Task 2

How does your product represent social groups?

What are the social groups represented in terms of gender, age, class, race .etc?Is gender represented in a stereotypical way? I.e. men dominant and women passive

In our film we have chosen for Ethel May to seem like a happy little girl evidence from this is seen in our title sequence when she is playing outside skipping, but really Ethel-May is a troubled young girl and lonely, when she goes to a new foster home she doesn’t settle and chooses to isolate herself from others around her. Ethel-May is originally from the low class where her family had a bad abusive relationship leading her mum to leave her father at a young age, which left Ethel-May feeling different to others around her. When she was a small child her father physically and emotionally abused her, leading to her having low self-esteem. When her parents were together the father dominated the household as the mother and Ethel-May were both scared of him. Ethel-mays childhood can also relate to Esther in the film orphan as she spent most of her life in foster care, and had a bad upbringing from family which influenced her actions.

Ethel May Esther

Main Character

We chose to use a 12 year old girl as our main character, we got this idea from the film Orphan(2009) where the main character was 33years old who was in disguise as a 8 year old. Both characters have a innocent look to them making the audience question if they are the killers. In both films as well the audience have more knowledge of the plot and know that the little girls are the killers, we got this idea from the film Orphan so the audience are waiting to see what happens next. By the way we have presented our character by her clothing and makeup is very little to show how young she is. In both films the characters contradict themselves as they are both seen to kill and hurt throughout the film without the family knowing.

The characters in our film In our title sequence, the characters that are presented is only Ethel-May, we chose to do this because we wanted the focus to be on her as the title sequence montage of events is the most important scene in our film as throughout the film the storyline is related back to this event of her killing her mother, as it has to be noticed by the audience. In our film later on other characters are involved such as the therapist where throughout the film it shows previous footage from Ethel-May in therapy where the therapist begins to learn that it was Ethel who killed her mother. Dramatic irony is used in our title sequence as the audience know that Ethel has killed her mum before her foster family and therapist know.

Characters rolesThe therapists role in the film is to comfort a troubles young girl who has experienced a lot for someone her age, his main role is that he discovers what she has done and needs to tell the foster family before its too late. In the film the therapist is the only person that Ethel-May can trust, and throughout the film you see there friendship grow. Although Ethel-May doesn't tell the therapist what she done she says meaningful phrases where the therapist looks back on all his notes and begins to build a theory that she killed her mother.

Another key character in the film is her foster brother, who although she doesn't seem interested in him due to her upbringing from not having friends, he makes effort throughout the film to include her and to try and have a relationship with him, she repays him by at the end killing him.

In our title sequence we thought that to add mystery to our thriller film, that we wouldn't include a full shot of Ethel-May showing her face, in several shot you can see her but only in individual shots are her facial features seen by the audience e.g. A extreme close up of her eye and another shot of her from the back tying her hair up.