Sam, 16 Sam conforms to most of the stereotypes of her age.

She is presented as a distanced teen who prefers her own company, supposedly opting to visit the beach alone. Beaches in winter are more unconventional haunts of youths, so she also challenges typical traits of a young person, suggesting that contrary to the teenage stereotype, she avoids social occasions and populated places. Ambiguity is thus created in the character of Sam. Although she is the victim in our narrative, we hope that the viewer will take a while to decipher this, perhaps suspecting Sam to some degree before deciding that Ian Moone is the antagonist. We hope for this simply because it will make the viewing of Beach Comber more interesting, less generic and increase audience anticipation, satisfying the viewer when they realise that they rightly concluded to suspect Ian. Sam can be likened to Submarines Jordana Bevan, who conforms and challenges similar aspects of her age. Pictured left, she sits at a beach, much like our opening shot sees Sam sat at the waters edge.

Reinforcing comparable stereotypical idiosyncrasies to Jordana, Sam represents youth to be a stage in life in which naivety is ripe and isolation a common, even a desirable, concept.

Ian Moone, 16 Ian Moone is our mentally unstable, physically violent and socially delinquent antagonist. He therefore meets and reinforces the negative archetype and tags of teenagers (especially male teenagers) which sees them rendered thuggish and immune to the expectations of general society. Despite our sadistic depiction of a teen seemingly ambitious to murder, flirting with danger and the breaking of social norms, we did not intend to pin this antisocial behaviour down to the fact that Ian is 16 (perhaps other factors such as a hate for women contribute more strongly to his motives for stalking and overpowering Sam). He does, however, portray teenage males to be deviant and criminal as a result of his consistently immoral actions.
Pictured right, Liam likewise to Ian when Sams torchlight illuminates his face remains inscrutable both when Will sees him outside his house after discovering his wife dead inside and in the link, left, when Wills son looks at him on the bus.

BBC Ones The Escape Artist saw antagonist Liam Foyle depicted similarly to Ian. Both are young males who seem to enjoy seclusion from society. Alienated, the two loners are characterised heavily by their ghoulish interests such as stalking and interfering with harmless strangers. Below is a link to an extract from episode two of the miniseries in which Liam can be seen following his prey in an animalistic manner, reflective of his predatory disposition. Interestingly, as the scene descends into panic, with character Will Burton trying desperately to save his stalked son (and his sons friend), the crosscutting becomes pacier; shots of a fearful Will are contrasted by cuts of Liam calmly pursuing the two youngsters. In our final cut, Ians ominous entrance (into the shed) is similarly split up, edited to prolong his entrance and increase suspension. Furthermore, Ian and Liam can be linked because both antagonists wear black leather gloves and foreshadowing layers of dark. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fke-_PEc1Qc

Our antagonist Ian Moone and our victim Sam are both white British youths. The significance of our narratives characters sharing the same ethnicity becomes a question that our thriller leaves somewhat unanswered. We want our audience to speculate on the ellipses as to why Ian singles out and ambushes somebody of the same ethnicity as/to him, hopefully suspecting that he possess misogynistic traits, as despite being white and British like him, Sam is the opposite gender to her stalker. Furthermore, this sharing in ethnic identity teaches viewers that the attack on Sam is not racially motivated, and therefore our thriller opening does not reinforce the stereotypical position of ethnic minorities in modern British cultures. Instead, we endeavoured to break stereotypes of such minorities as Afro-Caribbean and Asian being the prime perpetrators of crimes against young white British girls.

A Room for Romeo Brass, although not a film of the thriller genre, paints a comparable picture of ethnicity to Beach Comber. Protagonist Romeo is a black 15-year-old and so fits the descriptive stereotype of a young British thug. The film challenges its audiences preconceptions of Romeo however, rendering the antagonist in the narrative to be a 25-year-old white British male, Morell. Gender aside, Morell descriptively does not appear to be such an obvious or typical perpetrator or thug, particularly with reference to his age, which suggests that he should know better. Beach Comber portrays Ian in a similar way to Romeo Brass portrays Morell. Both Morell and Ian can be considered to suffer from mental health issues also, with reclusive behaviour and destructive mood swings.

Much like Ian victimises a person of the same ethnicity as himself, so does Morell, threatening another white British male with a hammer (below) a weapon our antagonist also sports. Morells turning point is triggered by the rejection of Ladine, yet further linking him to Ian, who perhaps possess misogyny and holds negative views towards women. Unlike Morell carrying out his ambush on a weaker male, Ian could be seen to be channeling his anger by directly attacking the opposite gender, blinded by prejudice. Ian and Morell, despite their ethnicity and nationality perhaps suggesting otherwise, successfully contribute to the portrayal of British yob culture, a subculture becoming more and more prominent in media texts set in Britain.

Having stolen from a shop in a bid to impress female character Ladine, Morell (above) is a bitter delinquent and criminal who resorts to violence. Ian is an exaggeration of these traits, a Morell on a larger, more damaging scale.

Right, Morell challenges ethnic stereotypes in Britain similarly to Ian.

The two characters in our narrative meet the generic archetypal roles of their gender, with Sam being female and also a victim and Ian being male and antagonistic. Women are statistically more likely to be victimised than men. Below is a table taken from the following link: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/women-and-the-criminaljustice-system--2 under the second chapter, Chapter 2 Victims, which supports our reasoning for making our antagonist male. Government statistics show that males are more often the aggressors in crimes in the UK and females are more often the victims. Interestingly, the table excludes stalking from the findings in regards to any domestic abuse, any partner abuse and any family abuse, suggesting perhaps that it is a crime carried out by people known to the victim more than people unknown to the victim.
Table S2.05: Gender of offender for intimate violence in the last year among women aged 16 to 59 Adults CSEW

Ian is intended to appear as a stranger to Sam, as when we researched prior to storyboarding our thriller opening, crimes being committed in which the victim was unknown to the perpetrator were statistically less common. Because our gender representations are so generic, we opted to unconventionally feature an aggressor unacquainted with our victim. This also seems in many ways to create greater fear and tension for the viewer, as in two minutes establishing that antagonist and victim are acquainted would deter from the crucial construction of rising anticipation. As a result of depicting our victim to be female and our antagonist to be male, our opening conforms to archetypes of males holding dominance over the stereotypically weaker sex, with Ian reinforcing his masculinity in a socially unacceptable way over Sam. Again, like Liam in The Escape Artist, who murders a young white British female unprovoked, Ian is overeager to demonstrate his masculinity and power and seeks control via his use of violence. The table, left, also states that the figures are reflective of women aged 16 to 59 which can be linked briefly to Sams age and Ians masculine identity. Sam is 16 and therefore the fact that more males are guilty of intimate violence towards the opposite gender reinforces Ians conventional character type.

Gender Male Female Both sexes2

2007/08 86 12 1

2008/09 84 13 3

2009/10 91 9 0

2010/11 80 16 4

2011/12 83 15 2

1. Figures for any domestic abuse, any partner abuse and any family abuse have excluded stalking in order to create a comparable measure across years (questions on stalking were not included in the 2007/08 BCS). 2. 'Both sexes' refers to victimisation by a male and a female at the same time.