Treatment

Treatment

Exposed: A teen urban drama filmed in the social realist style.

There are two protagonists within this film: Omar and Eve. Two typical teenagers, the female being Eve having intimate feelings for Omar, which makes her vulnerable, so when he asks for a picture she gives it him willingly, even though she is out of her comfort zone. Omar then abuses her trust, this is because as soon as he gets the pictures of Eve, he says ‘Thanks for the Picture’ and then leaves her room, leaving her naked which denotes, how he has stripped her of her dignity and leaves her emotionally broken as well as more vulnerable. This represents the stereotypical view of boys, being ‘Players/Heartbreakers’ and not caring about anybody else but themselves. This is due to the current fears of bullying in schools/teen angst as being nice etc is sometimes classed as a weakness so people take advantage of you this is why males feel the need they need to be arrogant and cold, so people don't take advantage, but this leads to females being treated badly and without respect.

This sets up Eve as the main actor being a victim of misconception as she puts her trust in the wrong person and this leads to a tirade of bullying and abuse by other pupils further into the film. This is very common with the ‘teen urban drama’  for example, Kidulthood, as there are male leads, but usually there are sub-plots within the film e.g. the ‘main’ boy may be in crime but may be involved within a sub-plot to do with an obsessive girl, e.g. Kidulthood, this is where we got our inspiration for or 2minute opening, reason being it was exactly what kind of example we needed to work off for our opening scene.

So as a whole, our 2 minute opening represents the typical life of teenagers and how exploring their feelings for the opposite sex can lead to not only heartbreak, but also the breaking of trust, which leaves you vulnerable and also embarrass you as you could possibly lose you dignity, as your feelings for other people can make you come out our comfort zone as you feel pressured and do things you wouldn’t normally do.

The target audience for Exposed is teenagers between the ages of 14-19, as this is the common age group for films like ours, e.g. Kidulthood, age group is similar to ours, so we used the same age constraints for our film, as our film will relate to this age group the most.

I took it up upon myself to write out the treatment, as I felt I understood clearly what it should contain as I starred within the film and also help direct it so I felt I had a clear understanding of role and how and why someone would do this in real life, due to the pressures of society and being able to fit in.
Also me and Charlotte felt that we were 'going native' as we felt we fell into the role as we are teenagers and could adapt ourselves to the role so we improvised the dialogue within the opening scene which meant that our treatment had to be all the more coherent and specific. It was also a way of figuring out the story for ourselves and not working off a story board, which was good as we could film what naturally came to us which made it all the realistic.