Representations

Many things have to be in our film because of what genre it is. In a Christmas film the atmosphere has to warm and homely because that it what a traditional Christmas setting is like. If it also had an exterior shot, snow would be seen but because our film is only made up of interior shots, we need to show a lot of Christmas decorations in the room.

In a Christmas film, you would expect to see things like Santa, elves, presents and a Christmas tree. We have included these things in our opening sequence so that our film fully represents Christmas and people know what type of film it is.
 We are portraying the religion of Christianity because our film is about Christmas. Christianity is shown as being cosy and warm. Our film is set in a homely middle-class house which shows how the setting of Christmas looks for most families.
Santa is portrayed as being quite old and funny, whilst the robber is shown as being young. This shows the difference in age and how young people are portrayed as being stronger in many films when this may not be the case. The elf
 in our film is female whilst Santa is obviously a man, which shows gender differences and how women are traditionally seen as inferior to men.

The characters in our opening sequence are Santa, an elf and a robber to show that these character feature heavily in the film. A robber is not usually seen in a Christmas film which demonstrates how unique our film is. Another character in our film is Jack Frost who appears later in the film. We didn't want to give all the main characters away in the opening sequence because that would spoil the film. Jack Frost also is an unusual character to appear in a Christmas film which makes our film stand out from others.