1. How do your products represent social groups or issues?
With making a film, comes many elements that go unthought about. I do not believe when we film we intend to think through all the social groups we will be addressing when it comes to pre-filming. But the fact that social groups and issues are addressed based on the stereotypes of the chosen genre. The social groups and issues will follow. One way our products developed arising social groups, is by using the gender of a female as the antagonist in the film. In thrillers it is very common to see the roles of the victims to be commonly portrayed by women; they can be seen easily as emotional and unstable. Men are typically the protagonist and are portrayed in thriller movies as those who do the victimizing. Another common element is social class in which our product does seemingly address. Our character Tatyanna did take a different career path from her sister Bryanna which led Bryanna to lead an envious spite towards her own sister. This social group addresses the fact that the rich are often the ones to be punished, usually a clue they are stuck up or not grateful. With these discussed social groups comes identifying the issues that come along with it. Our products represent all of our outlined social groups very well, and we even challenge a fear convention in which I will discuss in the upcoming question.
2. How do the elements of your production work together to create a sense of branding?
This is actually a very tough question, but, in our short film with the relation of other production work of course. We really wanted to stick to the theme of sisterhood and betrayal. The protagonist is someone who Is jealous of her own blood sister, and ends up turning on her simply because of the difference in lifestyles. We really wanted the protagonist as female as well because it goes against your typical inferiority of masculinity. We kept everything simple with our postcard and even website to portray these details. Another sense of branding comes from the name of the film “My Sister's Keeper,” it really drives our theme of sisterhood and actually bounces off the entire idea of how such a close courtship can lead to betrayal and despair in the end.
3. How do your products engage with the audience?
Engagement of the audience is by far one of the most important principles, I believe when it comes to creating a film. If it isn’t appealing to the audience, your views may drop along with your ratings of the film. A 5 minute film is by far the easiest way to keep an audience engaged because you don’t have to figure out a way to do so for hours with a regular length film. We actually used a modern take on it by including a quick flashback with TikTok videos created by the sisters, as a memorabilia to their fondness of each other growing up. Allowing viewers young, and even old, to even enjoy one of the most famous apps out right now. I think our product is also very engaging because of the story it has to tell, and how even the closest of sisters may have to watch their own backs.
4. How did your research inform your products and the way they use or challenge convections?
When we originally looked into different genres to create a project out of, we knew thriller was going to be one for the books. It was the easiest and everything seemingly turned into thriller/ action when we sat down and jotted ideas; almost all the storylines we were going for pointed to thriller. Being that my partner and I are both sort of hip to the background of thriller we didn’t do much research but while we did look a few things up we found common elements that simply must be incorporated into our genre. Our product uses all the basic elements; suspense, female antagonist, cliffhangers. But the one way we do challenge the conventions is by using a female protagonist. In thrillers it is always likely the protagonist (the one trying to kill, steal, or harm the antagonist) is male. We thought by going against this will really thicken the plot and not be so stereotypical when it came to what was expected when watching this film. Also the protagonist and antagonist weren’t complete strangers, in fact they happened to be close sisters, when one grew spite of the other as the years went on and they took different career paths. One sister (Tatyanna) had a better life; nice job, car, house, etc. while Bryanna struggled to make her way. Lastly we included the plot twist in the end that revealed it was Tatyanna’s own sister who betrayed her by kidnapping her.
