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

Our film ‘Take Off After’ relates to a genre of films that relates to the topic the social under classes inside a London’s close inner-city life. We have taken our inspirations from the tenacious realism of Guy Ritchie’s depiction of modern gangland conflict (Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels 1998, Snatch 2000, Rockn’Rolla 2008), we targeted to contribute another take on a Guy Ritchie modeled plot we has been very popular to Ritchie’s target audience which we have based our film on, however we didn’t want to base it so much on his style with the quick editing and shuffled plot. The underbelly criminal class operating just below the surface, just around the corner, but close enough to audiences in daily life to excite the horror and fascination that fuels a number of successful TV dramas such as the hugely successful The Wire (HBO 2010) to recent films such as London Boulevard (Monahan 2010).

Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998) capturing the underbelly criminal class
of East London. 

Our film is set in a predominantly masculine world where men are the dominant gender in action and represented in masculine environment, carrying out with stereotypical masculine activities: in our film, the major roles are all taken by men and they are depicted driving a powerful car, dealing out with their dangerous weapons. In one of the final scenes of our opening, the hammer is raised up against the intended victim to reveal the nasty side of gangland culture: the hammer tool is classed under a domestic surface where a situation along with a tool such as a hammer can turn violent and any tool can become a weapon. Hacking a man to death is a particularly nasty and terrifying threat for someone to witness. We want to position our audience so that they experience naturalistic jeopardy: the POV shot from the victim’s perspective in the boot positions the audience as if they are a potential victim within the situation.

The leading characters are all represented wearing masks in order to conceal their identity. This immediately suggests to the audience that they are criminals: they are hiding something. Men wearing masks are typical carrying out criminal acts because they want to escape from identification. The masked intruder is a stereotypical figure, and you can pick out from his eye they appear through the mask, that he his is not all that 
sane.

I feel a lot more suspense and terror is provoked from the masks
which alter the criminals identities. 

The setting for our film opening places the criminals in an inner city estate, anonymous enough to be anyone of those found in South East London. It is important that there are no people situated about: no workers or policemen are present to witness any of the acts of terror and violence carried out by the gang. It maybe situated in Britain however it depicts the dark and lonely side like: Kidulthood (2005), Harry Brown (2008) and Bullet Boy (). When we visited the BFI this month, we watched a screening of Shifty (Eran Creevy, 2009) in which local gang culture results in violence during the thriller.

Adulthood (2008), this film evolves around gangland culture
depicting one side of Britain.

Domestic tools such as hammers are being used in cases
of domestic violence which relates well to the
nature of our film.

We have used a deliberately realistic, low-key style in our representation of this particular social group. The dimmed down streets and unemotional tone of the setting place our film into traditional modern realism. The men involved are not acting outside their ordinary scheme: casual brutality, loyalty and punishing disloyalty in everyday occurrence.