Evaluation Q2

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

I chose these two characters, Zoe and Sarah from Hollyoaks as they both have qualities in which ‘Toni’ possesses. Both girls from Hollyoaks have an easy going personality and are both quiet bubbly. Much like Zoe and Sarah, ‘Toni’ is quiet oblivious to her surroundings and what is going on around her and doesn’t notice the little changes that happen that could cause a big catastrophe, this is linking in with the whole love triangle that was a storyline on Hollyoaks.

Zoe’s personality in Hollyoaks is more similar to Toni’s character as she is a very caring and loving friend, much like she was towards Sarah, which made Sarah fall in love with her. This is much like the way in which Leanne fell in love with Toni. Toni’s nature was to be a good friend towards Leanne, as she’s a loving person.

On the other hand, Sarah being popular in Hollyoaks is similar to Toni as she was well liked and more noticed compared to Leanne. Reasons why are because Leanne kept herself preserved and hidden whereas Toni was more open and loud, she had many more friends than Leanne, but she still kept Leanne closer than everyone else. Her appearance was also the result of her popularity, Toni has style and keeps herself up to date with what she wears and cares about how she looks.

Toni’s behaviour sometimes can be a tease much like Zoe’s behaviour towards Sarah in Hollyoaks. Toni at times can do things to tease Leanne deeper into her obsession, such as getting too close or acting intense around her.

On the other hand, we tried to keep Toni’s characteristics neutral as we wanted to challenge the stereotype of Leanne’s character more, as it was a change to the usual stereotypes around, and more so Leanne is a lesbian which is a different theme to what audiences usually expect.

Zoe and Sarah from Hollyoaks was a big encouragement to create the character of Toni, as watching clips from different episodes gave us the idea to create a mixed character for our film. We took several characteristics that both Zoe and Sarah had and incorporated them into Toni’s character to make her successful to watch in our film.

Our final opening sequence represents social groups in relation with the way Hollyoaks does, however, as we wanted our to be a little different, we tried to challenge the usual stereotypes of one of the characters in our film, on the other hand we will still only illustrate a set target audience.