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

Character overview In our thriller the main social groups we chose to represent were the mentally ill and a stalker.

Emily (our main character) suffers from PTSD due to witnessing the murder of her parents. Emily has obsessive behaviour, hence why she visits the church a lot as it is the place she fin comfort in despite it being where her parents died. She also carries around the same photo with her everywhere as another form of support. Similarly, Emily has a habit of frequently revisiting articles which were published about her parents death in an attempt to see if she can solve their murder because she can’t come to terms with the fact that her parents aren’t alive anymore.

As a symptom of PTSD, Emily also tends to wake up in the middle of the night from nightmares which disturb her sleeping pattern causing her to suffer from insomnia, as the fear of having a nightmare if she falls asleep is too much for her to cope with.

Character overview The black figure in our thriller, is Emily Ovittz’s stalker. She first started interacting with the Ovitt’s before Emily was born. This black figure became involved with the Ovittz officials when she was put under the watchful eye of the government after being considered a main suspect for a serial murder.

After being caught and locked away, the black figure seeks revenge on the couple who condemned her and continues her killing spree with a new target- the Ovittz’s.

After successfully killing the two in cold blood, the figure in lack isn’t fulfilled as she is aware that she still can’t gain access to files on herself within the government due to the Ovittz’s offspring Emily being a spanner in the works.

In attempt to get what she wants, our villain traces and logs all of Emily’s movements, to get an understanding of her habits in order to track her down and kill the final Ovittz member.

How have we shown the mentally ill? Our main character ‘Emily Ovittz’, is the orphaned child of her government official parents who were murdered by a mysterious black figure.

In the opening we show that she is suffering from PTSD by filming short clips of worn down articles of her parents death. The articles are worn down to show how frequent she looks at them (repetitive behaviour being a symptom of PTSD) because she can’t come to terms with the fact that her parents are dead due to this mysterious murderer.

‘Emily’ (played by Holly Merrick) is shown waking up from a nightmare, (a common symptom of PTSD). The nightmare leads her to the church- a place she visits as a place of refuge and security as it is where her she feels closest to her parents as it is their final place of rest.

We use the church as our location for ‘Emily’ to visit, as this is her parents place of death/rest. Her visiting the church shows her obsession (repetitive behaviour being a sign of PTSD) with it as it is her parents place of death.

We dressed this character in her pyjamas to show her adolescence as well as to represent that she has woken in the middle of the night to attend the church.

Where did we get our inspiration for the character ‘EMILY OVITTZ’? The idea for the character of Emily Ovittz, actually stemmed from the character Logan Lerman plays-Charlie in ‘The Perks of Being a Wallflower’, who also suffers from PTSD.

The character of Charlie was molested by his troubled Aunt Helen, every week. After her sudden death in a car crash she has when he is young, Charlie blames himself for her untimely death, which is where his PTSD originates. This causes him to abuse illegal substances, suffer from blackouts, have frequent nightmares etc – all of which as symptoms of PTSD.

We chose PTSD as it is a disorder which has a lot of backstory which we can closely relate to Emily’s backstory of her parents being murdered.

What was the inspiration for ‘Emily’s’ mise en scene?

We chose to dress the character of Emily in all white pyjamas. We chose white to symbolise her innocence and purity. The pyjamas were also a symbol comfort. Moreover the character of Emily was dressed in pyjamas to show the audience that she had awoken in the middle of the night.

The character of Emily was filmed in more high key lighting to further the representation of her innocence.

Emily’s prop was a picture she carried around of herself and her mother, this is to show the emotional attachment she has to her mother even after death.

What was the inspiration for ‘Emily’s’ mise en scene?

On her feet, Emily is wearing thick bed socks. Again, this is to highlight her childlike attributes whilst also letting the audience know that she has ventured into the night after a nightmare.

We also took into consideration that we were filming the character of Emily at night - as if she’d has her sleep interrupted. To show this, we made sure Hollie (who played Emily) had natural hair and make-up as Emily wouldn’t be dolled up in the middle of the night after waking up from a nightmare.

How have we shown stalkers? The stalker is after Emily as her final ‘Ovittz’ vistim as she is the last key to getting into government official documents which are held on said stalker. Our villain is shown as Emily’s stalker by being dressed in all black, filmed in low key lighting and by using shadows. We have shown the stalker character in a negative light in attempt to heighten the tense atmosphere and to make the audience worry about Emily’s safety due to the stalker being in a dangerously close proximity to her.

Where did we get our inspiration for the stalker character? We got our inspiration for this mysterious black figure from the character of Bill in ‘Kill Bill’. However from this, we stemmed out the character of a stalker which came from the character of the stalker/murderer in ‘The Lovely Bones’.

In ‘The Lovely Bones’ the stalker is a neighbour to the Salmon family. The neighbour is an unsuspecting character and really has no relation to his victim – Susie Salmon, who he lures into an underground lair he has built in the middle of a field she crosses on the way back from home.

We understand these actions are premeditated as otherwise we wouldn’t have built it on that specific route.

Moreover, you never see the murderer of Susie in full view until she realises who it is. We imitate this in a similar way by only showing our stalker out of focus when her head is in sight to keep her identity a mystery.

What was the inspiration for ‘The stalkers’ mise en scene?

Adhering the typical codes and conventions of a thriller, we dressed the villain of our thriller in black and filmed them in low lights to show that they have a dark persona. Moreover, using our lighting cleverly, we created shadows for this character to show our audience that ‘The Stalker’ bought a never-ending sense of impending doom with her. The use of shadows also relate to our film title ‘SHADOW’, which we chose as a euphemism for ‘stalker’ (as the villain constantly follows and re-enacts the behaviour of Emily in order to hunt her down).

What was the inspiration for ‘The stalkers’ mise en scene?

Just like Emily, the villains character also has a the prop of a picture of Emily and her mother, except this one has the mothers faced scratched out. We chose to scratch out the mothers face to show that she has already been taken victim and that Emily is next.

Opposing these codes however, we decided our villain was going to be a female. We chose to show this by dressing our character in black heels to show dominance over the ‘hero’ – Emily.

Our villain also wore gloves much like the character of Bill in ‘Kill Bill’. Again we chose black as a colour to show danger and uncertainness