Evaluation Question 2-
Catherine

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Our antagonist, Frank, played by Patrick Coakely negatively represents teenage males in our film opening as he is portrayed as a brutal murdering psychopath.
We conformed to the stereotype of male teenagers being violent, aggressive and rebellious as Frank kills his mother and shows no signs of remorse.
 Frank is a 19 year old teenager that, as the audience see from the beginning of the film opening, creates a façade. As seen photos (left) Frank seems to be an average teenage boy which is initially communicated by his costuming. The black skinny jeans and Doc. Martins reflect the typical teenage fashion in the modern        

  day and the fact that Frank is holding a shopping bag shows that Frank is simply walking back from the shops after perhaps being sent out by his mother to buy groceries. These factors allow the character to put on a front of seeming perfectly normal despite the fact that the bag is full of cleaning products which Frank will use to clean up his mother's blood.

This façade that Frank puts on and the normality of his outside appearance is similar to the characters of Kevin in the independent film, 'We need to talk about Kevin' (Lynne Ramsay, 2011) and Peter and Paul in 'Funny Games' (Michael Haneke, 1997)

The central character in the movie 'We need to talk about Kevin' is very similar to Frank in our film opening as he also conforms to the male teenage stereotype of being aggressive and violent. Kevin is a 16 year old student whom like Frank murders his family. It's evident that Kevin puts on a completely different front when with his sister and father to when he is with his mother. When speaking with his sister and father Kevin is pleasant and cheerful, whereas when he is with his mother he shows a clear resentment towards her and is insulting and verbally abusive. This is the kind of façade Frank puts on to the outside world but is completely different with his mother.                                                                 The character of Kevin greatly influenced us when creating our antagonist as he constructed quite a disturbing and creepy atmosphere which we felt was perfect for our thriller. We thought the dark hair and pale skin was effective in creating a sinister character and so we took this into account when choosing our actor, Patrick as he had similar features.  I liked how Kevin always seemed to look quite tired and jaded and so when applying makeup to Patrick's face I made sure to emphasise the darkness of his under eyes.
In terms of costuming, though there are major differences between the characters as Kevin mainly wears white throughout the film whereas we decided that Frank would wear dark colours which blended in with the dark lighting and made him seem like more of a sinister character.

                                                                                                         

Although I did not particularly enjoy the  film 'Funny Games' as I felt that the breaking of the fourth wall  led to a break in the thrilling and tense atmosephere, the main characters were incredibly successful in creating a creepy atmosphere. The actors Michael Pitt and Brady Corbet gave life to the young and disturbed 'Peter' and 'Paul' and conveyed them as ignorant young men who displayed many psychopathic tenancies. This included aggression which we mirrored in our opening as 'Frank' violently threw his mother's arm into the
bath tub.


Peter and George showed obvious signs of psychopathy as they were overwhelmingly charming, self centred and impulsive, however I didn't want Frank to show these signs as it may have been too obvious to an audience that this character is disturbed which would leave no element of tension. The main aim was to create a suspenseful climatic atmosphere to shock the audience which meant not giving too much of the character away. I felt that we did this by deciding to not film Patrick's face and just his body as it leads an audience to be more intrigued with the character.