Question 2

Representation means portraying a certain person/object in a certain image.

The media use representation to create specific groups of people by portraying the typical person for each group sometimes in a biased or simplified way. This could include magazines designed just for men or women parting the two groups. 

Our thriller protagonist:                                                                          Law Abiding Citizen: Protagonist

 

 

 

 

The similarities of these two characters include:

Both of these characters are victims in the thriller genre. Our protagonist is the victim of murder by a hidden killer while LAC includes a victim of his family being murder in front of him.

Both characters start off the thriller leading ordinary lifestyles such as eating breakfast or talking to family but get disrupted by the killers leading to bad consequences further on.

Both are similar being shown as weak characters, one is stabbed while the other is tied up to watch his family be killed and are shown to be completely helpless to stop it.

Both characters share the same class being ordinary citizens living in an urban neighbourhood with a high status as they are quite wealthy due to their surroundings of the house. This is shown by the props used such as China cutlery and pictures on the walls and the size of the house being bigger than average.

 We used a male as the victim’s role. This is because it represents the male group who are most likely to watch the film and roughly the same age and would have a stronger connection psychologically between the victim and the audience who are watching.

 

For both characters wanted to show the audience the characters daily routine set in an average morning. I also wanted to show the character having normal clothes to be worn on a daily basis which also links to the white shirt showing innocence and purity from the character.

The make-up for the character is minimal only for the murder scene with the bloody chest. This is because he has just woken up and doesn’t need makeup as it wouldn’t look realistic.

We used the Mise-en-scene to create the victim by using every day props and costume. For example a plain white t-shirt to represent his pureness and innocence as a character.  We also represented danger towards the victim using Mise-en-scene such as the kitchen knife which is typically used in thriller films as a close range weapon. We also spilt ketchup onto the victim’s white shirt. This was to take the idea of pureness away from the victim before he is killed.

I made sure that there were close up shots than mid shots to keep the main characters identity hidden towards the audience. Anything in the background could give away something significant to the character and for a thriller opening so we tended to just take shots of the victim himself and not spoil anything else towards the audience.