Character development- Lauren Research: Material Girl

Romantic Comedy Drama inspired by book 'Fashion Babylon' about dreams, love, clothes and how we all use them to run away from who we are and towards who we should be.

The protagonist in this drama is Ali Redcliffe,
A talented fashion designer, feisty, impetuous and ambitious, she knows it's going to be tough in the world of fashion for a down-to-earth girl. Despite her training she considers herself a fashion outsider with no connections to the industry.
She finds it difficult to trust men ever since the man she loved, Jed Nicholle, left her in pursuit of his career. Ali is the focus of Davina Bailey's personal vendetta, since Ali walked out of her job after a huge row. She refuses to be compromised creatively.

I believe this is the main source for our storyline Ali is down to earth gutsy and knows what she wants these are the characteristics we want to be portrayed through Lauren. The fact that she is British makes our characters more alike. your environment plays a big role on your perspective of life and your personal rationalism through our drama we hope to show this through actions Lauren chooses to make and discussions.

The adversary in this case is FORMER sister/ best-friend figure Davina Bailey a British sister of 'Ugly Betty's' manipulative Willamina crossed with Meryl Streep in 'The Devil Wears Prada.' Benig the success thirsty business woman she is she just could not stop her habbit of backstabbing Ali in the process. After a mjor arguement Ali decided she had enough and left Davina to make it on her own. however Davina still has not come to terms with Ali's new found confidence and success, so she continues to sompete with her in a poor attempt to win popularity.

Heres a trailer of what the series is about.

Research: Ugly Betty- Character development of Lauren

 Betty Suarez is smart, sweet and hard working. The only problem is that she's not thin and beautiful like all her coworkers at Mode, the high-fashion magazine where she works. The only reason the publisher hired her to be his son's secretary, is that he thought Betty was someone who Daniel would never sleep with. Betty's hard work and determination earns Daniel's respect, as she helps him find his way through the shark infested waters of the fashion industry. Ugly Betty is based on a Colombian television-novel "Yo Soy Betty La Fea".

Ugly Betty is a TV series comedy drama.
As soon as we came up with our story line we found and immediate correlation between this drama and our own. Betty, like Lauren is the Protagonist (main character) with a love for fashion but isn't always understood, but once in a blue moon she gets lucky. She is far from perfection which makes her character lovable because nobody is.

Some story lines include themes such as:

• Family affairs
• Love 
• Rejection

And so on these are all things we can base future radio dramas on .

The Adversary in this case is Willamina Vivian Slater played by Vanessa Williams. Willamina is a conceited, self-absorbed diva and former supermodel who lives for two things: MODE and BOTOX. Betty and Willamina have a strange relationship. Willamina being a powerful woman in the MODE Magazine industry and Betty being a personal assistant, Willamina is very much superior to her. Instead of rebelling against this Betty (being the nice person she is) has much respect for her. This respect allows them to get along regardless of the working environment hierarchy. 

Research: The Devil Wears Prada/ Character development: Lauren

 Other than the setting being realistic, the characters must be aswell so we researched a few existing TV shows and Films relating to fashion for an insight as to what our main character Lauren should be like

The Devil Wears Prada

A comedy drama about a naive young woman comes to New York and scores a  job as the assistant to one of the city's biggest magazine editors, the ruthless and cynical Miranda Priestly.

BEFORE...

The protaganist in this case is "Andy" (Anne Hathaway) who is an aspiring journalist fresh out of university who lands in an fashion job despite her ignorance towards the proffession. During the film we share her struggle to fit in or be accepted in the fashion industry.

This shows her 'Go-getter' quality as she strives to improve in a feild she has no interest in. This is a quality we would like to be portrayed in Lauren.

AFTER...

Andy then began to learn the ways of the fashion industry and also began to sound and dress the part. To show development we can mention that Lauren had all the knowledge to make it in the fashion industry but she lacked confidence. As Lauren grows in the drama and facing some trials to do so she gains confidence, but has she gained too much confidence? Has all these challenges got the best of her? These are all questions that can be answered in future radio dramas.

The adversary in this case is powerful and demanding fashion magazine editor Mirander Priestly, (played by Meryl Streep). She is a non-negotiable part of the fashion scene. And expects anyone who comes across her to realise that.

 From this image alone we can see the relationship portrayed between the two in the fim. The levels in the image show Mirander to be more superior to Andy as she is standing and Andy is seated. Also the distance between them shows a level of respect.

However in the film they do grow fund of eachother although Mirander doesn't show this due to her proud and proffesional character whereby Andy being younger and having no real repuation to keep up has no problem expressing herself.

