Skint Inspiration

The OED defines poverty as "The state of being extremely poor"

Background

There is a recent documentary on Channel 4 giving an insight into the lives of those in one of the poorest regions in the UK, Scunthorpe.  The show follows several different people and their struggles with family, money, addiction, and venturing in and out of jail. The program angers some viwers with regards to benefits being given out, and how some charachters feel there is no need for a job, however some viewers sympathise with their situations.

Channel 4 have used the following description for series 1 episode 1 on it's catch up service:

"Bringing up children when work is scarce is never easy, but it's even harder if you are also struggling with addiction. This episode follows the impact that addiction can have on family life."

Influences for our trailer
We could branch out from this and find out how far people would go in order to get money, drugs, or materialistic items that make them happy, and combine all the episode's ideas into a series of short clips, that in turn would make a full movie. A local pub is also used as an area for meeting , seen in Skint, and also in the Shamesless trailer. (see below)  



Family featured in Skint

Research

I have found a list of multiply deprives areas in the UK that have been released by the gov.uk website, that brings together details on employment and income in order to produce a deprivation scale. It reveals the top ten as:

Falinge (Rochdale)
Langworthy (Salford)
Everton (Liverpool)
Grangetown (Redcar/Cleveland)
Sparkbrook (Birmingham)
Birkenhead North (Wirral)
East Jaywick (Tendring)
Granby (Liverpool)
North Huyton (Knowsley)
Hupurhey (Manchester)

From this table you can see how high levels of deprivation can lead to high levels of crime

Housing like this is not an uncommon sight

Reviews
The program raises wide awareness, however there are not always positive reviews of Skint, in an article from thisisscunthorpe.com there is a wide backlash from viwers as they claim the show glorifies drug takers and shop lifters. http://www.thisisscunthorpe.co.uk/Skint-Complaints-Ofcom/story-19102867-detail/story.html#axzz2VodU1leM

Twitter users also take to the social media site with tweets such as:

"This skint program gets me angry, get a job you doley bast's"

"Skint is probably the most discusting program i have ever seen"

"Skint highlights the scum of the UK #nooffence' 

Exploring Genres

Overall, the areas of poverty, benefits, addiction and deprivation are sensitive but interesting areas to explore and could be benefitical for our A2 coursework. We could explore many genres if we went forward with this idea such as horror, psycho or urban. Some examples include the crime drama film 'Ill Manors' that has links to deprivation and it's impacts on life.

Here we see the film set in London, with a high use of drugs, violence,  and it gives a realistic insight into the life stuggles that come with such little money.

Urban

A more urban take on the realistic lifestyle comes from the film 'Kidulthood':

The difference with this trailer is that it heavily involves teenagers and young adults, so it's hard to see the stuggles that they face as they still live with their parents, who would be mostly affected with money stuggles, but we can clearly see the impacts it has when it comes down to the teens.

Shameless

Not necessarily a film trailer, but the trailer for series 11 of Shameless takes away the deprivation from London and moves it to the northern region of Manchester, the setting of the home, and the actions of the charachters highlight the small amount of money that they have in order to get by, and how they can't afford luxuries, this is also shown with the repetitive use of the £10 note and how the protagonist is happy that he's got this money, and chases after it when it is blown away with the wind.

The lighting that is used within this trailer is quite dark and dismal, showing the lack of escape that the charachters face when dealing with situations.