How I have used representation to create meaning in the film opening that I made this year

Earlier in the year we made a film opening in the selected genre of horror, the main representation that we enforced within our opening was the representation of teenagers and the way which we conveyed them to be through stereotypes, this had the after effect of feeding the audiences expectations as this was their dominant ideology of the adolescent age group.

We represented them in a manner that showed them to be anti social and rule breaking, this was shown through the cat on of them drinking underage in a public place and them smoking underage. This also represented them as vulnerable which conformed to their age group ideology as they are seen as defenceless in the flash forward when each of them has been killed off, well at least this is what the connotation is.

Within our film opening we also incorporated the idea of a female survivor which challenges the dominant ideology within the media that women are weak and defenceless, and that men are strong and can defeat anything, making them the protagonist, however we liked the idea of going against what we saw and thus made the main character and survivor female.

We represented the doll to be quite young through costume, we put bows in her hair, dressed her in a sweet light blue and white dress and also used knee high socks. We also used rosy blusher on her cheeks which made her deem innocent which is often associated with being young as you have not lived enough to sin. However the representation that the youth are always innocent was challenged as the young doll was a killer doll and thrived off of killing people who entered her park.

We also represented the female to be quite emotional through crying and screaming, this was also shown through mascara stained eyes and when she dials 999, which represents panic. This conforms to the dominant ideology of women as it does show them to be weak despite the outcome that she is the only one to survive. Women are also shown to be emotional in our opening again as when the boy tells the scary story one of the girls gets scared and upset that he would even try to say that, which represents them to be over emotional.