Question 2

2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?

In our film the main ways in which we represent the social group “Young Couples” is through costume, performance and sound. In each of these we researched which things would complement the viewing for this group and being in our teens our self gave us a head start to what sorts of things we could use to represent our own social groups.

The costumes that the actors wear were picked to suit the character and to fit in with the scenes being acted. Scene one is showing a casual meeting scene at a party at the male characters house, this is why we have chose to dress him in a chequered shirt with jeans and the girl in leggings and nice top as these are the sorts of clothes that are worn to casual “gatherings”. Scene two is the date in the park where the couple start to like each other, Ben is wearing again wearing jeans and shirt but this time we see his bold trainers which are generally linked with young boys as these colours might look strange say on a working man, Alice is wearing leggings, top, long cardigan and Ugg Boots which particularly in the last couple of years is considered a “fashionable” casual look for teenage girls. During the moving in scene and a shot before that the couple also wear hoodies in, which is a classic ideology of teenagers and particularly male teenagers which normally seen as making them more intimidating to elders and children but here it is just worn as a comfortable outfit for being outside.  In a later scene wear the couple are seen to be getting married we tried to keep the costume fashionable and young by making Alice wear a pink flower patterned dress instead of the traditional white wedding dress; we also thought it kept the youth even though they are meant to have aged slightly, Ben is also kept slightly more casual and fashionable by wearing a shirt and waistcoat rather than a full suit. In the final scene Ben and Alice both wear tracksuit bottoms and baggy tops as “home” clothing which keeps them being seen as a young couple because an older couple (30s+) wouldn’t necessarily be going round the house in hoodies and trackies which are again strongly linked to a younger age and social group.

During the scenes the actors appear to age and act more grown up, at the beginning the couple appear more youthful and in love for example when they fall on the floor laughing after Ben proposes to Alice. They also are quite shy and nervous which obviously for a young couple starting a relationship this would be the case, normally confidence is shown in adults which towards the end the performance starts to show this. The scenes where the couple get married is where we see them as a true couple arm in arm walking out of the church, all of the classic cutesy romantic bits like this are the things that are classically linked with couples; holding hands, kissing, hugging etc. 

The music that goes with the film was researched to fit in with the Romantic Comedy genre that appeals to the social group of “Couples”, the fact that we picked the ones that appealed to us make it youthful as well as fitting to a wider audience. The reason behind the piece was that it had low and high points in the music that fit well with the performance of the actors. The piece is called “Road Trip” which we thought fit well with the idea of the couple growing up and starting their lives, which also fits well with the social group of couples because most people don’t go on a road trip alone. The other sounds and folio that represent young couples would mainly be the giggles in the date scene and the speech during the final scene of the male lead (Ben) in the pregnancy scene.

I think overall each element of the film has to represent the target in some way because we made sure to link everything back to the idea of our target audience and how the viewers would perceive things, especially the way that male and female roles are performed and seen so that the audience can engage and link themselves with the characters on screen.