Teen Drama

Teen Drama

Definition: Teen dramas focus on "the theme of the adolescent's assertion of independence, which is characteristic of the adolescent stage of development."

A teen drama is a type of dramatic television series that focuses on teenage characters. This genre only really became prominent in the early 1990's...It was relitavely un-exsistant for the first 45 years of television.  A lot of people mistake this genre with sitcoms. Sitcoms are telivision situation comedy that features recurring characters in a common enviroment. However teen dramas are usually part of a larger assemble that include adults as well as young adults but are generally more focused on young adults. Teen dramas, more often than not, have many soap opera elements. This allows the young adult characters to develop and grow over time while having to be faced with an array of 'realistic' teen issues. However a lot of teen based dramas often include elements of major themes such as; science fiction, fantasy and action/adventure. Teen drama is often outrageous and attempts to portray 'real life' as accurately as they can.

In the UK, teen dramas are usually aimed at more mature audiences. Examples of this are...

• Skins
• Hollyoaks
• Sugar Rush
• Nearly Famous
• The inbetweeners
• Misfits

Here is a clip of a Skins trailer. This trailer is a brilliant example of the Teen Drama genre. This clip encompasses every element and convention of a Teen Drama by exploiting Teens as a mean to create reality. Some of the elements covered in this clip are; Sex, Alcohol, Drug use, Careless behaviour.


However as we have to create a 2 minute FILM opening we have found a film in which we can base our film upon. Initially we researched skins but later realised this is a TV series and not a film therefore it would be harder to assemble a short clip based on such a wide range or episodes. The film we chose to then produce further research on and base our film opening on is Kidulthood. The main and consistant theme in the film we chose is bullying. As a group we realised that for the opening of the film there was a main point and within the first 2 minutes it switched between this and the every day happenings within that society.