Health check - discuss the way that women are represented in the media

Women have always been represented through media as maternal, seeking marriage or judged on for their looks. 

To begin i will use the music video Blurred Lines to show how women are represented. In this video we see attractive half naked women dancing around men, instantly they are being represented as attractive and sexualised. This conforms to Laura Mulvey 1975 theory of the male gaze, this says that women are objectified in the media, this media text is largely about the men being statisfied by the girls, this futher supports her theory that the media is made by men for men. 

The women are shown to be very "sexy". This is portrayed through they're make-up of red lipstick and they're clothing. The lip stick can be read into further, as this colour can infer love, passion and attractiveness, this all conforms to the stereotypes of women. This whole media product is based on the women's looks, which is Richard Dyers theory, who says that we treat others on how they are represented, therefore from this mediation we would treat women with less respect and treat them in regard to their looks.

Secondally I will look into the historic film of a Brief Encounter. This representation is very different to the previous one. The character of Lauren conforms to the maternal stereotypes of women as she has a family, two children and a husband. She cooks, cleans, looks after the children and this is shown when the welfare of one of her children is at risk and she shows lots of concern. She is also shown to do her make-up and look at her own refelction to make sure she looks alright. 

Lauren is shown to listen to the men and her husband in particular. This represents women as very passive and that women accept that they should do what they're told by men, and this tells other women in the audience how they should be and tells men they can tell women what the can do. The theory of John Berger 1972 focuses on the "Ways Of Seeing" this is how men look at women, and women see themselves being looked at by men and they are aware that they are being seen from a males point of view. Also compared to the men in the film there is a clear distinction between men and women, the men are employed and the woman isn't.  

Thirdly I will look at the film Sket and the slightly different representations of women. This film challenges the stereotypes of women being attractive, reserved, and polite. The women here are shown to be in a gang and are spiting and swearing, here they are shown as violent and agressive which are stereotypes of men. The theory of Michel Faucoult is the theory that our identity isn't fixed on factors such as gender, age, race or sexuality and this does not define who we are, because he says there is no fixed boundaries to categories such as with the idea of collective identity. He also says that identity is used to exercise power over people in order to prevent them from going outside the fixed boundaries. Alothough the women in this film do not comply with the stereotypes of women, when it comes to their relationship with men they are still dominate. 

Heath check - Analyse your film opening with regards to genre

At the beginning of the year, we created a film opening. We used the genre of horror, as a group we decided that this would be a good choice as the codes and conventions were easier to follow than that of comedy or adventure.

We started filming around four o'clock as it was starting to get dark in the winter, we did this in order to use dark lighting and the weather also contributed as it was raining and cold. However this did work in regards to following the conventions of horror, but some shots are hard to see and are unclear.

In regards of location, we used a childrens park. The park was surrounded by a field and a wood, this created a isolated area, making the characters more vulnerable. The fact we used a childrens park adds a 'creepy' aspect to our film opening, as we had research many horror films had used the theme of children to give a sense of inncoence and vulnerability. The real life doll, who was the threat in our film tied in well with the children theme as this was apart of her background story, however we did not use this in our film opening. This follows Mcquell's 1987 theory, and lives up to the audiences expectations. 

The age of our characters were primarily teenagers, of the ages of 16 and 17. They are shown drinking alcohol illegally in a park as they are under age, there is a danger shown here which may foreshadow future events. As we had a target audience of 15-20+ the majority of the audience were teengers, therefore they could almost identify with the characters, we also added a wide variet of personaitys in to appeal to a bigger audience, this allowed the audience to relate and put themselves in that position, which creates mire fright in the audience. Although this was a good starting point to show the audience a danger at the start of the film opening, i think we gave too much information away, as we used a flash forward to show the coming events. We decided to do this to keep the audience interested in the film and watch it until the end however, we would have lost the suspense of our film because of revealing to much in the opening. 

To improve on this I would, change the narrative of our film opening, and surround it around our main character of the doll. As mentioned before we had thought of her background story, and we could have incorporated this into our film opening, many horror films rely on history to scare the audience. Also in order to keep the suspense of the film I would not give as mucho of the story line away, therefore I wouldn't use a flashforward, but instead a flashback to show the history of the doll. I think we could also use Neale's 1980 theory of using the same and changing conventions, as genre is instances of reptition and difference.