Sophie Turner Thriller Evaluation Q2

Our central focus character, Vanessa, is a collage student, so it was important for us to focus on the representation of teenagers in our final product. There are several main teenage stereotypes that are portrayed often in real media. In my opinion the major representations are rebellious, popular and antisocial (outsiders) In order to represent a rebellious group, the characters will perhaps be seen smoking, loitering or wearing dark clothes. An outsider will be represented as quite, awkward and usually intimidated by others. In my opinion there are two distinct forms of popularity within most major films. There’s the friendly, preppy group of teenagers and there are the dominant, intimidating, social manipulators; who are stereotypically, stylish, attractive and athletic. We wanted Vanessa to be a popular teenager although we wanted her to be slightly isolated from society at the same time. Although these two characteristics may be contradicting, we intended Vanessa’s athletic hobby to be personal to her and to symbolise a form of escape from the outside world. Dance allows her to be one with herself, outside of the dance hall she is a social and well-liked girl.


Representation of Protagonist & Antagonist

We conveyed this representation by conforming to the stereotypical appearance of a popular teenage girl, slim, pretty and blonde. We chose for our protagonist to be blonde as Vanessa was based around Donna Kepple from Prom Night. We were also keen on adapting Hitchcock’s trademark blonde bombshell ‘damsel in distress’. We had to establish the fact that Vanessa was the victim of the story, we conveyed this by involving a high angle shot to foreshadow a sense of vulnerability.

Our antagonist was also based on a character from Prom Night, former teacher Richard Fenton. Analysing Fenton led to the idea of the stalker being a janitor as we thought the idea of him being in such close proximity frightening. We chose to represent our stalker as a janitor as they have access to all areas of the school building and often go unrecognised, which presents him as sneaky and enigmatic. We conveyed this mysterious and threatening representation by effective use of sound, camera angels and mise en scene. We made sure not to reveal the antagonist’s face (including ground level shots of walking feet) clothed him in black and furthered this representation with an eerie soundtrack.

We followed the stereotypical thriller convention of having a female as the victim and a male as the aggressor. As women are often represented as the vulnerable and easy targets and men as strong and dominant, whether they are they are the attacker or the saviour.