Evaluation Question 2: How does your media product represent particular social groups?

The most important message we wanted to convey in our film is the idea that cyber bullying can affect anyone without us realising that it is even taking place. It is extremely difficult to identify those who are bullying and those who are victims of such abuse and we wanted to make this point in our film.                                                            

We believe in modern society there is very little one can do to identify someone who is being bullied online and this is why we made our actor dress up in a very typical outfit for someone who is aged 16-19. There was also the more in-depth decision to have our actor dress in red because we felt that was a good representation of danger within our film, hence why we chose the red car to be the one of key significance because it stood out from the rest of the cars within the frame. 

Typical teenage clothing often found in Topman, River Island etc. 

                                  

With the bully, again we felt if we were going to create a realistic depiction of bullying, we shouldn’t revert to creating a stereotypical image of one because we are trying to show that a bully and his victim are indistinguishable, which is why he is also dressed in typical clothing, though we wanted him to dress in darker clothing to perhaps make it slightly clearer to the audience.

There is also a height difference between the two characters and in this sense we are reverting to typical conventions of the genre in that generally speaking, the character with more power will be of a bigger physical presence. However as you see in the film, and in real life, one can not judge a person on face value and although our character Sean is smaller than his bully Ollie, the effects of abuse have taken its toll on him and despite perhaps being weaker he feels that he must carry out his revenge no matter what obstacle stands in his way.

This was the realistic mentality we were trying to capture in our film. If someone is being bullied, they often show a disregard for the consequences of their actions even though they may be harming themselves and those around them. In this case Sean does not think of the consequences he may face when knocking Ollie out because he is so overwhelmed with anger.