Development

Sixteen year old Hannah starts her summer with a big move to a new town. The town is small and old fashioned, and its as if everybody who lives there is stuck in their ways and moreover stuck in the past. The house she moves into is big and old to contribute to the eery sense of the move and as an obvious component of a horror.  Hannah goes out to familiarise herself with her new surroundings and begins to resent her parents for the move as she doesn't like the new place and how quiet and conformist it is. She meets some people of a similar age down by a lake in a forest on the edge of town. She begins to become good friends with them and soon the summer has gone by and she has spent the majority of it with her new friends. Eventually summer is over and it is time to start school so she looks for her new friends on Facebook and finds it strange when she can't find them. After starting school she looks for the friends she spent summer with whilst in school but never sees them during only after when they meet by the lake. Her parents begin to worry when Hannah is never home and always out with her 'new friends', although never seen with them by the tight knit community. After being told that Hannah is often seen wandering and sitting alone her parents worry more and the school gets involved. Waiting outside for a parent teacher consultation about her she begins to look at the old photographs of previous school years on the wall by the office. Peering closely on the bottom left row of a photograph labelled 1972.. she sees the familiar faces of the four friends she's been searching for.

• Were in the head teacher class
• went missing shortly after the photo was taken (1972)
• never found. (possible title)
• also could include romance with one of the friends.

Episodes to have different names like I found in my research of teen series.

I.e: 

1st episode - The Move.

2nd episode - 1972

Themes:

Supernatural

Horror

Mystery

Love

Friendships

Family

Character development:

Hannah - sixteen years old

friends:

Amara = eternal

Adriana = dark one

twins Scott and Wade = wanderer

I chose to base the series in a school to relate to my target audience of teenagers. The majority of characters will be teenagers as well, including the protagonist. The remaining characters will still be relatable to teens as they will be teachers and parents. I wanted the series to be more supernatural than horror with an element of mystery and the fear of the unknown. To keep it interesting the protagonist will realise something is wrong within the first few episodes and her parents and teachers before, even in the first episode. This is to keep it within the supernatural genre otherwise it would be at risk of being a teen drama. In my research I looked at a few american teen dramas within the supernatural genre such as twisted, the vampire diaries and pretty little liars. All of these seem to be based in a small town in America, with a group of friends, a romance and a school setting. These shows seem to get a lot of interest from teenage audiences and so i followed their conventions.

Tyrannosaur and character development

How can you enrich your narrative?

What elements can you add to bring your characters alive?

How will you actively seek to serve your chosen audiences?

In Tyrannosaur the characters develop throughout as we learn more about them and their pasts. It becomes known that Joseph lost his wife and this could be the reason for his anger and self destruction, whilst Hannah seems to have the perfect life but is really a victim of domestic abuse.

I can use this film to enrich my narrative by following its idea of character development. I liked the way that the audience found out more and more about the characters as the film went on. It's linear structure helped with this and I can follow this as well to help with character development. In Tyrannosaur the ending is the main part of the film as we are then certain that she killed her husband, I like the dramatic ending and will try and use this in mine.

The characters explore all different emotions throughout, from depressed to happy, and I think this helps keep the audience interested. I will make my series relatable  to teens and therefore help in serving this audience. The narrative is mainly based in a school and centred around making friends which everybody can relate to.

Christmas, Consumerism and the role of the media

In class we watched three Christmas adverts:

• John Lewis
• Boot's
• Sainsbury's

We talked about how each advert targets a specific audience and manipulates its audience through the advert. The John Lewis advert entitled 'Monty the penguin' takes the audience back to their childhood and their memories and excitement of Christmas. It explores the themes of love as it is about the penguin wanting to be loved on Christmas.  The 2 minute advert would have spent lots of money on production  but also the merchandise to go with it, including a £90 stuffed toy penguin that the audience now feel compelled to buy. 

The Boot's advert is relatable to most people as it explores the themes of not only love but family at Christmas. It shows a family coming together on the early hours of Boxing day to be able to have a Christmas with the mum who is a nurse working Christmas day. Out of the three adverts this was the only advert to feature their store in the filming as we see a girl walking into one to buy her Christmas presents.

