Pitch for A2 coursework

For my chosen brief I will be trying to get the genre of a supernatural drama to the children’s TV drama as this genre seems to be very popular with channels like CBBC and other children’s channels but most of children’s TV dramas seem to be on CBBC and seem to be on at tea time or when schools finish. The age range I was going to aim for was going to be 7-15 yrs, I wanted this age because in most other children’s TV dramas this is what the age range comes from in the products that already exist.

The storyline that I thought of was 5 kids, 4 of them that are close together and the other who is a bit of an outsider to the other 4 but is close to one of them and is the only one they can trust. The 5 kids all come from different backgrounds, the 4 from a counsel estate where they have a tough life growing up and the 5^th being the one who is well looked after and is more upper class. The 4 group of friends wanted to escape home life so decide to go for a walk and the friend with the 5^th most unpopular person of the group decides to take as the other group of friends if the 5^th person can go for a walk with them. On the walk they get caught in a thunder and lightning storm where they leave the 5^th person to find where they are as they ran off with a pocket watch from the 5^th person, during this time when they reach the top of the bank a lightning bolt strikes them and blasts them away from each other. After they all end up in hospital together for a few days they all discover that they all have some sort of power, which are the 4 elements: fire, water, air and earth. These characters have these powers because getting hit by lightning is a natural disaster so when they got hit by the lightning they also became part of nature’s elements. They also discover that the 5^th person that was behind them had went missing the night that they were dragged into the hospital. As they try and control their powers, they come across an older teenager that has the same problem. The older teenagers power is that of lightning because he was the only person there when this character got hit however when the group of 4 friends get struck by lightning it’s almost as if the lightning split into 5 parts and gave the group of friends their supernatural powers. The older teenager gives them some pointers on how to control their powers, but this is when this older teenager is kidnapped by the 5^th person and his group of minions, the other 4 though don’t know that this person who kidnapped the older teenager was their outsider friend. The 5^th person has got the power of changing time in anyway of any person, the reason the 5^th character has these powers is because as the 4 other characters had his watch it also got struck by lightning and became electrical and when the character went to pick it up of the floor this character got an electric shock and also became filled with some sort of supernatural power to change time with his now magic pocket watch. The 4 friends decide to go on a hunt for the older teenager and to find out who kidnapped him. This is what I am thinking of for the narrative as it has a supernatural feel and it involves children/teenagers so that the audience can relate to the story a little bit, and especially relate themselves to one of the characters whether it is one of the 4 tight group of friends or the 5^th person or even the older teenage character, an older teenager may relate to the older teenage character because to the other 4 characters the older teenage is the type of person they want to look up to.

 For the cast, the 5 main characters will have to be children about to hit the teenage stage this is so the older teenager can actually look like an older teenager and look like the more responsible one. For the genders of the cast there could be 2 girls 3 boys as in some children’s TV dramas there seems to be more boys than girls this maybe because the genre of drama it seems more appealing to girls than boys as most boys these days would rather play video games or go outside then watch TV. Another part of the narrative maybe that the friend that is closest to the 5^th character which could be one of the boys of the cast, the friend could be one of the estate girls and has a soft spot for the 5^th person as they have a crush on him, and that is the reason that she is so nice to him. This adds more of the drama to the children’s TV drama. Then in the cast there are 2 more boys and one other girl. The older teenager can be another boy as it seems more sensible for the older teenage character to be a boy rather than a girl as although more females watch TV dramas, more males will watch a programme with supernatural elements in than females especially when they are at the age of playing with lightsabers and trying to be Harry Potter (one of my personal experiences growing up with my brother and his friends) and going back to the point of making the older teenager being a boy it would be more suited as this character isn’t going to be one of the main cast but is going to be important character and boys who will watch the programme and the other 2 boys in the main cast will find it more easy to look up to him then to looking up to a girl.

For the locations and settings for the product is mostly going to be outside as the series is focussing on what children get up to when they are at the age the characters are at and if the viewer and characters are from different backgrounds it will also have a lesson in it for viewers to learn off the characters. The most important setting that will be used is some sort of bank where the characters get struck by lightning. Another setting we could use is a small bedroom of one of the group of friends, or maybe just someone’s house in the sitting room where the friends could meet up. Another seen that could be used is a park or an open field. For the filming part and pictures we could either have a sunny forecast or a rainy forecast as it would all fit in with the storyline, so the filming could either be done either some part during the autumn or sometime during the spring as these are times when it most rain. The filming and pictures would also have to be taken during the day especially the outside parts if filming inside it can be day or night. The only part that may need a nice day on either cloudy or sunny is a part of the title sequence I am thinking of which is a part where we see the 4 characters using their powers when they first discover them.

For costume make up and props, the product needs to be as realistic as possible even though there is supernatural element, so there won’t be any super hero costumes or anything like that, the 4 characters that come from a counsel estate background could be dressed in stuff like tracksuits or stuff that almost scruffy, like trainers with holes in them and clothes that’s are too big for them so they look like hand downs from older people in their family. For the 5^th character he would have to wear more upper class stuff like jumpers and smart dressy shoes to shoe the audience that he is more upper class. With the older teenage character he could dress like he is trying to fit in with everyone who is around him so stylish clothes skinny jeans smart shirts that kind of thing. With the props most of the camera shots will have some sort of special effects on, as on the DVD cover I will have all 4 main characters on the bank where lightning struck them with them with all their powers so for example with air the character which has been giving the power of air will almost be floating off the ground. The 5^th character will also be featured on the front cover but almost hidden in the dark so you can’t exactly see his face but the focus is going to be more focused on the pocket watch that he will be holding in his hand which will be positioned in front of him as if he is trying to control time through the photograph. So one of the props will have to be a pocket watch so that it becomes the main focus of the ‘bad guy’ in the narrative and it also represents his supernatural power, with the older teenager, he will be in the background so you don’t really focus on him much but mostly the 5 main characters of the narrative. As I am trying to make it as if the programme was real to the children watching the drama the makeup will be minimal but there will be lots on the 2 girl characters as they need to look as ‘chavy’ as possible as that is what their characters are like.