Ideas
In our discussions, as a group we came up with a range of ideas:
1) A homeless person begs and busks during the daytime in order to afford any food or drink that will keep them alive, however they often dread the nighttime as the unpredictable can happen and no one can help you. They return to their usual sleeping spot after a busy day and discover another person sleeping there, they decide to confront them and this results in them getting mugged by the other person. The other person flees, the main character chases them to no avail and gives up. They return again to the spot and see another person sleeping in their spot.
2) A mother is stuck in a busy work life and is never around to give her daughter the attention and care she needs, the mother often leaves her child alone at home whilst she works numerous hours down the hospital. The mother returns home one evening to discover her daughter missing, the mother panics and doesn't know where she could have dissappeared to.
3) A young teenager goes missing, her friend believes she has been kidnapped and decides to go to the police in the hope they might help her. The police do not take action on the matter which results in the missing girls friend to go on her own discovery to find her friend.
However, all of these ideas had a few criticisms:
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The majority of these ideas are too complex to complete within a 5 minute run time as these type of storylines often span through a television programme in order to create a realistic and more detailed plot, the risk of attempting these ideas within a 5 minute run time could be costly such as the audience not buying into the plot or believing it, this criticism was most present in our 2nd idea and most definitely our 3rd idea.
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Specific roles especially for older characters such as a mother or father could prove difficult to find an actor who could play the role, the risk of having a younger actor attempting to portray an older character would make the production look too amateuristic and the audience would notice. Therefore, this cancelled out two of our initial ideas, the 2nd and 3rd idea, as both ideas include older characters such as parents or police officers.
Final Idea:
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A young homeless person (Matt) busks during the day in order to afford any food or drink that will help him survive on the streets, another homeless person watches his success (Ethan). Matt dreads the nighttime as the unpredictable can occur with no one around to help. He returns to his usual sleeping spot and discovers Ethan sleeping there, after confrontring him they recognise one another and agree to share the spot for the night. Matt wakes up to witness Ethan stealing all of his belongings, he runs and Matt chases him to no avail. Matt returns to the same spot again to see another homeless person sleeping, Matt decides to steal the other persons belongings whilst they are asleep to make up for what he had lost but decides not to, he can't bring himself to steal from another defenceless person. He gives up and sleeps beside them.