Evaluation Question 2) How does our media product represent particular social groups?

In our piece I think we as a team thought carefully about how different social groups are being represented within our film, we felt like we wanted to make more of an impact, and so wanted to use more than one representation. We started out by initially having a black drug dealer as the antagonist. Typically, black people are generally represented poorly in action and crime genres and it would most likely be accepted that black people are usually the antagonists. We felt it was a good step to keep to this genre, as it gives a represenation immedieatly, but one the audience may not notice till after. we also played with this convention by having by having myself, as a caucasean junkie with him.

This therfore challenges one aspect that the antagonists are typically black and this means that our film does not just make one race seem worse than any other. A further way we showed differences in social groups within our film was gender. We typically showed the male's in the film as the dominant protagonists. Whilst the women did the tasks of providing information, and being their aids in the field, leaving the men to do the life threatening physical work. This inaccurately portrays women to not be as able as men and that they must do more menial tasks an stick to what they can do, ofcourse this is wrong, but we feel this is what the genre's are saying about women, and that we saw no major reason to change this convention, if if we do not personally agree.

This meant we were well within the conventions of our genres, evidence of this can be seen in several TV dramas, such as ‘Touch of Frost’. Touch of Frost uses a middle aged male for a main character and portrays women to be less able than the men.

Furthermore the social status within our film is given off sometimes obviously through the use of the four key area's of mise-en-scene, camera, editing/SFX and sound. As an audience, we can tell that CID1 (Brian) has a higher status than CID2 (James). This is first shown when the audience see that CID1 is searching through Rimante's folder, which connotes he is in authority and therefore must be in control. Moreover, CID1 is wearing a baseball cap and a lighter shade of clothes than CID2 which brings the audience's attention to bear on CID1. This is backed up ever more by the situation in which CID1 restrains the drug dealer (Josh). Also, smaller things such as the fact that CID1 has more camera time overall than any other character, meaning, he is obviously watched more closely by the audience.

In terms of our camera work we managed to use our knowledge of a variety of shots throughout. We advanced what we had learnt from the preliminary task, such as when we used match-on-action when CID1 was getting out of the car. We also used other shots, such as birds eye view, establishing, close ups and our jib shot inspired shot, which was as close as we could get to a jib shot itself. we also used angles, such as when when CID1 has the drug dealer on the ground in the finale, it clearly shows CID1 talking to the dealer, showing CID1 has a higher status.

Sound was used cleverly in our film because rather noticeably CID1 has lots of dialogue whereas CID2 has a few. Meaning, the audience can decipher that CID1 has the higher status. However, in the finale this is flipped on its head as we are presented with the voice of Kelvin Rimante the status changes. As this happens the film logo appears, and a low bass tone is shown, which we used to signify the end of CID1's authority and status. The antagonist Kelvin Rimante becomes the figure of authority as CID1 quickly learns of his partner's fate and must now obey him in order to see an end to it all.

editing was used in our film, but not as specifically as we used the other 3 key area's, meaning we did not hit one convention of the usual action film with plenty of special effects, but I feel this was for the better, as it gave the film a more realistic and genuine feel, and creates emotion rather than just pure mindless action. This is however, not to say we didn't use any editing within our piece. Such as when we showed the cross cutting between the two chases of the drug dealer & CID1 and the second of the junkie & CID2. This creates an air of suspense as they want to know what happened to one chase, and then the other straight after.

Furthermore, in terms of editing the black transition effect after the antagonist Kelvin Rimante shot the drug dealer, as we researched and found this is usually used to show time has passed in between the 2 shots, and signalled the entrance of CID1 again, and this transition only needed to be short, as the audience is most likely used to this sort of editing from other action and crime films/dramas.