How does your media product represent particular social groups?

The filmmaker uses micro elements to encode the specific macro representations in to the text for the viewer.

The viewer decodes these representations to read meaning from the text.

• In order to try and create meaning and transfer a message through a text you need to use micro elements

• Micro Macro

• The micro levels make the text, character, and technical elements, which all fall under codes and conventions made represent the macro.

The technical elements include:• Sound• Mise-en-scene • Camera • Editing

• The macro level is the overall representation of the film.

These are made up by:• Issues • Themes • Character codes

The seven key areas of representation are based on people, places, events, time periods and themes.

These seven key areas are age• Gender• Ethnicity• Sexuality• Class and status• Physical ability/disability• Regional identity.

All of these areas adds up to verisimilitude.

Verisimilitude is “truth to life”, the appearance of being true or real.

It refers to the construction, in a text, of a plausible, believable world.

• My media product offers a mediated version of the world.

• I aim to portray reality by representing particular social groups by using micro elements from the four different technical categories

• I aim to do this by looking at these social groups in the wider sense citizens from a particular economic class), and in a more targeted sense (truants and criminals).

  Mise-en-scene

• Micro elements from the technical category of mise-en-scene are employed in my product to construct specific representations of a social group and class. The social group I was focused on was Drug users

• My product is showing the social group of drug users and the deprived. It also shows the drug dealer, even though it is unknown if he takes drugs or not, but I used a cigarette to show he smokes tobacco.

MOLLY – My Film

Tobacco is a type of drug, addicted to cigarettes

• The key representative area focused on in my product is class and status. Issues of personal hygiene and addiction are a massive theme in my media product. As in the beginning you see a messy room and all the drugs and syringes on the floor.

pills on the floor of room, showing that person my be abusing drugs

Class and status

Class and status is one of my themes in my intro.

All of the individuals shown in my intro are all of the same class and status but all have different personalities.

People judge others and create stereotypes of people but if you looked individually you would see they are not all the same.

I showed my actors were of a low status by what they were doing, where they were and what they looked like as there was no dialogue to tell you for example, the girl was getting drugs whilst the guy was selling it, which is Class A criminal activity. They were all wearing clothes that a normal person would wear but it was really dark colours to show they may have been trying to not stand out and to show the colours [blacks and reds] are a symbol for what they are doing.

My intro is set in Tadworth on the estate, which has a connotation of chavs, gangs and danger

The main scenes were shot her messy room and outside on the empty deprived streets of Tadworth. I chose this specific place as I wanted to show the low class area of Tadworth to represent the characters in my intro.

All black coats, trousers ect. Connotes mystery and death.

Building site, distribution and unstable are

Deprived, empty and boring everywhere

Colour Design

• I chose the colour palette of my film to consist of greys and blues. As these colours are associated with depression and negative things.

• I also wanted it to give it a washed out bleached look to represent my characters as they have nothing else in there life at that particular moment except for drugs

Lighting

• The lighting throughout my intro is low key.• I chose this as the Themes and issues in my product are serious and I

wanted people to feel the intensity and darkness in my intro• I also chose this as I wanted it to foreshadow the bad things that will

happen as being involved in drugs [selling or taking] never ends well.

Camera

Behind bars, foreshadowing the future of somebody involved in drugs.

Camera

I used high angles in my intro to show when my characters were in power and when they were weak.In this particular moment I used more or less a birds eye view shot as at that particular moment my character was in a state of turmoil

Editing

• In my intro I have many long takes. I chose to use long takes to represent my characters as it is a metaphor for there life being empty and not successful as it is going on for ages with no action.

1. Micro elements from mise en scene create a representation of ability and disability and regional identity through the use of establishing shots which show a council estate and corner shops, we then go onto see a bedroom that is in a uncontrollable state which could link to the character having an uncontrollable addiction to drugs which then links to the representational area of ability and disability by the character having a mental disability.

2. The theme that is explored in the extract is mental disability. This is conveyed by the use of mise-en-scene with the cigarette, as well as drugs. An addiction is considered a mental disability which aids the exploration of this topic.

3. In this extract disability/ability is present, the use of costume, props and location in this extract allows us to see how deprived the area is. The props of pills and cigarettes are used to show that the person has an addiction to many different substances.

4. Within the extract, there are several micro elements that convey to us representations of ability and disability. Firstly, there are several close-up of someone lighting a cigarette in a dark and deprived area, presumably, on his own. The reservation of close ups for only the drugs, highlights the theme of addiction and the harms and problems associated with this.

5. Within the extract, parallel editing is used to depict the disability of the female in the bed as it creates a link between her and the male character, Furthermore, the close up shots are used to show the props such as the syringe and pills, this conveys the disability of addiction and how she is the taker and the male is the pusher. Idk how to word this…

6. The use of parallel editing between the shot of the character standing outside and the shot of bedroom showing medication highlight the difference between ability and disability.

7. Within the extract ability/disability are shown. By the props used for example the pills which could indicate to the audience that she might have overdosed as the character wasn’t moving in the bed. Also the addiction to cigarettes is a disability in itself.

Ability/Disability opinions of people