classes, a higher educated class represented by Carlson and a Lower, more violent underclass represented by the terrorists.


Carlson:

We wanted to present Carlson as an upstanding member of society. This is why we chose to have him wearing smart business clothes and in a house.
We also wanted show that he is an intellectual man so we chose to go with the stereo type of smart man wearing glasses.


He differs from the terrorists because the film shows that he has a job, with him getting ready to go out to work in the morning.
 
Because he is a MI6 agent we took inspiration on his character from films like James Bond and The Bourne series but also the TV show 24.






The Terrorists:

Group of IRA members

For the terrorists we chose to go for more of an IRA inspired approach as opposed to a more modern Al-Qaeda view. We chose this because we were limited by the actors we had and also so that people would not be offended by accidental racial stereotyping.

We wanted to present our group as members of a downtrodden underclass. To try and get this across we asked them to wear mainly black clothing and we also gave one of our characters a balaclava to fit the mise-en-scene of the stereotypical terrorist costume. We also had their scene take place in an abandoned garage to show that they were materially deprived.
Another way that we wanted to present our terrorists was that we wanted them to look organised as well as violent. This is primarily for the plot as we wanted them to actually pose a threat to a highly trained MI6 agent. In order to make this threat apparent we gave them a selection of prop guns to use in the scenes.


One part in our opening that juxtaposes the 2 groups is the split screen shot with Carlson and one of the terrorists doing up their shoelaces. Here we see one nice dress shoe on a nice checkered floor, where as in the other shot we see a haggard old boot being done up on a rough concrete floor outside. This shot shows the far contrast between the 2 groups and their living situation.