How have you represented social groups?

Firstly, we are representing the Asians as soldiers, as often in films Asians are the bad guys however in our thriller we are following the Asians and making them out to be good guys who we support and follow throughout the film. Once again, we want to represent the Asians as strong, violent and having a military background. We are not conforming to the general stereotype of asians, we are aiming to subvert this unlike in other films, such as in Rambo, Crouching Tiger & Hidden Dragon, many of the James Bond films & many Jackie Chan and Bruce Lee films.

Men are represented in our film as ruthless & murderous which is often the case in action thrillers such as The Expendables & The A Team. We wanted to represent the Asians as being very physically large, well combat trained and brutal looking subverting the physical stereotype appearance of Asians from being small, subservient & mathematically minded to tall, stocky, scary etc. The reasons for doing this is that we are conforming to the stereotype of soldiers and mercenaries in order to make them more imposing and to add to the action genre.

In our thriller we chose a blonde girl. Stereotypically blonde girls are usually the hysterical character within a wide range of films, in our film we wanted to conform with this stereotype. This is shown by the blonde girl screaming 'DAD!' constantly, being terrified and we thought by choosing a blonde girl for our cast that this would be most effective for a terrified young girl.

The basic definition of a mercenary, also known as a defence contractor, is one who works for wages. In military terms, mercenaries are professional soldiers that are typically hired by a foreign government to clean up particular unrest that may be occurring in that country. The job is highly demanding and can be considered dangerous. However, for those with a military background, mercenary work can be a rewarding position for those that like the excitement of combat and aiding in resolving conflicts. So, in our film we want to represent our characters in this way to show an audience that the mercenaries have experience, this being physically muscular, looking older, visible scars showing they have fought before & looking professional, i.e. how they run, holding of gun, stance etc.