Media Production Report

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.