Evaluation Question Two || How does your media product represent particular social groups?

My film opening is supposed to portray a group of teenage girls. I decided to do this as stereotypically a dystopian survival film will have strong male characters who tend to protect female characters who are often portrayed as weak and emotional. I wanted to defy this stereotype as we need to see female characters portrayed as strong characters as well. My main inspiration came from Group B in 'The Scorch Trials' who are a group of girls who fought their way out of the maze similar to Group A in the Glade.

The main character in 'Black Sands': Rowena Hemlock is a key character within my film opening and I tried to characterise her as a leader as well as someone who girls could relate to - which is key to any character in a film. I wanted her to be strong and someone who didn't seem to need to be rescued and independent.

I firstly linked Rowena's character to Clarke from 'The 100'. Both are natural leaders and have a strong free spirit as well as a strong sense of loyalty. Alike to Clarke (in the book 'The 100'), Rowena has lost her mother which seems to dawn on her and adds to hasty maturity. However, unlike Clarke, Rowena is set on surviving and in what she believes in. In terms of costume, Rowena and Clarke are very different. Although Clarke originally came down in normal clothing, she soon turned to lots of leathers and other grounder clothing in Season 2. Rowena is characterised as wearing something that a teenage girl would wear. I didn't want it to look like she had planned for an event like this or had time to return and change her clothes when she felt like it. I wanted it to look like Rowena had been stuck in the same clothing for a long time, being covered in dirt, grime and blood (which I attempted to cover the clothing with via some methods I learnt from on YouTube).

I then went on to compare Rowena's character with Octavia from 'The 100'. I chose to compare Rowena and Octavia's characters as I imagine that, before the disaster, Rowena was once a typical teenage girl and only after her mother died and her family died that she had to pull herself together. This is very much the same as Octavia after she was locked up after being discovered under the floorboards in her mother's flat. I saw more similarity, costume wise, between Octavia and Rowena as neither of them change their clothes - Octavia does but only marginally. I wanted Rowena to seem as if she had accepted who she had now become and knew that she could not escape from it - unlike what Clarke does in 'The 100'.

Finally, I compared Rowena's character with two characters from 'The Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials': Harriet and Sonya. Harriet and Sonya are part of a group of girls who fought their way out of the maze similar to Group A in the Glade. They are the leaders of Group B and both compliment each others character traits. Harriet is the harsh leader who will fight to protect what she loves whilst Sonya is her second-in-command and is far less brutal but none the less willing to fight for what she believes in. I like to think that Rowena is a combination of both of these characters put into one. Similarly to Harriet and Sonya, I made sure that Rowena was in something that a teenager would wear and something that you would be comfortable in if trapped in an eternal winter like the characters are.