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

In our opening sequence, we focused on the representation of gender, age and race, and we used stereotypical representations, but also challenged some conventions. Whilst challenging conventions, we had to keep in mind that audiences like familiarity, and so we tried not to subvert too many stereotypes as that would alienate our audience. We also avoided tokenism.

GENDER

Stills showing the possible romance between Charlie and Sam in 'Perks of Being a Wallflower' and Lila and
Noah in our film

Stills showing Sally's thoughtfulness in 'The Art of Getting By' compared to Lila blogging in our film (highlighting her thoughtfulness), and also Lily's quirky dress sense in 'Little Birds'

AGE

As our film is a coming-of-age drama, we obviously had to focus on the representation of age. Young people in society are branded as ignorant, antisocial, rude "youths", and so many dramas follow this stereotype. For example, many of the characters in 'This is England' are represented in this negative way.

• In our film opening, our three protagonists are thoughtful and lovable, challenging this convention.

This GIF shows our three protagonists (Lila, Jess and Noah) jumping at the top of the hill, which is quite a playful, loveable action

Jess wearing a funky khaki
coat in 'Turning Pages'

RACE

People of Oriental ethnicity are usually represented as quite geeky or quiet and obsessed with studying in coming-of-age films, for example, Lilly in 'Pitch Perfect' and the "Asian Nerds" in 'Mean Girls'.

• Jess is represented as quite cool and quirky, subverting the stereotype. This is evident by her fashion sense but also her sarcasm in our opening sequence.

We have represented our three protagonists, Lila, Jess and Noah, quite positively as we thought that teenagers like to relate to the main characters in a coming-of-age drama and see themselves in them, rather than disliking certain characters and creating their own conflicts with them. In our film as a whole, the slightly more minor characters may be represented more negatively - for example, we thought that Lila's parents would be quite uptight and strict, not wanting her to go on her journey, creating more tension.