Task 10 Evaluation - Foundation Portfolio: Question 2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Our film challenges the generic look of a male protagonist in a film noir which is shown as this intellectual male adult with a combover and all the women falling at his feet, rather than use this pre-conceived image of the character we decided to use a male teenager. This is because we chose to dispute codes and conventions of our respective genre to show that everyone can do something great regardless of their class, ethnicity and economical background. 

Another element of film noirs is the generalization made toward women being deceitful in the form of a femme fatal. So in our film we decided to go against the very patriarchal views which most film noirs share, so instead of casting a woman as the victim reaching out we made them a male. This is due to male members of society not having to conform to gender roles as a man can play the role of a femme fatal with no questions being asked but if a woman was to play the role of the male protagonist this wouldn't sit right with a lot of male viewers. This shows the naivety of male audiences as they dont except gender equality in the film world. Another convention we challenged is the fact that in the film industry they try and hide violence to children so in our film when you explicitly see a child get shot, this will be controversial as it brings a dark issue to the forefront of the viewer's mind as they all understand that violence does happen to children but sometimes refuse to accept it. Therefore this shows that no matter your age you can accept responsibility. 

The majority of film noirs today only ever represent adults as doing something so we decided that using a teenager in our film will not only appeal to a wider audience, but actually get more exposure. It has been proven in recent times that using such young protagonists and antagonists is a successful formula through films such as the 'Hunger Games' series and the 'Divergent' series, both of which are now extremely popular and have a cult following of young people who find them easy to relate to.   

This film is aimed at children and adults, its aimed at children to inspire them to do something adult like and accept responsibility from a younger age. Its aimed at adults to change the preconceived ideas they have about children doing noting other than being a menace to society. People talk about how our generation will be the ones ruling the country in years to come but why not start early and show that we are more mature and can act like adults? This looks at teenagers, and represents them in a completely different way and allows audiences to view them in a positive manner rather than negative.