Formal Proposal

Formal Proposal

The main topic of our documentary is teenage subcultures and how teenagers have changed over time from the mods and rockers of the sixties to the chavs and moshers of today. Everyone will have an opinion on this subject as everyone was a teenager at some point in their life and many people were part of the subcultures at this time. Another topic in our documentary is how the public feel about teenagers today and their opinions on certain issues such as stereotyping of teenagers and how teenagers behave in today’s society.
Our documentary will be mixed as it will be combining a voiceover with interviews, vox pops and both archive and new footage. This will be good as it will show the audience how they were teenagers as many people tend to forget what they were like as teenagers and how they were treated by people at this time.
We intend to show our documentary on Channel 4 as it is renowned for its selection of documentaries and how they target certain issues of society and a majority of its documentaries are mixed, we also intend to show our documentary at 8:00pm as it is late enough for children to be in bed and their parents to have finished any jobs they may have but still early enough that teenagers will still be downstairs with their parents.
The main target audience of our documentary is 15-50 as most people at this age will have children/teenagers of their own or will still be teenagers or young adults. This would be beneficial as many people in this target audience will understand better the conflicts of social prejudice towards teenagers and the stereotyping of them by the media better than a slightly older audience that may have older children.
The primary research we will do will include finding out about teenage subcultures throughout time, this will be done by visiting exhibitions about mods and rockers in the 1960’s and by interviewing people about their memories of being a teenager and what they think of teenagers in today’s society. Our interview locations will be relative to the subject of teenagers as we intend to film in a youth centre, this is so we can speak to both teenagers and the volunteers that work with them.
Our secondary research will consist of archive footage and pictures of Woodstock in 1969, Mods and Rockers fighting in the 60’s, footage of Skinheads causing trouble in the 70’s, Punks, Deathrockers and Goths of the 80’s and the 90’s grunge movement and how that affected the teenage audience and also some footage from now as to how teenagers are behaving in today’s society, we also intend to use various clips from music videos and sound clips from different music eras such as Elvis to show the music Rockers listen to and Nirvana to show the grunge movement.
Our narrative is basically going to show the audience how teenagers have changed through time and how there are still some similarities between the teenagers of the past and now such as many hippies in the 1960’s were taking drugs and living promiscuously, much like many teenagers today taking drugs and living promiscuously. We will look at footage of different subcultures and determine where different modern subcultures have evolved from.

Outline of content

Intro section, 5-10 minutes:

Opening credits will be set against a black background, with the title contrasting in white in a very standardised font. By doing this it won’t detract from everything else that is going on in the shot, for example we hope to be able to fade the black background into close ups of teenagers faces starting with the current youth and changing them through to their parents faces and then their grandparents faces. Over this we will put a music bed that relates to the topic in question so either a currently popular music track, or one that suits the documentary best. The first shot would contain photo clippings, news reports and archive footage of teenagers causing antisocial behaviour with a voice over giving facts and figures out about antisocial behaviour, crime rates and the links between that causes this behaviour in teenagers.
Each subject that would be brought up an expert would be introduced to give his views and opinions then cut away shot would be used to go to items that he says that relate. Street team would go out and ask members of the public from varying generations a few questions on the topic and if any had a bad experience with teenagers and we expect this to be the elderly we will conduct a dramatic reconstruction to make the audience feel how they felt so a few camera techniques and angles will be used for that. During the reconstruction the music used would mirror the action that was going on, dark, dramatic tones possibly even operatic with perhaps sound FX of things that were there at the time for example breaking of glass and the sound of someone being hit. Cut aways would be used again of police reports of incidences of underage drinking, binge drinking and drug taking all with a voice over explaining the relation between this and behaviour.

Middle section, 10-15 minutes:

Interviews would be conducted with parents and their parents to see what differs from the youth of today and the youth from their generations. No music beds during any of the interviews just the natural ambiance of them. The expert would be brought back in again to help piece together the views of the parents etc and would move us to the next shot which would see a case study of teenagers and their families from a poorer social background, a middle class background and an upper-class background and how each one differs from one another. The way they behave in school/college, what they do at the weekends, hanging out with their friends, everything along those lines.
What will also be looked into would be where the younger generation get their influences from, be it their friends, the music they listen to, or even their parents. Interviews of their influences from the music industry and from this we would get their views and opinions and also why they think that their music and themselves are such big influences on younger people. Next the narrator will pose a question which will be answered nearer to the end of the film allowing time for all information about the question to be presented, allowing the audience to decide an answer for themselves before the answer is revealed.

End section, 5-10 minutes:

Towards the ending of our documentary, the question that was posed in the middle section will be answered by all parties involved, giving a variation on the end result which hopefully will mimic the viewer’s ideas and feelings. The same graphics that were seen at the beginning of our piece will be used for the end credits as well although there will be a colour change depending on the outcome, bad - font colour will change from white to a gradual red but if it’s good then we will keep the font the same colour as before. The voice over summarises everything that has been said and presented to the viewers in a small period of time, giving a brief overview and then steering the audience to the answers for the questions arose in the film. Music bed would return for the outro and would stay the same

Resource Requirements
Camera
Tripod
Microphone
Headphones