How does your media product represent particular social groups? Scarlett: Age: 19 Gender: Female Social Class: Middle Class Nationality; British Our protagonist, Scarlett, is in her late teens. This is not uncommon in the thriller genre as a large section of the target audience are young adults. Other thriller films using this age group are Brick and The Hitcher. However, in contrast to the conventions of thrillers, she is female. Women often appear as the helpless victim so it is rare to see a strong leader presented as a girl. This idea was inspired by the film Hard Candy as it also features a young girl as the heroine. Other aspects of Scarlett are fairly typical – middle class, white. It could be seen as unusual to have a British character as the protagonist as they often play villains, but as it is a British film, this could be expected. Overall, Scarlett is not completely unconventional for a thriller film but could be viewed as uncommon. At the beginning of the story, she is made to appear as the common vulnerable female as she is being threatened and followed, portraying her as the victim. However, our film shows the character development and reveals she is strong, resourceful and will overcome the antagonist who has been stalking her. The clothes that Scarlett wears are aimed to be fairly simple as we wanted her to appear to be fairly ordinary, following the normal-person-in-dangerous-situation feature that is used so often in thrillers. However, we avoided clothes that were too feminine as this would make her appear more defenceless due to the conventions of thrillers and would undermine the idea that she is a bold and defiant character. For this reason, we also avoided makeup with pinkish tones as this appears too innocent. Instead, we used dark eye makeup to make her look daring.

Emily: Age: 21 Gender: Female Social Class: Middle Class Nationality; British The character, Emily, is typical of the thriller genre. She plays the helpless victim in the film, as featured in many thrillers. The victim is often as a female, as they are portrayed as the weak who need rescuing, usually by the protagonist. However, in contrast to most thriller films, Emily isn’t saved by the protagonist and instead dies. Her death acts as a catalyst for the leading role to seek vengeance on the antagonist. Emily is supposed to be quite innocent, vulnerable and naïve. To display this is the film, she wore a bracelet that was made to look slightly childish to reflect her personality. Also, the actress who played Emily looked younger than 21 as this will give her the impression of being youthful. This character is heavily inspired by Emily, from Brick. For this reason, we decided to name our own character after her. This is reflected by using the bracelet. As you can see to the right, Emily also wore a bracelet that can be seen as slightly juvenile. Another way in which our film mirrors Brick, is that the helpless female victim is killed. Marcus Age: 20 Gender: Male Social Class: Middle Class Nationality: British The antagonist, Marcus, is both convention and unconventional of the thriller genre. Most of the time, villains in thriller films are presented as rich, wealthy and sophisticated, which is very unlike Marcus, He is more psychotic, similar to John Doe from Se7en. Whilst many villains are more like Vincent from Collateral, there are some thriller films that also have stalkers as the antagonist such as Stalking Laura. The character is meant to seem violent, unstable and devious. He is also made to appear intimidating and powerful as well. To try and convey this in the film, he is dressed only in black, which can represent malicious or evil. He is concealed by the trees, watching the protagonist, increasing the feel of uneasiness as they are oblivious to his presence. His face was deliberately hidden in the film, to leave mystery to him as his identity is meant to be unknown.

The first location we used was designed to look like a normal, middle-class house, as this reflects the characters. This would conform to the conventions of thriller films as they often have normal people in a dangerous situation, as I mentioned before. It is not uncommon to see in thriller films... Other films using normal characters as their protagonists are 'Brick', 'Zodiac' and 'Lucia'.