After we decided on the story for our short film, and finalised the synopsis, plot and story; we then discussed how we wanted to represent gender, age, relationships, social group or any other issues and ideas to appeal to our target audience but to also not discriminate or offend anyone else, and so we had to think about all aspects of representation in this film.
One of the most important aspects of the story is the fact that our two characters, only characters, are brother and sister, and so we wanted to represent their relationship as being a positive one so that the brother/sister sibling relationship isn't portrayed as something that is always bad and an unhappy thing as this is not the case the majority of the time and so we wanted to present this relationship as being relatable for our audience; a factor that could also be found comedic.
For the brother and sister relationship to come across as positive, we'll show the two of them getting along; this will be done through the dialogue, the lighting won't be harsh or dark, instead we'll use soft/bright lighting to convey and represent the happiness and laughter shared between them.
However, even though siblings can get on, it's also well known that there is also a natural rivalry and power to annoy each other; we all agree that this is common knowledge shared by everyone who has sibling(s) and maybe even by those who don't, and to present an accurate portrayal of this relationship, we all agreed that we also need to share this annoying side of having a brother/sister with the audience for them to relate to.
We wanted to portray our characters as being the average brother and sister pair, and by doing this, we then need to present their genders as being what you'd typically expect to see from a male or female teenager, but without following stereotypes that could be offensive to anyone.
We want to show that the female character has an interest in what she looks like; and so she'll be wearing make up, but we don't want this to come across in a negative way at all and so this characteristic won't over power the rest of her personality and so we won't make it come across as vein as it's a negative attribute that's often stereotyped. As well as the female caring about her appearance, we will also present the male as caring about his looks by showing him touching to hair, maybe a bit too much; this isn't to come across as vein negatively, but to seem funny to the audience because it's either relatable for them that they're seeing this happen that they themselves or someone they know do.
As well as this, we will show them texting and playing on their phones a fair bit as we all agreed that this is a typical attribute of this generation and therefore we feel it's a good idea to show this factor to make it relatable and realistic for the audience as we try to appeal to them and to present social realism.
This is also a characteristic that is typical of the age group we want to show as well as who we want to appeal to.
Although we aim to show the 'average' teenager, teenagers are very diverse and are all very unique, and so it will be difficult to show the 'average' out of every teenager out there, however, we will portray the characters as best we can to not offend any viewers.
Showing these characteristics can also be done through the make up, hair and costume of our characters; we have already looked into how we can achieve the desired portrayal of the brother and sister as being average teenagers; you can see this blog post here:
http://advancedportfolio201521.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/makeup-and-costume.html
Social class is also an aspect that is important to the representation of our short story; and so as a group, we also discussed how we think this should be presented.
We decided that our characters are going to be part of the lower to middle social class; this is because it is the most common class that college students are a part of and so our characters will be presented as belonging this class through the belongings; smartphones, laptops; as well as the house; a semi detatched or detatched house on a middle class street.
As well as this, we want to show our brother and sister characters to still be living at home as the vast majority of college students are, and we want to create a film that is relateable for our audience. We also wanted to represent this class because it's the same class as who we are targetting, and they have the most disposbale income to spend their leisure pound on the cinema.
