How does your media product represent particular social groups?
The film opening that we made was inspired by a real life story of Fred and Rose West, who now have a documentary about them. Fred and Rose West were also a couple, now known for their psychotic murders and rapes of young female victims. In comparison Fred and Rose West are similar to the characters of our media product because of fact that they are both seen as being a normal elderly couple but have dark secrets. This is shown in our media product through the way in which the victim is presented in the film opening, she is shown in a fast shot and doesn't have a big role other than flashes to her being tied up and having tape over her mouth. This was inspired by the story of Fred and Rose West as when they kidnapped or raped a female, they would cover their mouths and usually whole faces with tape as well as tie them up so they are unable to move or scream for help.
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| Fred and Rose West
Fred West meet Rose after he moved to Gloucester, Rose was 16 when she got married and became pregnant with Fred's first child. Rose committed her first murder while Fred was in prison for theft, she had murdered Fred's daughter from his ex-wife and his step-daughter who she then buried in a field. Rose also became a prostitute because Fred wanted her to and was several times raped by her own father after the permission of Fred to sleep with his daughter. This carried on for years, as well as them both murdering and raping a number of girls they picked up from bus stops and their own daughters. Bodies of these girls were found in cut up pieces in the couples house cellar and buried under the patio of their house. I believe that this is the type of background story that our characters have and if the opening was to be made into a full film, then this story-line would fit in perfectly.
Similarities and differences:
In terms of appearance, the characters in our media product were not very similar to Fred and Rose West because of the fact that we had to use makeup to make a young boy and girl into elderly looking people which was tough on its own. However, i believe that we were able to very well make the young boy and girl look elderly enough for the audience to believe it. Costumes wise, Rose and the female character of our product wore reasonably similar clothing, such as floral dresses. On the other hand Fred West and the Male character of our product did not have similar clothing because we wanted to make our character look more careless and rough than Fred West himself. The female and male characters of our media product both don't have the usual symbolic values that a normal elderly couple would have, this is because of the fact that they are both psychotic murderers and rapists and the audience would never suspect that unless they were given hints about it.
We chose the characters we chose because of the genre conventions of our media product, such as thriller, crime and mystery. This idea of an elderly couple living a secret doing things that no one would expect them to do shows the convention of mystery and the idea of them murdering young female victims shows the conventions of a thriller film. This is shown in our media product through the way in which they come across as a normal couple making breakfast showing mystery as well as the flashes of the victim tied up crying showing conventions of a thriller. However there re not many conventions of crime in our product but similarly to what happened in the real story of Fred and Rose West, they are later on found out about and deal with police searching their house; which presents conventions of a crime film.
Documentary on Fred and Rose West: http://documentaryaddict.com/films/25-cromwell-street-murders-fred-and-rose-west |
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