Evaluation Question 2: How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Here are the social groups that are represented though specific characters within our film:

Middle class

• The middle class social group is represented by the first character seen in the film, the psychologist. He is an ordinary character who doesn't appeal to the audience in any way.
• By how the psychologist doesn't appear to be too interested in his patient we can see that he does not enjoy this job, however, he deals with it and gets straight to the point when asking questions. He doesn't want to waste time and feels that his patient, the protagonist, is exaggerating his problems.
• The psychologist looks down upon the protagonist as he clearly sees him as a vulnerable and petty underclass, however, he does not express his thoughts, he just wants to get on with the job. In addition, we can see by his tone of voice and even how he doesn't have the courtesy to look at the underclass character when talking to him that he feels greater and in higher social class than him.

Underclass

• The second character present in the opening scene of our film is the protagonist in the present day - years after the incident he is talking about to the psychologist.
• Immediately the audience can perceive him as an underclass by his sluggish form as he slouches over the desk, whereas the middle class psychologist sits in an upright position. By how he drinks spirits we can see he resorts mostly to alcohol due to his depression and anxiety. As the audience are told he has symptoms of paranoia we can understand his reluctance to tell the psychologist his story, however, this may be due to him wanting sympathy over what has happened to him in his life.
• The protagonist in this first scene is seen to be stereotypically represented, many underclass people are seen and portrayed as unstable and unequal. Here we can see the protagonist is vulnerable, lonely and empty.

MI5 Agent

• In the library scene we see the MI5 agent who represents the very high class social group. By how he is on the computer, uses his smartphone and is in percession of a briefcase we can see how he is tech savvy and also of very high importance. His urgency suggests he has no time to wait around and has important tasks to do.
• The agent views himself to be greater than others. We know by how he barges past the student without any assurance of the teenagers well being that he thinks he himself is more important and has bigger and better things to do.
• The agent is stereotypically represented in our film as he is dressed smart and slick, while having up to speed technology (smartphone, email, computer). His tone of voice is strong, the audience know hes got a job to do, and nothing can stop him.

Students/Teenagers

• The protagonist in our film is not of the stereotypical sense, but instead a determined and willing student, ready to sacrifice all to save humanity, whereas, stereotypically teenagers are seen to be very mischievous and rowdy.
• The protagonist is intelligent and sharp, as he is studying at university he is even smart enough to test the top secret theory of global warming. This would be considered extremely difficult, unless for a amazingly intelligent scientist like himself - he is unique and contrasts considerably when compared to a student his age.
• As teenagers and youths are stereotypically seen as bad behaved and ill mannered, the use of an anti-stereotypical teenager gives the audience a whole new view of the social groups - we can see that in this film the agents are the antagonists, while to the audiences surprise the teenager is the protagonist.

Scientist

• When the protagonist reads the top secret file and discovers the theory, he then goes to his university to begin testing. This is the first appearance of the student being a scientist which may be a surprise for the viewers watching; we no longer view the protagonist as just a hand-working student, but not as an experienced scientist.
• By how a real experiment is used, along with time lapse, we can clearly see this character is strongly determined to find out the truth about global warming; this demonstrates how focused he is throughout the long duration of his experiments.
• The scientist in our film is sterotypically represented. Almost all scientists in films are portrayed as being extremely intelligent, alike how we have presented our protagonist in our own film. Just from him experimenting with chemicals we can see how he knows what he is doing.