Content for Statement of Intent 16.10.

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In this section I shall be going into detail about the product I intend to make. I will be discussing the
type of media text I intend to make, the subjects I intend to cover and the purpose of the text.
I shall now explain the type of text I intend to make. I have put a lot of consideration into what I
would like to achieve and I feel that I want to make a moving image product. Within that I intend to
employ two main forms of video product. The first being documentary and the second being creative
short film. I intend to use both of these products in combination to talk about a subject I have a
significant interest in and that subject is hidden disabilities.
I think that there is currently a lack of knowledge and understanding about disabilities. This is one of
the primary reasons why I want to make this film. I think that a large number of services are
currently ill-equipped to deal with the needs of people with varying needs of disabilities.
During the course of my film I will discuss several of these services that I feel arent serving the
needs of people with disabilities. I will demonstrate what they are doing wrong and comment on
what they could do to improve their working practices. I will now outline some of the services I
intend to include in my film.
The Job Centre. This service often struggles to understand the specific requirements of
people with moderate and hidden disabilities. Thus resulting in them providing people with
inappropriate job opportunities then discharging them for not complying.
Citizens Advice Bureau (C.A.B). The C.A.B being primarily a voluntary organization with
limited resources often doesnt have the training or knowledge required to deal with people
with these kinds of disabilities.
Housing Associations. The front line staff of these organizations are typically not provided
any training to deal with people with these forms of disabilities. As a result what can often
occur is people with disabilities being evicted by housing associations for non-compliance.
Education. Owing to a lack of resources disabilities can often go unnoticed for long period of
times in young people in education. This can have disastrous knock on consequences on
these young people as they grow up.
Health and welfare services. Owing to a lack of resources and complicated referral
processes, these services can often be overly complicated and poorly suited to people with
moderate learning and hidden disabilities.
The final service I intend to examine is the criminal justice system. This one is possibly the
most ill equipped service to deal with disabilities that I will look at in this film. The criminal
justice system is composed of too many complicated procedures that are not stream lined in
a way to make them usable for people with disabilities. As I have a significant number of
case studies and this is such a large sector, I intend to make this a large part of my film.
There are three primary purposes for making this film. The first of which is to inform, the second of
which is to educate and the third of which is to encourage change. I will use this film to inform
people about the issues faced by people with disabilities. Then I will endeavour to educate them
about different strategies and techniques that could be implemented to try and improve these
different services. All with the long term goal of encouraging reforms to these services.
I will now talk about the structure that my film will take. As I mentioned at the start of this section I
intend to mix both short film and documentary. Im doing this because I think that using these two
mediums in combination will allow me to reach the viewer on an intellectual level through the
documentary and on a more subject level by presenting them with a short film. This will also give me
the fringe benefit of creating a slightly cut down secondary product in the form of the short film
minus the documentary component.
The film will follow the year in the life of a young person with a moderate learning disability and
follow him as he interacts with several different services. All of which cater for his specific
requirements until he ends up falling into the criminal justice system. At key points during this film
there will be cut aways to interviews with various experts in the field of learning disabilitites. These
experts will talk about the different services and events being demonstrated in the film.
An element I intend to introduce in the short film to make it more powerful is a dual narrative
structure similar to the film sliding doors. So as we watch the film, we will see two different story
lines playing out side by side, split by expert testimony and interviews. One storyline will
demonstrate current practice/ Worst case scenarios and the other story line will demonstrate best
practice and potential outcomes if these strategies are implemented and followed.