TV DRAMA

'' LIFE'S A GAMBLE''

During the TV drama production project I have to work in a group of four team members in order to create the opening 15 minute drama piece which would be shown just before the first ad break, as a team we decided our drama is suitable to be commissioned on Channel 4 as it seems to meet their drama criteria. We decided to call the drama 'Life's A Gamble'' as the title matched the purpose of the drama itself.

SYNOPSIS


Dan Whitbrook is a young married man living in the city of Birmingham who amongst other things has major money problems. Pressured into young marriage due to having made his girlfriend Maria Whitbrook who is currently pregnant and having to put his career ambitions on hold to make time for the coming baby. Major money issues start to emerge due to having to rent a house with his wife Maria. Dan purchases a lottery ticket thinking he’s a winner when all his numbers match up.Thrilled that all their money problems are finally over the Dan and Maria go on a shopping spree. However, due to the ignorance that had started to fester in Dan he failed to notice that the ticket he thought was the winning one was in fact the one he’d purchased the week before. Maria (distraught) has a massive argument with Dan which results in him going out drinking he then gets intoxicated but with his despair comes a young lady called Danielle who enters his life . Danielle persuades Dan to follow her into a dark old Basement which is known to be a drugs den. This then leads onto a  detective called Harry Gray who starts to follow the trail of Dan’s punishable law breaking habit.

Characters Dan and Danielle in the basement.

3.2.1 Action !

Maria doesn't look too pleased with Dan

Maria and Dan argument turns dark.

MY ROLE
My pre-production role was to do script writing as it is something I quite enjoy, I worked closely with both the Assistant Director and Director in order to complete the script. I am also a Production Manager so my main duties is to keep on track with the production schedule and budgeting and make sure that the big files are completed at the end of the post production stages. I am also involved in allocating the location during the production process, so I had to keep in contact with Film Birmingham in order to get permission to film at various locations around the Birmingham region.

Left to right : Paul ( Sound Operator/ Editor ) , Joe ( First AD / Scriptwriter ) Me ( Production Manager / Scriptwriter )        Jono ( Director)

PROFESSIONAL TALKS

During the first couple of weeks of the TV drama module we had some visitors from the television drama industry to talk to us about how they started of in the industry. The first talk was by production coordinators at BBC Doctors who told us what it is like working in that particular industry, this was a very useful talk as it helped me understand what is needed to work in the industry. A couple of weeks later a director from teen soap drama Hollyoaks came to talk to us about how he became a director and what skills and experience is needed to become a television drama director.


TRAILER

During the module as a group we had to think of a cross media project to reflect both of the modules we picked, as a result we decided to create a trailer which crosses both of the modules together. We thought channel 4 drama trailers are shown on E4 quite often so it would be great if our trailer was shown on the ad break of the TV chat show Screen Squeeze.

FINAL PROJECT


After weeks of filming, the final project was completed ready for the deadline date. As a production group we worked extremely hard with the project. There were a lot of strengths as well as some weaknesses, this has helped me identify what drama production could be like in the industry. I had an incredible time working with a great team and learned a lot of skills, I enjoyed being a production manager and understood how time management, organisation and professionalism were the key points to that specific job role.