My group and I collaborated to create a short film based around the issue of teenage drinking. My partner was Timothy Reich, and we produced, filmed, and edited the short film “Influences” based around one central character. The film represents teenagers and young adults, and our fast-paced film paired with our social media page and advertisements connected the overall message. The social media page on Instagram appeals to a young audience and the dialect that our script uses appeals to the audience as it uses popular colloquialisms. Our purpose for making this short film is to stress to high school students that drinking leads to bad consequences. Tim and I researched how many teenagers drink, and the number was surprising to us. Around 25 percent of teenagers in the United States admit to drinking. This number motivated us to create a project that focuses on this age group.
The social group of teenagers, or Generation Z at the moment, are at the age now that alcohol abuse is an issue they come across frequently in social situations. Though most of these teenagers have been taught from a young age to stay away from these products through organizations such as D.A.R.E., (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) peer pressure can often force them off of their morals. Tim and I found it important to be sure that a message against alcohol abuse was our priority in the short film, rather than alcohol and driving, as that can imply a different message than we wanted. The phrase “Don’t drink and drive” can imply that the drinking of alcohol is acceptable unless driving. Tim and I focused on making our moral just about alcohol abuse, as that is the larger issue among teenagers. We used the organization D.A.R.E. to not only appeal to teenagers in our area, (as this organization is used in Central Florida and all over the country) but the premise of this organization is easily understandable, and there are similar organizations around the globe that work to educate this age group on alcohol abuse. Some other organizations include the Center on Alcohol Marketing and Youth or the Partnership for Drug-Free Kids. We used D.A.R.E. as it does the most activities with students in a school setting.
Our social media page takes stills from the set and the film itself to connect the teenagers that follow it to the moral of the movie. We decided to use Instagram because according to our research, this platform is very popular among our target audience. The format is also convenient, as we can post photos with a description and use hashtags to get the posts into the algorithm. A big part of the Instagram page is establishing what the movie is advocating for. It will pull together the message in the short film to the products. Our poster as well as the merchandise designs appeal to teenagers as well, as they are not as bold as other designs would be about this topic. The poster is professional and in a similar format to big Hollywood movies. Merchandise such as our shirt, hat, and mug are easily usable.
Our short film begins with a familiar setting, a classroom with students and an officer from the D.A.R.E program. This immediately connects the audience of teenagers to the action; they have most likely been in a similar setting themselves. Later on in the film, through the school and party settings, the audience also easily understands the atmosphere, as we aimed to make it relatable. We used the most common words and phrases teenagers use in our area use. This dialect made the script feel more believable to the audience. Tim and I also used some stereotypes in our film. The biggest stereotype is the main character himself, the star athlete with perfect grades that can do no wrong. We used his character to show that even the most “perfect” people can succumb to peer pressure.
An issue we came across while making the moral to the short film was making sure that we did not put out the message “don’t drink and drive.” This message was not what we wanted to put out, because as mentioned earlier, the phrase implies that just drinking while driving is bad, and we wanted the audience to focus on just drinking. The reason we came across this issue is because we included the main character choosing to drive while drunk and getting into a car accident as a result of this. To put the message back on track, we ended the film with a montage of newspaper articles about the main character’s choice to drink and his consequences. The ending titles read, “It’s your life, it’s your choice, say no to alcohol.” This ending message does not mention driving, and reiterates the main point of the whole movie. We also struggled with acting. When we filmed the D.A.R.E. officer, we noticed that he had a hard time memorizing and delivering some of the lines properly, granted, he was an actual officer and not an actor. Though we ended up getting the shots we needed, they did not turn out the way we first envisioned. The same can be said about some of the party scenes. Our actors were not actually drunk, and acting that was difficult. We took a lot of takes for those party scenes, and spent nights going over the script to make it as believable as possible. Most of our shots were up to our expectations, but we could have definitely done a couple more takes on a few of them.
Overall, Tim and I succeeded in creating a short film that challenged the peer pressure surrounding alcohol use. We worked to emphasize that alcohol abuse is prevalent in teenager’s lives but is very preventable. Considering the fact that we were both quarantined for a total of 5 weeks during the completion of this project, we did the best we could.
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