Skins - Contextual Research - British Drama

Skins

One of my favourite ever British tv shows ever made has to be Skins. It is so relatable to our generation that it instantly hooks everyone on board. Skins is a typical British comedy drama that consists of a large group of rebellious teenagers from Bristol, South West England. It is mostly set throughout their 2 years in sixth form. The storyline explores a lot of issues such as mental illness, abuse, death and mostly bullying. I can really relate to this show as my own project involves a dysfunctional family, and this is also shown within Skins. Each and every episode always decides to focus on one individual character and explains their own story and the struggles they face in their lives. We live now in a generation where a lot of teenagers struggle with these awful problems, and skins really focuses on the resolution. The show was originally created by a father and son Bryan Elsley and Jamie Brittain and it was for Company Pictures and premiered on E4 on 25th January 2007. Skins really targets the young demographic as it's mostly aimed at teenagers. An interesting fact the shows name came from cigarette rolling papers known as 'Skins'.

Skins really influenced my work in a way were i leaned on my characters having family issues. I really wanted to play on the idea of my main character being depressed and alone until she's found her lost sister. Skins really represents these problems well, most of the characters have/had dominating families who have either hurt them or left them and i really wanted to influence that idea in my own project as it really comes across as a serious problem in this generation. A lot of people are left with almost no families and no-one ever understands the pain they go through and i wanted to portray that the way skins does. My screenplay also plays on the loss of a family member and the rough life without one.

This is a very memorable scene for me and also a very touching scene. The way that the editing mostly focuses on diegetic sound is so powerful because it makes you feel a lot of pain for Chris and Cassie. The atmosphere already feels distressed where we see alcohol laying around and Chris smoking before hand, we as an audience feel worried for the characters. When Chris lays down on the bed and Cassie starts rushing for the phone to call an ambulance the music gets louder to create a dramatic effect for the audience. We start to question if Cassie is quick enough to save Chris, the second Cassie runs over to Christ the music instantly quiets down so we can hear the last ever conversations between the powerful characters, this is were the audience begging to accept the fact that Chris is dying. We as an audience have been attached to Chris as a great character for a while and to keep us interested and watching this usually happens where a character is killed off to create drama and sadness. None diegetic sound is played at the end where Cassie is walking away to create the illusion that Chris is 100% dead and Cassie is walking away from their past together. This completes the separation between these two characters within the show. I myself tried to to create these illusions for my audience to feel between the characters, i want my audience to me engaged with my scenes and i want them to keep watching that is was all great film makers strive for. Throughout this scene i have picked up some pointed for my own scene where i know to dim the lighting to create the feeling of sadness and the also use close ups and extreme close ups to show the characters emotions through the lens! This is very much expressed in this scene where we have many close ups of Christ trying to mumble his words over to Cassie it almost makes us feel uncomfortable. 

Here is a montage of some really great scenes that really struck the audience and made them keep watching the show. I personally think that this TV series was brilliantly executed to where many people can relate to most of the characters and really engage with the show and feel the pain and happiness with every single character.