Q2: How does your media product represent particular social groups?

- Beth Price

What type of characters have we used in our film?

In our film, The Girl I Love, our two main characters are Louie’s character (the antagonist: 18 years old, male, and a college student) and Ellie’s character (the victim: 18 years old, female, British, college student). These two characters are very typical of ‘independent thrillers’; they’re your average British teenagers. Louie’s character is a typical stalker character, however Ellie’s character seems to have slightly more courage than your average Thriller victim.

Mise en Scene.

The location is the main clue to the type of characters that are in this film, as the Opening Title Sequence is mostly around a college. The costumes used are very iconic of British teenagers, giving the audience insight into the characters age and backgrounds. The main props used are the antagonist’s camera, and the victim’s possessions. The camera shows that Louie’s character is stalking Ellie’s, and Ellie’s possessions just reiterate this. Louie’s figure expression showed him to be very nervous; he was fiddling with his hands, and there were prolonged silences when he spoke.

The main prop used in our OTS – the camera, used to take pictures of his victim and build up a shrine.

The college setting for our OTS is clearly shown here – this is used to help determine the age of the characters for first-time viewers.

The Antagonist.

Louie’s character has been represented as a very troubled teenager – he is clearly emotionally unstable, as shown by his unhealthy obsession. The costume his character wears is casual: a dark hoodie and jeans. We chose to dress his character in a black hoodie as it symbolises mystery and, as it covers most of his head it hides his character’s identity. His costume is typical of a British teenager: this, combined with the college setting used, shows that his character is 17/18 years old.

His figure expression shows his character to be very nervous: he fiddles with his hands when talking, and takes a long pause when declaring his love to his victim.

The props we have used in our Opening Title Sequence clearly show his stalker tendencies: he has created a shrine of Ellie in his bedroom (not only containing photographs but also some of her possessions – this shows how close he’s been able to get to her), and he also carries a camera around to take photographs of her. He’s completely oblivious to the fact he might be seen, as shown by his fairly obvious places to hide.

This picture shows our antagonist’s main costume – a black jacket and a dark hoodie. These dark clothes give the character a very dark persona.

This photo shows Louie fiddling with his hands before declaring his love to Ellie. This shows how nervous and unstable he is.

Victim.

The victim, Ellie’s character, is shown to be very naïve; she is completely unaware of the state of Louie’s obsession. She wears casual dress (a shirt, hoodie and leggings), which is typical of a British teenager – this shows that she’s a similar age to Louie.

Her figure expression shows her to be fairly confident, and unaware of her surroundings. She is engrossed in her phone, so much so that she barely notices Louie’s character approaching.

The main props she has is her mobile; as well as showing her age more clearly, this also shows that her character is fairly popular.

In the picture on the right I have shown the victim from the Thriller film Brick; Emily. She is similar in terms of age and appearance to the victim from our film, The Girl I Love. Both of their characters are young college students, however the relationship between the two main characters in Brick is very different to the relationship in our film. Our character’s figure expression when rejecting Louie shows how innocent and naïve she is; blissfully unaware of Louie’s intentions.