Raynor describes representation as “The process by which the media present the ‘real world’” which means that everything in the media is a representation; everything we see is being represented and this is to portray the stereotypical view of the world.
Due to the fact that our short film had a strong message we wanted to put over to our audience, we thought it would be best if the characters and the storyline were easy for the audience to relate to. To achieve this, we made sure that the characters were quite ‘real’ and stereotypical to the everyday person, however not so extreme that our target audience would feel they couldn’t relate to them. We chose a storyline that is becoming more and more common in the UK to highlight the need for awareness of danger. We did lots of research of statistics for driving accidents and discovered that young males are the most dominant factor in these accidents. This is due to issues such as; driving too fast, the feeling of being invincible, and concentrating on other things i.e. mobile phones, stereos, iPods, etc. Therefore, we decided that we could successfully portray this issue by showing the audience the consequence of choosing option 1) looking at the phone whilst driving, and option 2) pulling over at the side of the road to read the text. From analysing the statistics, we felt that the most effective representation would be to have a young male as the driver who has to make the choice; this is to fit with the actual real life happenings and therefore make it easier for the audience to relate to. If we had, for example, changed the main character to a middle-aged woman, then the outcome and purpose of our film wouldn’t have been the same. The representations alone help attract the target audience and allow them to put themselves in the position of the character, therefore if they cannot relate to them due to lack of similarity, they will find it difficult to do this and the purpose of our film would not have been fulfilled. We have paid great attention to the portrayal and representation of the teenage boy, it was important to us that he did not necessarily appear in a negative light. Although what he did was bad and the purpose of the film was to stop the audience doing the same, we needed it to be clear that this boy wasn’t necessarily a terrible person, he just made the wrong choice – it could have been anyone! Therefore we made him appear as normal as possible, as appose to an extreme stereotype of the current portrayal of youth today. To achieve this representation, we paid extra attention to clothing, props, and location, i.e. normal casual clothing and a car that is popular amongst young men. The audience reacts to this representation and this depends on their own interpretation of the text, strong representations within a text make it more likely for the creators to achieve a preferred reading.
The young boy, the victim, was also represented in the same way. We needed to give the impression that it could have been anyone that fell victim to the accident; we felt that his clothing was going to be the most important and effective representation of a normal, innocent, little boy and that is why we decided to have him in a school uniform. This representation alone would attract a whole new audience – parents – it would make them understand that it could have been their child and encourage them to educate their children to concentrate and be careful when crossing a road.
Representation in our Advanced Portfolio is vital, without attention to representations of the characters and storyline, the message and purpose of the short film would be far less forceful and clear and it would be increasingly difficult for the audience to relate to the goings-on in the film. This is such a hugely important factor of our film as we are trying to convey such a strong message about danger and safety and without strong representations; we would struggle to achieve this.
