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

2. Social Groups Represented: Male in late
teens
• Lassus as a character represents more than one group of people, one of these
groups however is an adolescent male entering the final years of his teens. A
number of stereotypes for this social group were explored within our final piece,
the first of which is the characteristic of possessing a short temperament which a
male teen would often get connoted with making them seem like a hot-head. We
used this stereotype with Lassus mainly in the scene where he is smashing the
walls out of frustration. This conveyed Lassus resorting to physical violence when
trying to deal with his anger, much like how typical young males are portrayed.

3. Social Groups Represented: Male in late
teens
• Other stereotypes we explored of a male teen was to be messy and be engaged
with pop culture. We carried this out by having a shot of Lassus’ bedroom floor
which had music magazines sprawled all over it to tie in both stereotypes into
one shot. Although Lassus’ messiness did represent a male teen it was also used
to show the audience that Lassus’ insomnia caused him to be unorganized as he
is almost in some form of constant hazed trance from being so sleep deprived.

4. Social Groups Represented: An
Insomniac
• The most potent type of person explored through the character Lassus was
someone suffering from Insomnia, from looking symptoms and possible causes
we applied this new knowledge in creating Lassus. For instance, it is recognised
that insomnia can be triggered by stressful situations. Therefore for the severity
of Lassus’ insomnia we thought it best to have a traumatic experience happen in
his life that has triggered the illness. Lassus also often seems hazed and
disorientated in the opening sequence which supports the effects of sleep
deprivation causing a decrease in performance and alertness. Regarding mis en
scene we also communicated what insomnia may physically do to a person. With
the use of make up we created dark under eye circles for Lassus to clearly show
he was exhausted. Lassus’ clothing was also relatively scruffy to show a poor
quality of life an insomniac may experience.

5. Comparison With Other Characters – Evan In The Butterfly Effect

6. Comparison With Other Characters – Evan In The Butterfly Effect
• Evan is a 20 year old college student, although he is not in his teens he is still a symbol of
a youthful male much like Lassus. In The Butterfly Effect you find out that Evan suffers
from an illness which is induced by stress which leads him to experience blackouts.
Similarly Lassus is suffering from an illness caused by a single traumatic event which now
dramatically effects his daily life. As a child Evan experienced traumatic events which
included the death of both parents, mirroring Lassus. Finally, throughout the film Evan
realises that the root of his problems is himself by tampering with various timelines. The
cause of Lassus’ problems is also in fact himself as although he is unaware, he actually
killed his parents - the death of his parents triggering Lassus’ insomnia is from his own
actions. Both Lassus and Evan are characters that provoke empathy from the audience
due to their past traumatic experiences which is an important trait in psychological
thrillers. Some differences however between the characters is Evan seems determined
to rectify his problems for the love of a girl. Lassus’ search to find a solution to his
problems (though as not seen in the opening sequence but as explained on the pitch) is
for his own peace of mind and not for the comfort of anyone else making Lassus seem
not as heroic compared to a character like Evan.

7. How does this link into the target
audience?
• We made Lassus the character who he is to appeal to a certain target
audience. The target audience we chose is people in their late teens as in
our research for target audiences on the Pearl and Dean website we found
a similar film to ours – Vacancy, 70% of it’s target audience was the age
group 15-24. To try and connect with this target audience we made Lassus
to be in his late teens so teenagers would be able to relate to some of his
behaviour and therefore get into the film more. Although males may be
more attracted to the film because of the main male character it could
also appeal to women as the hardship Lassus has faced in his life may bring
out a maternal nature in women to feel sympathy for Lassus also the fact
that Lassus became an oprhan could cement this maternal instinct for
women and attract them to this film.