A2 Media

9-7-09 & 10-7-09

For our next project, we are going to be entering a competition producing a film 3-10 minutes long based around underage drinking. Underage drinking has become a major factor within the UK in these present times, and we need to start bringing awareness to all those who participate. It will be entitled 'Consider the consequences' and is rather self explanetary. The charity working alongside this project is called 'Alcohelp'. The website containing a full brief is www.alcohelp.co.uk/consider
Our target audience for this project is 13 year olds, which we found to be quick an astonishing age to work around. They are very young to even consider drinking, whether or not it is on a regular basis or once in a while. Within the film we are able to include one of the following aspects that cause underage drinking to start with to bring awareness to those involved.
They are:
- Peer pressure
- Violence
- Long term health problems
- Truancy
- Binge Drinking

This is to raise awareness of the different issues, and if a particular child has experienced on of these, the short film will aim to show how it needn't be the case.
We have to portray how underage drinking isn't fun and games, but does have serious consequences. For a homework task, we were asked to research into the topic thoroughly and find statistics that will shock our audience.
As I found in my research, long term health issues if starting to drink alcohol at an early age consist of things like Brain damage, liver disease, cancer risks and loss of awareness, for example sleeping with somebody whilst being drunk and becoming pregnant. Young people do not realise these consequences, and until they see it to believe it, it may not become apparent. Statistics gained within my research, showed how many young children these days can buy alcohol within a shop without being questionned of their age. This makes it easier for underage drinking to occur, as parents are not in control of their children's behaviour if they do not see what goes on. Also, 54% of children said that they drink within the home. This is a shocking statistic, but it doesn't state whether this is just one or on a regular basis. Children as young as 12 have been admitted as alcoholics due to excessive drinking on a regular basis. This is hard to understanding, when you automatically think of young children being innocent and well behaved in many parts of the country.
However, alot of the underage binge drinking occurs within parks and outside locations where parents are unable to see the effects of what they do. Many young children say they do this because they have no other activities they can become involved in.
In the second part of our lesson, we started to understand how different aspects of the film could make it more influential and realistic using several techniques. We looked at how documentary type films often use interviewing techniques, cutaways, and still images to get the message across clearly. I like the use of voiceovers in many short films, as I feel it makes it affective when trying to understand the point of the film. This could be affective when producing the alcohol awareness short film, as many of these techniques could attract the audience and inform them of the effects their drinking will have in the future.