Main idea

The storyline in this video will be about a group of teens who meet up before getting the bus to college. The main character, Seb, is having problems with his parents at home and he is woken by his parents arguing. He gets up and gets ready for college, he leaves and meets his friends at the bus stop. Sebs friends will be sitting on the bench at the bus stop waiting for him. Sebs friend, Luke, tells Seb he has some weed and he pulls it out offering to smoke some with Seb and Beth (Lukes girlfriend). The bus then comes. Beth gets on the bus and Luke and Seb decide to smoke lukes weed and not go to college. The boys then get hungry and go to the shop where seb says he has no money as his parents wont give him any so they seb has to decide whether he is going to steal it. The boys get caught stealing and get chased out of the shop. I want the characters to act unknowing of the camera at until the end where I want one of the main characters to voice over the party montage talking about life as a teen and to talk about the issues touched in the video. The issues I am going to be touching will include drugs, sex and how easily tempting these things can be to a teen of my age. I want the piece to include a few decisions that have to be made by the character that will effect the way that the story plans out. I want to touch on the idea that a lot of teens have nothing to do outside of college and how easy it is/ can be to go and get some drugs to pass the time. I want to follow 2 maybe 3 of the characters so I can show how each teen experiences something different even though they may live fairly similar lives.

Magazine

My video will be taking a lot of inspiration from the film "kids" by Larry Clark. I have decided that I will take some inspiration from the film cover and other forms of advertisement for the film. I have decided to do this because our films have a lot in common style wise and this has been specifically made for a documentary type drama. I like the idea of having the characters faces in the title this is something that I would add to my magazine spread as it is a good way of determining the main characters. The cover also has a large variety of colours which adds energy to the poster and emphasises the "kids" idea as the colours are very generic. The photo on the cover is interesting as it has a vignette round the image which is a photography technique where the image slowly blurs out. This is not a very modern technique so I will not be using this. I will be trying to make my poster look modern (to emphasise that the film is about modern youth) but will include elements of this poster. I want my magazine spread to emphasise the idea that my film is a social documentary/ drama so the audience is taken in by the idea that the characters are real people. The quotes at the top may be the way that I decide to portray my ideas as this is a good way to show off any USP without it looking too over the top trying to show off loads of ideas.

I have decided that for my double page spread I will be interviewing the actors that take part in the filming. I will be talking about what it was like to be part of the filming of the video and the actors views on the ideas in the video as the "actors" are teenagers that are experiencing the topics in the  video first hand. I will be asking them if there is anything in the film that was left out or that should have been put in. I will also ask them about any personal experiences that relate to the film/ video to give a first hand account of a teenagers life.

I plan to lay m double page out something like this. I will do a photo shoot with the characters in the locations that I use. The text in the bottom right will be the interview and the text over the page will be showcasing the video and all of the unique ideas surrounding it.

Looking at this advert for I am legend shows a photo of the film being shot which I think is interesting as it is not something you see everyday you only see the final outcome. This is something that I am looking to incorporate into my magazine spread as it will draw peoples attention and give them an insight into how it was made.

The story line

In each scene a different topic should be touched. I want the first scene to touch on the idea that if your life at home or situation with your parents is bad then your decisions throughout the day could easily be affected. In scene 2 I want to express how easy it is to be persuaded into doing things like smoking weed. Scene 3 I want to express the idea that a lot of college students are broke and some resort to stealing. I want the end to talk about how all these things together can be




Scene 1 - Sebs room
Cinematic shots of Sebs room while you can hear Sebs parents start to argue.
Main character (Seb) is woken up in the morning by his arguing parents. He rubs his eyes and sits up (looks frustrated) stands up, puts a tee shirt on and walks down stairs. A montage of Seb getting ready for college with parents arguing the whole time then starts and finishes with him leaving the door (parents arguing is inaudible). Seb then gets his bike from the garage and we have a shot of him slowly bike off towards college.


Scene 2 - Rec bench
Seb pulls up on bike to see luke and beth on a bench. They greet each other but Seb seems to be upset or annoyed by something. Luke brushes it off and starts talking about his night last night mentioning he has some weed left over. he pulls it out and sparks it. Beth gets ups and says she needs to go to college and asks if Seb and Luke are coming. Luke says no, Beth then asks Seb and Seb stops to think (Can hear his thoughts) "go to college and be miserable or stay with Luke for some weed which will make me forget about my parents". Seb chooses to stay with Luke. Luke says he has decided not to go in either as he hasn't done the work and doesn't want trouble. They talk for a little.
Scene 3 - They get hungry and go to a shop. Seb explains that he hasn't got any lunch or money for lunch as his parents were arguing this morning and he didn't want to be near them. Luke says its fine and goes to distract the shop keeper while Seb goes in and takes some food. The shop keeper notices them but they run off and do not get caught. Luke "mission success".

