THEME RESEARCH | billysmedia

Theme Research - Homelessness

We chose to focus the main theme of my short film around homelessness, which is a problem that effects thousands of people every year. We wanted to learn about the ins and outs of the struggles of being homeless, and how difficult life can be when you live on the streets. We wanted to look into how it can have a dramatic effect on young peoples lives, as in my short film, the girl who becomes homeless is a teenager. We wanted to see what life is like from the eyes of the people who are homeless, as I believed it would help me create a more dramatic and realistic storyline for my short film. To find out more about the topic, which we knew very little about, we decided to watch a documentary created by Dispatches, called Britain's Street Kid's (as shown on left) which

follows various teenagers between the ages of 16-18 over a six month period, and shows how difficult day to day life is. It empashised how it can completley turn peoples lives upside down, and can cause many long term physical and mental problems. The documentry showed how many people are on the streets due to either leaving home, or being disowned by their families, and many teenagers feel like they will never be able to return home again. This leaves them feeling unwanted and lonley, and eventually they see themselves as a burden on society, who is trapped in a spiral of homelessness. The documentry also covered how many homeless people are forced into drug addictions, however my group and I decided not to feature the theme of drug abuse in our short film, as we felt that it would be very easy to make the film seem unrealistic if we did so.