Sainsbury's were very clever in that their advert told the story of the Christmas day truce during world war one and started showing it during November of this year - the 100th anniversary - to show that their shop is patriotic and supporting. The advert was targeted more at an older audience who knew of the story before hand and unlike the Boot's advert there was no obvious advertising.

From the adverts we can tell that the media plays a big part in the manipulation of the adverts consumers. All three of the adverts are aimed to attract customers and use the themes of love and relatable feelings at Christmas to do so.

Coursework Idea and Research

Teen horror series – post water shed:

20 episodes

Half an hour each

Supernatural/ thriller

• 
  
• ·         Autumn weekend, a teenage girl moves to a new town with her family and enrols at local school.

• ·          She argues with her parents about the move and leaves the house to see the new town.

• ·          The setting of woodland and a lake, she meets a group of people her age who say they attend the school she is due to start.

• ·         Spends a few hours with them and goes back home.  Starts school on the Monday and all week looks for the friends she made.

• ·         Goes to the same place the following weekend and they’re not there so begins to ask around about them.

• Looks through an old year book and sees them, 1970...

• ·          Asks her teacher about them and the teacher tells her that she went to school with them and  the 4 friends ‘went missing in the 1970's’.  Newspaper article - mysterious disappearance.

• ·         Leads to series of supernatural events, dark woodland settings as she meets them again and loss of real friendships.

Research:

Similar to ABC’s teen series twisted. The same sort of idea with a small town and mysterious happenings and events.  Also a group of friends with a school setting and a  female protagonist to appear more vulnerable and therefore scarier.

Similar to Sixth Sense in that as we watch the film the audience believe the people Bruce Willis are meeting are real as does he. The end of the film is when the audience find out that they are ghosts however this will become apparent in the first few episodes of mine to keep it interesting.

Grayson Perry: Who are you?

This 50 minute episode was the first in a series and focused on Perry's interest in identity. Grayson Perry is a portrait artist who believes that portraits are 'distilling life in one image'. The aim of the show was to create portraits for 4 subjects and display them in the National Portrait Gallery. Grayson Perry pointed out that most of the portraits there are mainly white heterosexual men and he chose 'a parade of the unusual and the troubled in amongst these seemingly impervious icons of British solidity.' I liked how Perry wanted his subjects to be people 'experiencing the extremes of life' in order to do their portrait

I like how Perry decided to explore different types of people and how he wanted his work to stand out from the rest at the National Portrait Gallery. He chose his subjects based on gender, fame and religion. His first was Chris Huhne former cabinet minister whom Perry described as  a 'white middle aged, middle class man facing a collapse of status.' He wanted the portrait to reflect Huhne's bulletproof mask that he seems to wear in public and so the portrait was a vase smashed and then put back together to show his vulnerability.

He then met Rylan who he described as 'famous for being famous', and I liked how Grayson managed to get Rylans true opinions of himself out and Rylan realised that he changed himself so much and called himself 'all fake.' 

"I'm not really Rylan am I"

Grayson then went on to talk about how celebrities identities are heightened through the lens.

Kayleigh is a white woman Muslim convert whom Perry met to understand how identity can be transformed by religion. She was an unemployed single mother of four in her twenties. Grayson wanted his portrait to show a clash of civilisation between Islam and the modern world, such as shopping. He discussed how people buy their identies through designer brands and from shops whereas some people like Kayleigh get there identities

from their religion. His portrait of Kayleigh was a silk 

hijaab telling her story and those of 'western capitalists

 buying their identity.'

Perry then explored the modern metro sexual society and how people say they are accepting but really advertising suggests women should be feminine and wear high heels, whilst men need to have a six pack to be masculine. Jaz was born a girl but later became Alexander after feeling male from the age of 4. I think Perry was clever to visit a school and get young peoples opinions on the topic and discuss how it is easy to succumb to pressures and conform. He decided

 he wanted Jaz's portrait to be heroic as her transition

 was 'building an identity and not just surgery', 

therefore he wanted it to be a declaration of manhood.

Overall I really like all the finished portraits and I think he was clever in spending 18 months getting to know the people and their lives and then showing this through his work.I think the order of the programme was good as we met all of the subjects and learnt about them before we saw the final portrait. This way the audience went with Perry through his thought processes and how he ended up with the art work he did.

Prezi

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