Question 2

Firstly, our thriller challenges generic conventions of this genre by having a main female character who is portrayed as capable, strong and not in any way reliant a male character for anything. This is a common archetype for women to be represented in many thrillers, women can be objectified, such as in the thriller film Casino Royale, where women are often sex objects for the main protagonist James Bond. Or they are the character type ‘damsel in distress’ who need to be saved by physically and mentally stronger males such as in the thriller film The Dark Knight, where the female romantic partner to the main protagonist Batman needs saving by him. An incredibly common conventional role for women to play within thrillers is a femme fatal, this role often does give some power to women because it contradicts another negative stereotype of women not only in thrillers but in the wider film industry in which they refuse to play the role of devoted wife and loving mother that mainstream society prescribes for women.

Instead a femme fatal is deviant, independent and dangerous, however this is often the reason they are killed, showing that it is bad for women to be like this and attempt to have more power than men as it will result in their downfall. Alongside the fact that most femme fatal are often oversexualised and objectified, which is mostly how they gain power, like in the film noir Double Indemnity with the femme fatal called Phyllis. Or the femme fatale Gilda out of the thriller Gilda, where she is seductively singing “put the blame on mame”, using her body to hypnotize men, therefore overall her character type is a positive for her because she gains power, but is still sexualised through her strip teasing. This is why we chose not to have this specific character type, as when researching we found that the overall representation of a femme fatal was negative, and we wanted to challenge negative stereotypes of women in thrillers and the wider film industry. There are many more negative stereotypes of women within the thriller genre which always seem to portray them as of less or secondary importance compared to men, they have less power or are flawed in some way in contrast to their male counterparts, these can be more roles such as simple love interests or props to men.

However, our thriller opening challenges these patriarchal archetypes, which is the direction many new and modern thriller films are taking, making this these stereotypes become outdated and old fashioned and putting men and women on an equal ground within thrillers, and the wider film industry. For example, in the very recent thriller films like Gone Girl, where there are many strong female characters such as the determined and smart detective Rhonda or the antagonist Amy who is incredibly smart, deviant and powerful right throughout the whole film. Or Kill Bill chapter one where the subgenre is action, so there is a lot fight and confrontation scenes and gender is portrayed equally and of unimportance, when it comes to this fighting and who wins. We chose to do this because it is a more contemporary view that suits our target audience.

Additionally, men can be negatively represented in films also, where if they are anything but strong, masculine or powerful then they aren’t as worthy as other male characters. One example of this is on the TV programme The Walking Dead which subgenre is thriller, where the story is about survival. One character called Eugene is portrayed as less likable compared to the other male and stronger characters, he also is less traditionally masculine and macho, and one of the only characters like this, therefore suggesting being male is all about masculinity, power and dominance. We have also chose to ignore this representation of men, however it is argued that the negative representation of women within thriller films and the wider film industry is a lot more prominent and passive, whereas for men they aren’t as categorised and discriminated compared to women.

We have tried to contradict negative stereotypes by not even showing masculine and feminine behaviours and traits within our opening and characters. For example, our female antagonist’s costume, at first doesn’t even reveal her gender because it is unidentifiable and androgynous, her face is hidden because she is wearing a hood, also she is wearing an unfeminine large coat, with the lack of jewellery, which is often associated with a femme fatal, and our camera shots and movements doesn’t give her gender away through no close ups or extreme close ups of her face. Therefore, establishing that her gender is of unimportance and irrelevant within this opening, and this is not what the audience should be focusing upon. This adds upon the generic mystery theme within the genre, because it contradicts the anticipation of characters’ moves and behaviours often associated with their gender, such as women over reacting and becoming hysterical in unnerving times and crisis’, while men stay calm and in control.

