The genre
that we were focusing on was teen horror so I began by looking up similar
products to my TV show that I was going to create, although it is aimed at a
teen audience I decided to focus on more individual stories with changing
characters rather than stories spanning multiple episodes, I felt like to get
people to connect with the characters I had to write a good story as I could
not develop them more than one episode. This is why I choose a more realistic setting
rather than focusing heavily on the supernatural aspect.
For the
pilot episode I chose to tell a story of kidnapping, I struggled with coming up
with a competent story whilst only having a sixty minute run time to do so. I
decided to focus less on the character’s and more so on the overall narrative
of the piece, I chose to do it on a kidnapping as it is a well-known subject in
modern media and I feel this could help my target audience identify with the
characters. At its root my story has some themes of romance, but a heavily
misguided one as the Kidnapped girl is clearly underage. I decided to implement
and three act structures, a common story telling device that I feel can really benefit
my storytelling. I decided to use this structure as from my research I felt
that it would be best to stick to a known story telling trope as my subject
material and the way it is laid out is already a departure from more common set
ups.
The Target
audience for my Production is for a post watershed teen horror audience,
although the material of the pilot episode is not something that could be
commonly associated with a teen audience I decided it would work well as I took
inspiration from another show (Game of Throne) which is not necessarily
targeted towards a teen audience yet manages to attract them thanks to its
brilliant storytelling and good plot development, my production differs from
Game of Thrones as I do not have a full season to expand my characters as I have
chosen a different style of storytelling. I still feel like the way I tell the
story and that each episode is different as a teen horror audience would like
the idea of each episode being different as it injects a deeper sense of
mystery into each episode as if a character is unpopular in one episode there
will be a different character in the next episode so it encourages people to
stick with the series as the next episode would be different.
I feel
that although this format can benefit my show it can also be a detriment to it
as some people might be put off of the idea that each episode has different
characters, as it might be hard for the audience to identify with a particular
character knowing that he would not be in the next episode.
The show is
somewhat similar to American Horror story, as each season the characters change,
although in my case characters change each episode and sometimes bi episode
bases, depending on the length of the story and the need for extra length to
develop the story that may not be allowed with just sixty minutes. It is also
similar to American Horror story in that they are both Horror based television
shows although American Horror story focuses more on Supernatural Horror where
as my production mainly focuses on real life horrors. I chose to focus on real
life horrors as I believe that it is a less used form of horror than
supernatural and also allows me to present more mature subject matter, the difficulty
is making it seem interesting as I cannot rely on special effects to keep my
audience entertained.
In
conclusion I have drawn inspiration from a number of sources to make sure that
my Production is exciting and thought provoking experience, it would do this by
relying on more mature subject matter and clever storytelling. I feel that the
main weakness of my production would be character development as the time
constraints of each episode would make it hard for the audience to bond with
the characters. The narrative would hopefully make up for this and overshadow
any presence of poorer characterisation.
