THE TREATMENT

EQUILIBRIUM

How people are dealing with the death

This fictional documentary, filmed by a group of students who have been asked by their film studies teacher to film the reactions and grievingness of pupils. This is intended to be shown at his memorial service as a tribute to Ben. The students intend to interview, friends, staff, students and family. It begins with a sudden teenage death of a bright, popular athletic, handsome fellow student who has died in a car crash.

COMPLICATION

Girlfriend receives text

During Charlotte’s interview, it is revealed that Ben has been taking ADHD medication and buying it off a student who has got this condition. We find this out when a text is sent around all the students by an anonymous individual and Charlotte receives it. At first she is confused and then this turns to anger as she realizes he was all fake. He wasn’t who everyone thought he was. Her reaction shows a great deal about who she is and also gives us an insight into why he had taken the drugs as there is so much pressure.

DIS-EQUILIBRIUM

HOW PEOPLE REACT TO DRUG TAKING

Everyone is very shocked and confused. People want to know why he would take these drugs and what made him do it. So the documentarists decide to take a different approach and investigate the issues Ben was facing in which forced him to take the drugs. While interviewing people they all mention his brother and how naturally talented and great he was and how much Ben looked up to him. While interviewing his best friend, Tom, we find out he knew and that he was very worried about him. He starts to blame himself for the death of Ben and this is when it is revealed that he knew all along.

                Now that everyone knows, the documentary makers feel it a good idea to show the consequences of taking un prescribed drugs. We interview Doctor Trenkil who has a PDHD in medicine.

Ben’s personal tutor talks of how Ben wanted to go and do a sport course at a college nearby instead of studying academics. This was not allowed as his parents and the head teacher thought it best he applied to Oxbridge and study something he wasn’t interested in, like his older brother had done. He had a lot of pressure and this is shown throughout the documentary.

NEW EQUILIBRIUM

The film makers take the documentary to both the parents and the teachers including the head master and we see the reactions of these people and they can learn from what they did wrong.

CHOSEN GENRE & IT'S CONVENTIONS ( DOCUMENTARIES)

              The first is Expository, this is the most traditional mode and it focuses on the voice over. The 'voice of God', you hear him or her but you never see them. There would be a lot of footage and archive material etc. to help back up the voice over and support the argument. Images are often used to illustrate or even counterpoint the voiceover.                                                                       

                The second mode is the observational mode. This mode consists of no interviews, no voiceover, but with lots of handheld footage and long takes. The sound is caught on location rather than added in during editing. The subjects also pretend that they are not being filmed.

           The third mode is participatory. This mode could be described as having a mix of observational mode and expository mode in it. There is a voiceover of the documentary maker talking, but there are also synchronous sound recordings. The documentary maker interacts with the subject. There are interviews and a lot of footage and archival material as well as newspaper heading and letters. The documentary maker is visible to the audience.

               The fourth mode is reflexive documentary. This mode tries to capture an emotional response from the audience by borrowing techniques from fiction films. They like dramatic lighting and dramatic music. The voiceover isn’t telling you things, they are questioning things so that the audience can come to their own conclusions but with suggestive factors.

             
The last mode is the performative mode. This mode is when the documentary maker interacts with the audience and will comment on the process of making the documentary. The documentary will address the audience in an emotional and direct way.  The documentary may be focused towards an investigation or a search, but this may not lead to any satisfactory conclusion.

GENRE CASE STUDY 2 - AMERICAN TEEN

‘American Teen’ is on the mocu-documentary borderline. Whether it is real or not, we don’t know. Nanette Burstein is the film maker; she followed around 5 teenagers in their final year at high school. There are many very realistic things about the film, but there is a lot that you question. A lot you wonder if it has been set up or not. Was Megan told to vandalise someone’s house? Megan is the popular, bitchy, goody two shoes that has never been sent to the principal’s office before. So why has she now? There is also her best friend, the jock. Who is the good looking, popular guy who all girls fancy yet he falls for Hannah, the rebel who doesn’t care what other people think and doesn’t have many friends. He then breaks up with her over text, something that we as an audience all question as to be a set up. Next you have the nerd, but this stereotype is challenged. In fact all stereotypes are challenged. The nerd has every quality that the stereo typical nerd would have but he isn’t an a* student and he doesn’t sit at home working all day. Hannah rebels because she lives alone with her grandparents because her mother is mentally ill and can’t look after her. Megan finds it hard to connect with emotions as her sister died when she was younger, so she takes out her anger on other people. Colin is the basketball player, who has to do well this season and get a scholarship to college or else he won’t be able to afford it. His father is an Elvis impersonator, at the local restaurant and says he has to join the army if he doesn’t get in to college.

The voiceover throughout the mocu-documentary is done by the characters, but mainly Hannah. This helps the audience feel closer and more emotionally attached to the characters. This is because they can tell you how you feel and it makes it more real. We meet all the characters family and they are filmed in their homes, there bedrooms, in their cars. Everywhere they go the cameras go. We don’t miss one bit out of their final year at high school.