Whereas in our opening the female murderer isn’t hysterical and over emotional while she is killing her victim, she is in control, composed and calm, and isn’t there for the male gaze. Moreover, when Holly’s gender is finally revealed there is no ambient sound or lighting to emphasise this moment and make it of importance, so it is conveying to the audience the fact that a women and not typically a man in thriller films doing this psychotic murder, that again her gender isn’t what’s important about this moment. Also the general mise en scene surrounding the two main male and female characters isn’t typically feminine or typically masculine, we attempted to keep it pretty neutral through a plain and pastel colour palette, with no bright pinks or blues often associated with each gender. We tried to make to Holly’s character type similar to Mallory Knox out of the thriller Natural Born Killers, where she is ruthless, dangerous and carries a gun with her at all times, contradicting what the audience may think of her capabilities as a woman which are often shown in the film industry in which she will not be capable of this murder. Or similar to Lisbeth Slander who is a computer hacker, a role traditionally filled with a male, and is uncompromising and determined to her cause, similarly in our production Holly will do anything to get to Billy.

The fact that in my opening the two characters, Billy and Holly are both white may contradict the equality approach we attempted to take with gender along into ethnicity. However, because there is no dialogue what so ever, it isn’t confirmed that the only two characters within this opening are definitely white British, because we cannot hear their accents. They could be from any other background where white people are, like South Africa or Australia, it’s all open to the audience’s interpretation. This in a sense places another irrelevance on what ethnicity the characters are, because it doesn’t place any importance or give any clues away on it, therefore suggesting it overall doesn’t matter, but I don’t think we did as good of job on diversifying ethnicity as we did gender, because the 6th form is mainly white British therefore it was difficult to find available characters to make it more diverse, who could fit our shooting schedule. Unfortunately, many other thriller films have problems with being diverse and even representing ethnic minorities at all, for example the Essex Boys opening, only shows white British males in its opening and mostly throughout the film.

Furthermore this has been a prominent issue raised within the award ceremony the Oscars, where it was shown to be an institutional problem where the reviewers and nominators for the films are mostly all white males, so the ceremony is culturally bias because of this and films and actors nominated were mostly white also. This racist and institutionalised under representation of ethnicities is a trend and issue of the wider film industry. Although in Britain today, about 83% of the total population are white British, as our target audience are British teenagers, I don’t think that we have harshly discriminated and underrepresented ethnic minorities. As we only have two characters and its only two minutes long, our under representation isn’t as bad as the film industry’s, where they seem to portray ethnic minorities as non-existent, and if we were to make a longer opening/film, we would have definitely included a more diverse cast.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hd6_uMyjDU8

Our representation of British youth doesn’t do well in challenging the stereotypes the film industry has in todays society. For example Holly is wearing a hood, therefore associated with the dodgy lower class ‘hoodie’ stereotype of a younger person, like in Attack the Block. Establishing that they are the more evil character in our production and we don’t do anything to later to challenge this view, we let the audiences anticipation and expectations of Holly being dodgy and criminal come true. Additionally another preconception of youth in general is being obsessed with fitness and their looks, often associated with teenage girls more often than boys. However we have done this with our male character Billy, therefore putting them on an equal ground as its showing it happens to males as well as females, and shown that he is not overly or unhealthily obsessed with fitness.

Therefore I think that this is progressive and positive representation of youth contrasting the other middle class fear that the youth are lazy and dependent, especially in the economy where it is difficult to find a job at a young age, therefore teenagers are labelled as just lazy ,good for nothing and the answers for these inadequacies. Whereas our protagonist is being productive, he is being healthy and useful by washing up. Both characters are shown to be isolated because there's no dialogue; they're are in isolated locations like the empty forest; there are no other characters apart from them whatsoever, which is another negative representation we are reinforcing within our thriller. However when I was researching thriller films I found that there was an under representation of teenagers as characters, they're barely appear in thriller film and if they do they're negatively represented and of secondary importance to their older counterparts, such as out of the thriller Taken, the protagonist has to save his teenage daughter, who was ‘stupid’ enough to get kidnapped. In contrast our production presents them as main characters and ‘normalises’ them, not showing that because they're teenagers, this is to blame for their flaws.