Our film specifically represents 2 social groups. One of them being teenagers. As the teenagers are the victims in our film, we wanted the audience to relate to them, connect with them, and sympathise with them. So rather than represent them in a negative stereotypical way i.e violent, rude and grimy, we decided to focus more on the positive aspects such as fun loving, full of life, young and friendly. For example we showed this through the shot of Suleiman rapping. We directed him to do a freestyle rap for part of the take, with his friends around him cheer
ing and laughing. Another shot of the girls downstairs in gentle conversation about a music festival also shows the positive side of the characters. This dissipates our target audience’s apprehensions of a negative stereotype and starts to make them care about the characters, which is essential if we want an emotional reaction from the audience when they are shot.
If you compare our film to Elephant, another teen based movie that deals with mass killing, we see that teenagers in general are represented in a similar way. They are represented in either a neutral or positive way by the use of their casual playful conversation, most of it improvised, much in the same way our film uses it. Elephant’s director Gus van Sant told the actors in the film to improvise their dialogue during some of the scenes. We also used this technique to make it more naturalistic.
Elephant also represents teenage mass killers. During the murder scene in Elephant, the killers are represented very coldly and negatively but not in an obvious way. They say almost nothing and show no expression, the same way our actors do in our thriller. This distances the audience from the characters and forces them to connect with the action happening, there are no so called hiding places for the audience, they are thrust right into the middle of the theme of the movie.
The representation of teenagers in our film contrasts with that of other media products such as newspaper tabloids. They usually focus on the violence of teenagers, knife crime and mugging etc. We challenge that, and try to show the majority population of decent and positive teenagers, and not focus in on the violent minority like newspapers do. We felt that the newspapers don’t accurately represent teenagers and in essence glamorise gun crime and violence.
ing and laughing. Another shot of the girls downstairs in gentle conversation about a music festival also shows the positive side of the characters. This dissipates our target audience’s apprehensions of a negative stereotype and starts to make them care about the characters, which is essential if we want an emotional reaction from the audience when they are shot.If you compare our film to Elephant, another teen based movie that deals with mass killing, we see that teenagers in general are represented in a similar way. They are represented in either a neutral or positive way by the use of their casual playful conversation, most of it improvised, much in the same way our film uses it. Elephant’s director Gus van Sant told the actors in the film to improvise their dialogue during some of the scenes. We also used this technique to make it more naturalistic.
Elephant also represents teenage mass killers. During the murder scene in Elephant, the killers are represented very coldly and negatively but not in an obvious way. They say almost nothing and show no expression, the same way our actors do in our thriller. This distances the audience from the characters and forces them to connect with the action happening, there are no so called hiding places for the audience, they are thrust right into the middle of the theme of the movie.
The representation of teenagers in our film contrasts with that of other media products such as newspaper tabloids. They usually focus on the violence of teenagers, knife crime and mugging etc. We challenge that, and try to show the majority population of decent and positive teenagers, and not focus in on the violent minority like newspapers do. We felt that the newspapers don’t accurately represent teenagers and in essence glamorise gun crime and violence.
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