The document provides a synopsis and character descriptions for a media pitch about a teen drama/thriller film. The synopsis introduces several teenage characters and shows them getting ready for school while establishing their personalities. It then describes friendship scenes between the characters at a park before cutting to thriller shots of the friends being held hostage. The document also provides explanations for how the opening will set up the plot, characters, tone, pace and appeal to its target teenage audience. Character descriptions are given for the main teenagers, along with suggestions for which actors could portray which roles based on their similarities to the characters.

1. MEDIA PITCH
Tara and Claire

2. Synopsis
The clip will start out with Lola (the protagonist) getting ready for school. She’ll be an archetypal teenager
and we’ll get an introduction to her as a character and her personality- through the connotations of her
room and her costume. We’ll then see Katie getting ready, frantically. We’ll get an insight into her problems
which include organising her younger brother and battling with her girlfriend. Next, her younger brother
Jack will be introduced as ‘the funny one’ he’ll be charismatic and chilled out: un-phased by his sister’s
dramatic morning routine. He’ll be the archetypal ‘lad’. After that, Susan (‘the geeky one’) is introduced and
is the stereotypical sensible and mild teen that is fully invested in her work. Although, she loves playing
sport and is a keen footballer and basketballer- she often competes against all the boys. Susan’s in a
relationship with Katie and they’re always arguing. The last character we meet is Ethan: he’s always in
trouble with the police and in school too- his hearts in the right place though. This character has struggles
with his dad letting him be a teenager so relies on his friends’ support. Moreover, the sequence progresses
to the park where all the friends are together- allowing us to see the importance of friendship. Finally,
there’s a blur between the positive friendship scenes and the melancholy dark room: where the friends are
being held hostage- shown as a montage throughout.

3. Explain how effective our opening will be in
communicating genre

4. Explain how effective our opening will be in
creating enigma

5. Explain how effective our opening is in
introducing key characters

6. Explain how our opening will be effective in setting
up the plot
The plot will form, when the montage of thriller shots are shown, as the audience will
get a sense of the turmoil that is foreshadowed in the opening. Shots of characters
tied up will quickly cut onto the screen, hopefully making the audience feel slightly
disorientated, so that they can get inside the minds of the characters, realising that
everything is not as it seems. When the characters are introduced, we find out who
the protagonist is and who are the main characters are, which shows the type of
plotlines that might occur between them.

7. The mood of our opening will fluctuate according to when the thriller scenes are shown and when
the opening finishes, leaving the audience gripped, wanting to watch till the end of the film. The
diegetic soundtrack at the start of the opening will reflect a cheery mood, relating to a typical
teen ‘coming of age’ movie. This music will coincide with the bubbly body movement from the
characters that we see. Our inspiration for this idea came from our research of the movies, ‘Perks
of Being a Wallflower’ and ‘juno’, as they both use an indie diegetic soundtrack to sustain the
opening as the opening titles are being shown. This creates a mellow mood, so not to shock the
audience straight away, reflecting the features of a teen drama and not a thriller. This could also
be effective in our opening, as we can use the soundtrack at the beginning to set a happy mood,
which we will then distort, by adding the cuts to the thriller scenes. The mood in our opening, will
work really well with the character’s facial expressions, as when their expressions change, the
audience will know that they aren’t as happy as before, thus foreshadowing the fluctuations in
mood throughout the film.
Explain how our opening will be effective in
creating the right mood and tone

8. Explain how our opening will be effective in
setting up the pace and rhythm
The pace will start slow, due to the fact that we will have no diegetic soundtrack over
the opening. The soundtrack will start when Niamh’s character ‘Lola’ puts on her
headphones, which will look as though the audience can hear everything that she
can hear as well, making it soundtrack diegetic. This is effective as it adds a sustained
pace to the opening and makes the audience think that there will no more changes
in the soundtrack pace or pace of the character.
The pace will be changed when the thriller shots are shown. This will bring the
audience’s attention away from the characters happiness and into their dark reality.
Since this happens in the blink of an eye, the audience won’t know what to expect,
distorting the pace.

9. How conventional is our opening?

10. How well will you appeal to your target audience?
Through our various characters, dialogue context and setting, our opening should reflect our
chosen genre quite well, since our distributor is Nickelodeon (an American Television and film
institution), who’s demographic is children to adolescents, ages 8-17. This shows that we want to
reach a large teen audience, but also entice the slightly older teens as well.
Our drama is a hybrid, which links, both the teen genre and the thriller genre together, adding that
little bit of maturity to the content we are aiming to show. In our opening, there will be quick cuts to
scenes of the thriller genre and likewise teen drama, giving both our older and our younger teen
audiences, a taste of content that they will enjoy.
Through our research on our target demographic, our questionnaire results and our focus groups,
we have found that many teens enjoy spending time with their friends and using various types of
modern technology. We will appeal to our target audience by incorporating different types of
technology into our opening, whether we film using a mobile phone etc. and relay the strong theme
of friendship throughout.

12. Character
representations
Katie
◦ Loves to use technology
◦ Enjoys hanging out with her friends
◦ Watches teen tv dramas, like ‘Friends’ and ‘Vampire Diaries’
◦ Social Media is her life
◦ She cares a lot about her appearance and spends time putting make-up on
every day
◦ Casting Jess:
◦ Jess suits this character very well, as Jess also enjoys going on social media and
her phone, checking messages and arranging times to meet up with people. Jess
watches the same sort of shows that Katie watches, typical to the teen girl
convention and she is very talented at applying make-up every morning for
school.
◦ Jess enjoys meeting up with her friends, whenever she has the chance and this
will be reflected through the friendship scenes in our opening, letting the
audience into Katie’s world, but also the world of Jess, as she is friends with the
other actors.

13. Jack
◦ Loves technology
◦ Enjoys hanging out with his friends
◦ He plays sport whenever he can
◦ Unless he is out with his friends, he is inside his room, playing video games on his
Xbox
◦ Casting Harry:
◦ Harry is a mirror image of Jack, because of his joker like qualities, making
everyone laugh. Like Jess, Harry is a fan of social media and video games. Jack
likes to hang out with Katie’s friends at the park and we will show this in our
opening.
Character
representations

14. Character
representations
Lola

15. Character representations
Kyle
We’ve decided to use Jake as Kyle, because
he is a boy who likes sport, hanging out
with his friends and is close to Susie in real
life, which helps with their chemistry in the
opening. We’d associate Jakes style with
Kyle, as it is casual, but stylish, reflecting
the archetypal teen boy quite well.

16. Character
representations
Susan
We’ve chosen Susie as our Susan, as she
enjoys sport, hangs out with Jake and Jess
a lot and works hard at school, reflecting
the inner ‘geek’, that we wanted Susan to
possess. Susie’s everyday costume would
be conventional of what we’d have Susan
wear, making her a good choice for our
casting.

17. Liv Josh
Liv and Josh are typical archetypal teenagers, which helps the relatability of the genre. They
both love to hang out with Ethan and Susan in the park.

18. Locations for Filming

19. Script

20. Storyboard