Task 2

How does your product represent social groups?

Main Character

Ethel-May is our main character, she is a 12 year old girl, who had a low class. When she was a young girl she was abused by her father and her father also abused her mother, therefore dad was dominate and controlling, she felt unloved and not wanted by her parents. Ethel-May’s mother left her father at a young age due to the abuse. Her abused childhood affected her at school, she was very quiet and lonely, making herself unpopular with the other pupils, as she was unpopular the other pupils would bully her for this as well and this lowered her self esteem. As her father was very controlling and dominate, Ethel-May picked up on this then becoming dominate and controlling over her mother which lead to the death of her mother, Ethel-Mays dads action influenced her into taking action and killing her mother. Ethel-May then became fostered by a middle class family, which was a big change from her lower class original family.

Ethel-Mays loneliness is showed in our opening sequence as she does a lot of activities by herself such as, going to the park and using the skipping rope. She comes across quiet old for her age, as she pours herself a cup of tea when stressed. We made her look more dominant by filming some of the over the shoulder shots to see from her point of view.

This links into our target audience as Ethel-May is a young female and our target audience is young females and males.

Esther

Ethel-May

ComparisonEsther, is the main character in the film The Orphan, and Ethel-May are similar as they have both had a troubled childhood and both been into care and then put into middle class foster homes. Esther and Ethel-Mays personalities are similar, they both appear innocent and isolate themselves from others causing both to be unpopular and do a lot alone. Esther and Ethel-May have a very similar expressions, the blank non caring expression, but also the same stressful face. We have not got many shots of Ethel-May in our opening sequence though, so it is hard to compare the expressions etc. they are both similar as when with the foster family both girls come across caring but also show dominance and being controlling as Esther is controlling over the father and Ethel-May is controlling over the whole family.

Some differences are that ethel-May is 12 years old and Esther is a 33 year old woman pretending to be 8 years old. Ethel-May and Esther’s appearances are very different, Esther’s appearance is more unusual than Ethel-Mays and she wears a lot of dark clothing.

Characters in our film.

Our title sequence only includes our main character as we thought that we should focus on her as the montage sequence of events is about what happens with her and is based around her and what she does. The storyline of the title sequence links back to the killing of her mother, it gives the audience a brief idea of what happens before the film actually starts. Dramatic irony is used in our title sequence as the audience know that Ethel-May has killed her mother before her foster family and therapist know.

Other characters in the film include the therapist who is there to comfort the young girl, his main role is to find out what she has done and to tell the foster family before its too late. The therapist is the only person she can trust, Ethel-May does not tell the therapist what she has don’t but she drops hints and uses certain phases which makes the therapist suspicious.

Another key character is the foster brother, who Ethel-May is not keen on knowing as she likes to keep herself to herself, he realizes something is wrong with her, so she kills him.