Evaluation - Question 2

Question

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

To answer this question I am going to get a still of Jason Statham as he is someone that the main character of  my groups opening sequence is based around and then compare it with the main character from our film 'Loan Shark'.

Here's our main character

Owen Grey played by Graham Trotter

When casting for our main character of Owen Grey we wanted someone that would understand what we were trying to create and would be available to us when we were wanting to film, because with this being a sixth form project people would have different lessons; timetables; and jobs which means at certain times they wouldn't be able to film.

We were also looking someone that was reasonably handsome to play our lead character, because even though our main demographic are 15-34 year old males, if we had a handsome main character that would attract a female audience and earn the film more money in the box office. However I felt that the lead character also had to be someone that could relate to the audience in there appearance by not being the typical muscular actor with the fairy tale good looks like Tom Cruise or George Clooney.

Also, due to the appearance of our main character I feel that he challenges the conventions of the typical Action Adventure movie star. This is because a normal convention with the stars of Action Thrillers is for the main character to be thin or muscular and look like he can handle a fight, while with our main character he is overweight and you wouldn't put a safe bet on him to win a fight, however this means that he is able to share more of a connection with the people that are in his position whether that's overweight or low on cash.

The mise en scene is also good for this character as he doesn't wear any watches or necklaces and nor does he have expensive clothes. This was vital for the feel of the film as the main character is someone that 

Taken all of this together we decided as a group that I should be the main star in the opening sequence of Loan Shark, because it was most suitable to us and due to my appearance I fit in with the chosen demographic of 15-34 year old males mostly from Britain as I'm not dashing with my looks but I'm good enough to attract a female audience and I'm slightly overweight and that'll create a connection to the audience even more, because I'm not super skinny and it's more realistic in a way.

Jason Statham

Jason Statham is an actor that has traditionally played the typical hard man in all of his films that can protect everyone and himself. One of the reasons that Jason Statham inspired us when creating our main character Owen Grey was because he still does a lot of low-budget films with British film companies and as we're a British Film Company that is creating the production of Loan Shark we that he was a good person to set our character around.

However, another reason why we chose Jason Statham to base our main character around was, because he appeals to the same audience as he mostly does Action Thriller films which is the genre that we are doing. So this means that basing our character around Jason Statham we should be able to attract the same audience which is 14-35 year olds.

Two males aged 14-35 looking at a film poster with Jason Statham on it.

Similarities

• Jason Statham is someone that a British audience can relate to, because he is British.
• A lot of his films our where he is the good guy that has to save someone.
• The clothing that he wears in Killers Elite (where for a part of the film he is trying to save Robert De Niro) are clothes that most people would wear.
• In both of the films ('Killers Elite' and 'Loan Shark') the main characters are both people who have had someone very important to them kidnapped and are looking to find the person and get their revenge on the guilty parties involved.

Differences

• In the film Killers Elite he is a professional killer while in our film Loan Shark our main character is just an unemployed man.
• He is the typical Hollywood hard guy in the way that he has a muscular body and a grizzly voice, while I have a bit of a stomach and a soft voice.
• I Killers Elite  the film grows and turns to be part of a government conspiracy, while in 'Loan Shark' it is just simply someone in a poor economic state trying to track down his wife and her kidnappers.