Plot

DRAMA

Child Abuse

Target AudienceChild abuse is a major concern everywhere. Studies show that each year over one million children are abused or neglected by their parents. The children who live through years of assault can have emotional scars that can last for years. We all pay the price of their suffering.

The target audience is aimed at the age category 15+ because the viewers would be people that are interested in child abuse. We have chosen the target audience of 15+ as children at this age are more vulnerable to child abuse. The audience would be interested in how these unfortunate children get affected by it and how they end up becoming by going through this difficult phase. The target audience could also be parents themselves who feel sympathy for the children and teenagers who suffer from child abuse. They may want to know the actions of child abuse so that they don’t do it themselves and would want to be aware of the steps towards child abuse. Therefore being more aware of it and possessing sufficient knowledge, they can ensure children are being protected and child abuse in being prevented.

Understanding Of PracticalityThe camera work and handling of all the different types of angles would be easy to perform as the locations in our film opening possess no restrictions. We would include significant shots such as extreme close up, long shot, mid shot, establishing shot etc..

The editing part would not be as difficult as we plan to film the opening all in one day and edit it the next few days. Instead of filming on various days, we will ensure we finish and get all our footage done in one day. This is vital as we can ensure no one changes their appearance, hairstyle or clothes, meaning there’d be no movie mistakes.

The mise en scene would be available as our genre is drama; places such as parks, suburban areas, flats and construction sites. The mise en scene will suit our drama film opening as it is relevant with child abuse, we can show the child being brought up in a rough area.

Getting the cast for our film opening would be difficult as a child will be hard to find during school hours. Also finding a mother looking like an alcoholic and wanting to participate. Filming in a flat may also be difficult to use in our film opening as we would need to find people that would allow us access.

Understanding The Genre

Many dramas involve telling the audience a story; relating and focusing on a real life situation. They get the audience engaged quickly and ensure they feel very emotional. The main feature of drama is to bring out a dramatic story line as it is based on truth. This is the reason for why the audience interacts emotionally with it.

Drama includes realistic characters and therefore our film opening will be easy to produce. Finding the characters suited for our film opening will be easy to obtain. The main characters of the film often go through a transition where they change dramatically throughout the film.

Understanding The Conventions Of A Film Opening

What is involved in the genre - Drama:

- Real life situation with real life characters and settings- Portraying the characters journey and ensuring the audience feels emotional- Intense social interaction- Conflicts which involve hardship, struggle and pain- The audience can relate to the characters- Happy endings often happen- Drama can be combined with others such as comedy, thriller and crime- Mise en scene - high and low angle shots which portrays strength and weaknesses - Dull lighting - Many props are included such as gun, alcohol, drugs and money- Costumes of the characters are easy to get- Dramatic music background that creates feeling- Many emotional scenes

PlotThe plot of our chosen genre (drama) is based around the theme of child abuse. Our main characters will be of white/black ethnicity as this will feed into the stereotype of those ethnicities being involved in alcoholism compared to those of other religious backgrounds.

The mother will be an alcoholic which will subvert expectations of mothers being loving and caring to their child. Our main character will be a teenager aged between13-14 years old. We have chosen this age group because it emphasises the struggle for the transition between childhood and adolescence. This character will be a boy as the father in this plot will be absent to show that there is no male figure for him to look up to.

The plot will start of inner city (London), inside an urban council estate. After an establishing shot of the setting, we will pan into the sitting room where the mother will be seen slouching on the sofa with empty alcohol bottles around her. After this, there will be a parallel edit of both characters (The mother and child) of their morning routine. Mother still intoxicated and going for another bottle and the child waking up, getting ready for school. There will be non-diegetic music overpowering the shouts coming from the drunken mother. We will have a close up of the child’s facial expression to show the audience his emotion of what had happened the night before, using diegetic sounds of the mother yelling and glass breaking. Following this we will have jump cuts of the child in the park with his school uniform on. Then we will follow his journey to school.