Aims and Intentions

I am producing a social documentary about life as a teen at college and how life at home can affect someone's behaviour outside of the house. The key idea is to mix concepts from a documentary and a drama together. I took this inspiration from a producer called Larry Clark who created a film that was filmed with some actors and some non actors who would reacted to the story line based off of their actual personality. I like this idea as, to the audience, the people are real people and the stuff happening to them is also real. This will make the audience feel more for the person and will grip them in, this is the unique selling point. This idea will also give the audience a good idea of what a teen is actually like outside the home which creates the documentary aspect. I will be using a documentary format but using dramatic elements to create suspense and too make it more interesting. I plan to use low-key lighting to create a dark tone to the visuals. I plan to use a variety of shot types and angles to make the video aesthetically pleasing and interesting for the audience. Another typical trait of a documentary is hand held camera shots, this adds a real life feel to the video and will make it feel more as if what they are watching is real life.




I will not need to construct many representations of people however I will for the people I choose to use as actors. However I will construct the most real and truthful representation of young people in the video as I want people to see that although some might do bad things their is a reason for this be it for attention, because they are struggling mentally or to try and fit in. I plan to give a balanced view on the topics shown as I feel that this is what a documentary should do. I plan to show that teens can and will be trouble makers however a lot of the time there is a reason for this and that there could be an underlying issue with the teen.


My target audience is 18-30 YO millennials and I intend to target this audience by using taboo topics that they can relate to. I plan to use this video to give viewer a nostalgic feeling and to remind them of how it felt when they were a teen.




My final product should conform to channel 5s industry context as channel 5 airs a lot of documentary videos and I feel that as mine is unique with the aspect of drama it would stand out. I decided to choose channel 5 as I feel my idea fits into its style. To decide this I looked at channel 5s commissioning page to see what type of programmes they are looking for.

Pitch

Title: TEENS


Logline: A documentary about a teen who struggles at home with his parents and we look into how this relationship effects his behaviour outside of the house and the knock-on effects this has.


Genre: Social Documentary


Audience: 18-30 YO Millennials who went to college/ sixth form and have indulged or experienced some of the topics touched on


USP: My unique selling point is the idea that most of the people in my piece are improvising scenes based on their real character this tells the audience that what is going on in the persons life is real giving the audience more of a feel for the character.
Convergence

Brainstorm for storyline

This page is going to be used to try and come up with a fitting storyline for my documentary.

• Teens preparing for a party the following night

• Teens with nothing to do looking for something to do (end up going and getting themselves in a bad situation)
• Teen struggling at home with parents and goes out to see his friends (how his relationship with his parents effect his decisions when with his friends)
• Teen falls out with mates and finds new friends that are a bad influence
• 
  

I will keep adding to this page until I have decided which story line I will use.

Treatmeant page

The Show: Urban Youth: Outside of closed doors
Channel 5
Target Audience:18-30 YO
Form and Style: (Genre) Fly on the wall style documentary
Duration: 2 minutes 30 sec to 3 minutes
Visual elements: Natural lighting (documentary style), and low-key coloured lighting for party environment.
Settings: recreational grounds, houses, college (maybe)
Audio elements: Diegetic sounds, non diegetic voice over
Inspiration: KIDS

I want to create a short film/ documentary style video that captures youth under unsupervised conditions and follow some people through day to day life and other environments. The aim of this documentary is to enlighten the audience into some important issues that teens face in and out of college. I will be planning a rough story line for the video but want the story line to seem natural (to create the documentary aspects) so I will be leaving some of the storyline or script to the people in the video and tell them to act how they would without the camera.

As the target audience is 18-30 year olds I think this idea will be very interesting as it will make them reminiscent of their teens and will show them how times have changed since they themselves were teenagers. Considering the audience is quite young I am expecting them to be quite open minded to some of the stuff that will be seen (especially some taboo topics) as I will probably touch on things such as drugs, alcohol and sex which a lot of people can relate to but not a lot of people talk about especially for my age group.