Kirsty - AS Media

I knew that I wanted to cast teenagers in my film to make it easy to relate to for my target audience. When looking into teenagers in thrillers, I found that often, they were cast as the victims. This is due to the idea that they're still innocent and young, and thus unable to handle the scenario the film throws them into. Their vulnerability makes it easier for the audience to identify with them. 

 In my film, I both conform and disobey this idea, as I have teenagers cast as not only my victims, but my antagonist. Though the antagonist's age isn't clear, by using it, it represents the brokenness of our generation - how sometimes, the scariest problem we face is our peers. 

 Usually, a thriller uses both genders - however, the role of the strong character is often given to the male and the role of the victim is often the female. This may be due to the fact that the target audience of thrillers is predominantly male, and by making them feel like the hero (or at the very least, be able to identify with a brave character), their target audience enjoys the film more. Not only that, but if females are used, they often conform to the male gaze theory - beautiful, a sexual object for the male character, and added for the male audience's pleasure.

 We experimented a little when it came to gender and the roles they're associated with. We decided to have two female protagonists, and our antagonist was male. Though this may appear that we wanted to represent all men as evil, that was not our reasoning. We believed that by using severe binary opposites, the contrast between good and wicked would be more effective. Our protagonists,  characters Tyler and Charlie, both have blonde hair and light eyes, whereas our antagonist has dark brown hair and some stubble. Though we had female protagonists, we made sure that their names could be used fluently between both sexes, a factor that may not be as obvious, but shows that anyone, any gender, can be good. 

 I believe that our film conforms to the male gaze theory in aesthetics, as our lead character, Charlie, is played by an attractive young woman - however, she isn't used as a male character's love or sexual interest, and though the male audience may enjoy her being onscreen, we didn't cast her for how she looked, but because she was an incredible actress. We knew that girls may be within our secondary audience, coming along with their male friends or on a date - we wanted to empower them and encourage them to step outside of gender stereotypes. Although Tyler Munson, who plays Charlie, is beautiful, she also appears strong as she is tall and naturally slightly muscular. Outside of media, she actually wants to become a bodybuilder! We wanted  to challenge gender roles, because recognising that anyone can do anything no matter what gender they identify as is becoming a more and more important and popular message to share. 

 I wouldn't say that class is very obviously represented in our film, because the plot wasn't focused on any aspect of it. However, our characters are middle class as when researching, of all the classes, the middle class watched thrillers the most. This is contradicting of the higher class being on screen, as often, their "perfect" lives are torn apart by the plot of thrillers. We decided to challenge this stereotype as we wanted our audience to be able to relate to the film more efficiently, and as it wasn't about representing how unimportant materialism is.