Setting research

It is very important to us that our radio drama is realistic even though it is not a visual drama. we had to make sure our target audience can relate to every last bit of the drama including the setting. so we searched for a venue located in the heart of London as our radio drama is. Initially we anted it to be in Royal Albert Hall because it is extravagant and well known for that however it wasn't realistic. so we looked for venue's where fashion shows had been held before via Internet.

This link: http://www.eventwise.co.uk/html/fashion-show-venues-london/ proved to be quite useful during our search it revealed a number of possible locations for our drama to take place. When searching our requirements were:

• Well known location
• Used before and recently
• Known for holding fashion related exhibitions and shows
• Images of location

Somerset House met all these requirements and more.

• Located in the heart of London

• Many other function that are fashion related have been held there

Matthew Williamson 
Until 30 January 2011

JENA. THEO
Designers in Residence

COMING SOON:
London Fashion Week 
18-23 February 2011
 

COMING SOON:
London Fashion Weekend  

24-27 February 2011

Previous exhibitions and events include:
Maison Martin Margiela ’20′ The Exhibition
10 June – 5 September 2010
Fashion for Relief
18 February 2010
Norman Parkinson: A Very British Glamour
9 October 2009 – 31 January 2010
SHOWstudio: Fashion Revolution
17 September-23 Dec 2009
Esquire’s Singular Suit31 July-31 August 2009

I found this information on Somerset House’s official website

(http://www.somersethouse.org.uk/)http://www.somersethouse.org.uk/support_us/events__private_hire/venues_available/863.asp



Theme and Narrative developments

PEER ASSESSMENT

We typed out our first draft in professional script format and corrected any spelling and grammar errors. We then had to read our drama out in front of the class. A few more characters were needed for the reading so we asked a couple of our classmates to join in.

I believe it went quite well as the reading was quite fluent and many people got the gist of the play and found the comedy in it. however there were some areas of the script that wasn't so clear and needed extra explanation from our group after the reading. One of these areas was scene 2 when a text was received by Vivienne who was threatening to destroy the fashion show. I believe the confusion was mainly because sound effects were needed at the time to put emphasis on the arriving text message which
will be edited during the production
phase using sound-pro.

There were also some queries about our character Roxy who was meant to be a close friend to Lauren, someone who she could confine in during the disasters during our radio drama. unfortunately this relationship was not portrayed during our radio drama so we had no option but to get rid of her. As a group we think this is a good change mainly because there were a lot more characters in the drama than we initially wanted and getting rid of one would be something less to worry about. Another good thing about this change is that we can now focus on the main 3 characters Lauren Vivienne and Chris and try to create a stronger relationship between our target audience and the characters by making them more relatable. starting off with a minimum amount of characters gives us the opportunity to add to the cast during the drama development in future series.

We gave most of Roxy's lines to Chris making a best friend to Lauren as well as just a boyfriend. we gave one of the lines to a model in scene 3/4 to create a employer and employee relationship to show how the range of people that admire her in different levels of intimacy so our listeners can then choose which category they would prefer to fall in to.

During our very first development stage we were told the drama was a bit short so doing this has created more dialogue in turn consuming more time to produce a full drama.

First Draft of Script

This is our very first rough draft of our radio drama it has 5 scenes in total.

Lets get it started: TAKE 1!

At our first meeting we reviewed our mind maps and decided that we would like to base our radio drama on a horror. We decided on this because of the previous radio dramas we had studies as a group which we found to be more engaging and realistic as it triggered our imagination into action.

But after listing all the possibilities of plots and story lines we found it too easy and decided an intelligent group of girls like ourselves can storm up something much more creative and relevant to this day and age.

We thought it would be easier to firstly decide on a target audience and from there list what genres would work. Our radio drama is to be aimed at young people- teenagers to mid 20's. We now know that the drama must be new, fun and exciting as well as relevant to today's society. We live in a modern age where radio isn't the only means of entertainment therefore whatever storyline we decide on has to be extremely interesting, empathetic as well as unique and most importantly realistic to our target audience.

As females we believe it would be easier to create a storyline we can relate to so we aimed our radio drama at females which is a god change as radio drama's we have studied previous to this have all been male orientated a good example of this is War of the worlds and the hitch hikers guide to Galaxy.

After a lot of discussion we came up with a story line based around a fashion show and two rival women fighting for success in the fashion industry. This represents females as successful business minded individuals instead of naive and needy.

[SCAN MIND MAP OF STORYLINE]