Question 2
How does your media product represent particular social groups?
Costume:
The suit he is wearing shows that he is a professional, probably high paid. He takes pride in his appearance as shown in the image above. We wanted to convey the fact that he is suspicious and i think the costume does this well, differing social attitudes following the recession has led to unease towards high paid professionals. This higher social class links to the conventions. The appearance is ambiguous, most audiences will think that he will be the films antagonist because of his shifty looks.
Appearance:
His slicked backed hair and well trimmed app links to the audience thinking that he is a high paid professional, for his appearance we took inspiration from Michael Douglas' character in Wall Street, Gordon Gecko, in that film Gecko was a deceitful, scheming business man and we wanted to reference that in the piece.
Setting:
The house used in the clip is clean and clutter free, this shows that he probably lives alone, presuming he lives in the house. The house looks quite spacious, to do this we showed him in mid shots which revealed the house to be quite big. This goes along with the idea that he is well paid. We wanted his house to look pristine, taking the idea for this from the film American Psycho where the main character, a well paid businessman. His pride of place reflects his own self determination and drive to do well, the shady shots of him, tell the audience his wealth may not have come to him through the most moral of means.
What he does in the clip:
His actions in the clip show him to be a suspicious character, he looks around to see if anyone is watching him and he does the lock on the door. The audience has no idea what he is afraid of but the shots of the briefcase tell them that it is probably something to do with that. He has no dialogue, which makes his role even more ambiguous.
Other Characters:
Gordon Gecko
In Oliver Stones 'Wall Street' (1987) the main antagonist, Gordon Gecko, played by Michael Douglas is a duplicitous stock broker, at the time Wall Street suits had come under fire because of economic problems in the country. This links into our character, society at the moment antagonises most high paid executives. His appearance is very similar to our character, slicked back hair and professional suits make cover up his criminal behaviour
Patrick Bateman
In the 2000 thriller 'American Psycho' Christian Bale plays the psychologically unhinged hedge fund banker who indulges his tortuous and sadistic fantasies throughout the film. The film satirises high paid business men and there evil ways. Bateman's apartment is obsessively clean and his pride of place is a character trait is something we wanted to transplant into our character, it shows a lack of personality, making him seem like an uncaring character devoid of emotion.
We considered some other characters but their influences were only minor they included
Calvin Candie (Leonardo Dicaprio)
Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz)
Mr Blonde (Michael Madsen)
Location
We also tried to find a location that matched some of the places you see these characters in, mainly Patrick Bateman, we went for as simplistic a look as possible as shown in our set photos.