The cameras used are handheld which is an important aspect of a documentary. All the scenes come across to be real yet you question a few of them, this makes you question whether it is a documentary or a mocu-documentary. They used interviews and close up, deep chats with the characters to let the audience understand the stereotypes inner feelings. We never hear or see the documentary maker, it is completely focused on the characters and how they feel, not how they are questioned or talked to.

GENRE CASE STUDY 1 - THE BREAKFAST CLUB

‘The Breakfast Club’ is a teen movie where 5 teenagers get detention on a Saturday and are locked in the school library for 8 hours. From 8am until 4pm. You have each one of the stereo types of an American high school. You have, Claire, the spoilt-princess, Andrew, the school jock, john the badly behaved, rude boy who comes across at first as not having any feelings. Brian is the nerd, the brainy boy who is in the physics, maths and many more academic clubs and lastly Allison, who is a compulsive liar and doesn’t speak at all in the first half of the film. Throughout the movie you learn a lot about the characters. They all have something in common, at first they deny these factors but as the movie progresses they become much more open and tell each other about their home life and why it is so bad. It all comes down to the parents. The principal is a nasty, bully who takes his power of authority to another level. He threatens John secretly and tells him no one will believe him, hes alone and who would take his word over his. The principal’s nasty behavior brings the students together, they all become very interested in John and why his behavior is like it is.

Teen movies usually use problems that teenagers in the audience will face, this is to help them relate to the characters and become emotionally involved. Conflict with parents is a common factor in a teen film but instead of presenting it in a very serious way there is humor throughout the film but they still get their points across, which brings the audience emotionally attached. This is a very cliché teen movie although it was instrumental in setting the clichés. They include illegal substances, such as marijuana but there is no peer pressure in the characters taking part in it, they join in on their own. Although the idea of virginity was made very pressured. Claire the princess and prom queen was repeatedly taunted about whether she was or not.

GENRE INTERTEXTUALITY

Box Office Results

'Drop Dead Gorgeous' is a mocumentary that has a box office viewing of $10,571,408.

'Amercian Teen' is a documentray that has a box office viewing of $942,441

There is such a big gap in viewings between these two films, even though they are both american high school documentaries. The mocumentary is trying to be non fiction by making it seem as real as possible where as the documentary is completely non fiction. Poeple are clearly more attracted to 'Drop Dead Gorgeous', this could be for many reasons but it seems like it is because 'Drop Dead Gorgeous' has stars featuring in it, such as Kirsten Dunst.

POSTER ANALYSIS

CHOSEN GENRE & IT'S CONVENTIONS (TEEN MOVIES)

Our film is going to be a mix of two genres, also called a "hybrid". It contains elements of a Teen Film and of a Documentary, basically a mockumentary, a fictional documentary about a teenage boy's death. The movie will focus on friends, close ones and family dealing with it but at the same time establish what kind of person the dead boy was and subtly make it relevant to teenager's and our generationin general. A  mockumentary most commonly mocks a certain topic and is not intended to be taken seriously. Our film is different, while the documentary itself is not real, the script is meant to be taken serious as it deals with an dramatic and tragic event. The genre of teen and coming of age movies has been wildly popular around the world 
for decades since the 1950. At this time, the film industry saw a market for teens with a more disposable income and therefore more money to spend on leisure activities; largely going to films. Because of the boom in teen viewers, drive-in movie theatres were also very popular. The idea of an intermediate stage between childhood and adulthood was widely succesful because it offered a new and innovative way for teenagers to relate to something and also attracted a very big audience, which meant money for the filmmakers. Teen movies mostly feature themes such as sexuality, friendship, growing up, family, school and pressure, all of these are very common for the genre. Teenagers can watch these movies and associate themselves with them. They relate their own problems and their personal problems to those of the characters in the movies.

ADVANCED TARGET AUDIENCE

Our movie is going to be the mix of two genres, while we are focussing on Teenage Dramas, our project is a mockumentary aswell, therefore we'll have to incorporate elements of both genres but at the same time make sure that there is a fixed audience for our movie . While Documentaries in itself often appeal to a more niche audience, the elements of a teenage drama appeal to a broader and more mainstream audience. By doing some research on the internet, especially on video platforms such as youtube and vimeo, I was able to find some statistics and general information as to what the conventions of our two genres are and who we should aim it at.

Gender	Age
Male	45-54
Female	45-54
Male	35-44

The short shown above, is a comedic mockumentary dealing with a plastic bag, kind of satirizing the general animal and nature documentaries that are made a lot. While it's content differs heavily my hybrid idea, looking at this mockumentary has helped me to learn about the general style of documentaries/mockumentaries. The short features various conventions of documentaries and helped me to get a broad idea as to who watches these kind of movies.




Adolescent Suicide from Matthew Oquendo on Vimeo.
Unfortunately, Vimeo doesn't offer any insight on the different audiences, their age and gender like youtube does, but the above mockumentary, is much more similiar to my idea in terms of atmosphere. Like our mockumentary, this one also is not intended to be funny but is a serious approach on a serious topic. The similiar theme of a teenage death is also one of the reasons why this one in particular, has helped me a lot with my research on mockumentaries and teenage films.