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

In order to represent particular social groups we used exaggerated characters. Being having opposite and contrasting characters it allowed us to show a spectrum of society involving all social classes.    

CHARACTERS

Character research- we looked at characters from other chick-flicks and tried to incorporate their traits into our characters. 

Legally Blonde- Elle Woods

Protagonist

• perfect life
• blonde 
• pretty 
• popular
• upper class
• fashionable
• kind
• friendly

Wild Child

Protagonist

Fashionable 

spoilt

Rich 

upper class

kind really

in reality doesn't have a perfect life

 SCARLETT

• New girl at school 
• Colour scheme- Red. Used to represent danger and rebellion. Also it is used to contrast Lauren's character.
• Her appearance is very dramatic compared to Lauren. She has dark red lips, jet black hair and dark eyes. Her costume is used to focus the audience on to the type of character that she will be. Her skirt is very short and skin tight- this was done to sexualise her character and make the difference between her and Lauren much clearer. 
• As a character she is the typical rebellious teen. Shots of her room indicate her involvement in drinking and smoking. Shots of her make up are to reinforce her awareness of appearance. In addition shots of her phone as her alarm are also included as it shows her as a modern teenager. 
• Scarlett is constantly moving from school to school and city to city meaning she must make new friends at each school that she attends. This is shown through school prospectuses and objects showing she has travelled. This idea of permanently have to relocate is common with many children so is easily relatable.
• It is clear from her room and appearance that she is a school girl although there is no specific mention of her age but her liberal uniform suggests to the audience that she is in sixth form. 
• In many films there is a lack of ethnic diveristy within them as they are often portrayed with white American/ British actors. However we wanted there to be diversity within our and to incorporate  the different aspects within a modern day society. The use of an India actress allows us to achieve this as well as being able to widen out target market.

LAUREN

• Popular girl at school
• Colour Scheme- Pink. Used to represent her girly character and to suggest youth and innocence.
• The appearance of Lauren is very natural. Her make up is very simple and minimal compared to Scarlett. Lauren is depicted as the typical all British girl with blonde hair and blue eyes. Her costume is further used to exaggerate this side of her character with typical British tweed blazer and pearl earrings. Her school uniform suggests to the audience that Lauren is of a certain class which would be further reinforced throughout the film. 
• Unlike many protagonists within chick flicks Lauren is a genuinely nice character who is liked by many of her peers. 
• Lauren is depicted as a very girly girl. The wide pans of her room show her variety of nail varnishes along with close ups of her pink desk and bed. Furthermore you are able to see the sporty side of the character through a focused shot of her medals. This further enforces the idea that Lauren is the all round perfect character. Her room is much neater than Scarlett's further showing contrasts between the two characters. 
• Like in many films the protagonist of Pretty Popular was white British. This was done to reinforce the idea of a british themed feel and allowed us to keep conventions of the classic chick flick film genres.  

IMPROVEMENTS TO THE CHARACTERS  

• The characters were perhaps too exaggerate which may have given an unnatural and fake feel to the characters. This many have meant that people couldn't relate to them fully.  
• The character of Scarlett was overly sexualised with her costume and character traits which were a bit unrealistic.
• There could have been more of a focus on a class divide between the two characters rather than focusing purely on character traits and appearance. 
• There wasn't enough focus the fact that the two girls were modern teenagers. Looking back to when we originally planned our opening sequence was should have focused more on current technology such as Twitter, Facebook ext... as a way for the characters to communicate and allow the audience to see more of them. We did attempt to include technological shots within our opening sequence however, the shots very jumpy and were very different to the feel of the rest of the film.