Statement of Intent 1st draft

Write your genuine 500-word Statement of Intent. This will be submitted to the exam board alongside your media products and is worth 10 marks of the overall 60 marks available.

I intend to create a strong trailer which looks as professional as possible along with three posters that are designed to promote my coming of age film "tough love". I intent to have my characters display how they are enjoying their life at the beginning of the trailer with an initial 30-40 second clip where my characters display some humour as they are out with their friends , which should put the audience in a position of vulnerability and allows the audience to connect to what is happening. I will include 3 film trailer posters which are aimed at young males who are most likely to understand, relate to and have an interest in a urban coming of age film of this sort.

The narrative for my story is based around a group of friends (jason, dylan, daud and vijay) who went to college/sixth form together and are about to move on with their lives and become adults, however with a difference in agreements in what they should do after when some of the friends would like to move on to university unlike some who would like move onto a life on the streets where they can make fast money, however their endeavours are dependant on the others choosing to join them and also make this choice. This dispute leads to heavy arguments and eventually causes two of the friends to lash out in his anger against who he once called one of his best friends and results in something he would regret soon after.

I think by making the trailer fast paced I will be able to include as much action as possible and will engage viewers in this urban coming of age film trailer so that i can make the story line obvious enough that the audience would understand and so that there is a lot of suspense. I think the faced paced editing will entice the audience and make them interested in the trailer and make them want to watch the film, I do however need to ensure that the audience aren't confused or overwhelmed by the amount of content included in the trailer.I don't think that i am in a position to subvert the general trailer conventions as I am not established and in my opinion could make the trailer look unprofessional.

I would like to make my film so that it is an urban coming of age trailer as i think that it would certainly be possible to create this and to have it be realistic, along side the fact that i think that it would appeal to my target audience, as they may perhaps find it realistic and perhaps more relatable than others as it tackles some of the issues we face today and therefore have an interest in it. By doing this I think I will be able to make it different to other urban coming of age films as i think i would like to switch between moments of high intensity soon after some of the moments where both our character and audience believed they are ever going to face any problems and is able to also show a different side of things where other urban coming of age films fail to show both sides of what the characters are experience and how they are with their friends. 
I think that this would put the audience in even more tension as they would not be expecting the more tense moments and it would perhaps put them in a position of comfort until something dramatic happened which would throw them off guard and perhaps play with their emotions.

I think i would still have to focus on leaving a lot of innuendos and clues to leave the audience to imagine what is going to be happening due to the fact that it will be shown before the 9 o'clock watershed and will also keep the audience on their toes. I think that it will be successful due to the fact that not everyone needs to relate to it as it is an interesting insight into the lives of some people in the UK.

I think that i will be able to include a lot of tense moments, however i think that generally tension would take a long time to build up, however if i was to begin the beginning of the trailer with some light hearted conversation and humour then i believe that it would be easier to have something which brings their downfall and it would seem like a much bigger thing due to the contrast, in a way which some other short films such as "Shiro's story" have done where a friend has taken something away and left much more catastrophic impact over someone random doing this. 

Learner response

Not knowing the title of your film prior to opening the presentation is worrying - it’s fine to have a working title or to change it later but this is a pretty critical aspect of the project.

Once the title is up - it needs to work. Not catchy but the concept is solid (although it is basically the breakfast club, which may be tricky).

Presentation is seriously lacking - characters, themed, audience ... tell us something about them! There’s no real impression yet that you’ve actually developd these characters.

Your themes are solid and clearly show some research into the genre.

Comedy element is interesting - it does make up an important sub-genre of coming of age BUT it is notoriously difficult to do.

The Inbetweeners franchise is a perfect example of industry, audience + marketing.

Good point on watershed and ternage comedy.

Theory is week - how do you plan to use stereotypes?

Reinforce? Subvert? 

Concept - 2

Structure - 3

Terminology - 2

Rehearsal - 1 

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                   8



WWW - addressed the point about the watershed and how teenage comedy with a good example of a similar film that was successful.

EBI - should have developed characters further and put more effort into knowing the pitch and timing it better


I think that I will need to redo my statement of intent as I think that it will be very difficult to make a comedy film which everyone finds funny and entertaining and develop my characters. I think if I was to change it I would have some sort of idea about having the streets and typical gang violence, however I would try to make it different by showing the characters normal side when they are with friends and family.