Street Art: Vandalism or Art?Final Documentary Pitch

Kiya Persad

• In the 1970s another artist called Blade became known for covering entire train carriages with graffiti. This can be linked to tagging that is seen covering most train tracks to this day.

• “Blek le Rat” came to the scene in Paris, 1981. He is known for using stencils to graffiti, much similar to the later work of Banksy. His work often was influenced by social problems. For example, in 2006, he created a piece of homeless people to raise more awareness on the issue.

• Ancient graffiti can be seen as displaying phrases of love and simple thoughts. However, today it is seen as displaying social and political messages.

• The first modern graffiti is considered to be by ‘Cornbread’ who was a high school student trying to get the attention of a girl by tagging walls in Philadelphia. This was in 1967. After realising he enjoyed spray painting, he continued tagging Philadelphia with his name. He now works with ‘The Mural Arts Program’ which helps prevent illegal tagging.

Analysis of Similar Product

• In 1983 a documentary called ‘Style Wars’ was created. The documentary was about hip-hop and focused on the graffiti scene. It also focused on the idea of artists expressing themselves and opposing views of graffiti.

How did my idea start

• My idea started through getting to the train in the mornings and noticing different graffiti tags. This gave me the idea to look at graffiti being used for tags. At first I wanted to look at why people created tags and used graffiti too tag different areas.

What factors affected my idea

As I developed my idea I considered looking at both aspects of graffiti art, such as graffiti murals. This lead me to look at whether graffiti is seen as art or vandalism.

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Structure of my Documentary

Introduction to documentary

Interview with graffiti artist to get their view of the topic

Cutaways of different art murals and tags sped up

Narrator comes to a conclusion from the general opinion

Vox pops with general public on their opinions of graffiti

Narrator discusses whether graffiti can be seen as art or vandalismCutaways of tags

across London

Interview with School Police Officer

Cutaways of artists’ work

Aim of my Documentary

• The purpose of my documentary is to show people the different aspects related to graffiti.

• It is also to allow people to make an opinion of what they see graffiti is once they have seen the different sides of it.

Target Audience

Primary Target Audience - 15 to 25 year olds interested in street art.This is because they will gain further knowledge from their starting interest in street art.Secondary Target Audience - Anyone who enjoys art.This is because it will give them insight on graffiti and how some graffiti pieces have lead to street art becoming a more accepted art form.

Primary Research

From my focus group I gained insight from my target audience that they think I should keep the use of colours broad. They also said I should go to skate parks to get a variety of visually pleasing cutaways. This aided me in knowing more about how I could use visuals and which ones to use in my documentary that would appeal to my audience.They also said my documentary should be observational rather than presenter led as the audience can create their own interpretation of the documentary and content within it. This allowed me to get a better idea of what style my audience would like to see and how I could film my documentary in an observational style to keep the information more interesting.In my focus group we also discussed what background music I should use. They agreed that any genre would work as long as it was relevant to young people and so I won’t need to use one genre of music to appeal to my audience. They also suggested that whichever genre I use, I should make sure it is upbeat as graffiti is quite exciting and not dull so the music should represent that. This made me gain an idea on what sort of music would work and appeal to my audience and allowed me to think of different music instrumentals I could use in my documentary.

Channel and DistributionI think my documentary would be best suited to BBC Three. This is because BBC Three show a lot of documentaries based on subculture, which is what street art would be considered as. Most of BBC Three’s similar documentaries feature niche topics that bring in a wide target audience. Therefore, I feel that my documentary will also do this as it covers both the positive and negative aspects of street art and will thus be commercially viable. BBC Three’s ethos is that they want to ‘hear fresh voices directing and presenting films’. This shows that BBC Three would be a suited to my documentary as they want new British film makers with interesting ideas.

Sister channels that could also promote my documentary would be BBC 2 and BBC 1. Even though BBC Three is an online format, it’s sister channels BBC 1 and BBC 2 often advertise shows across the different channels, this would aid me in gaining a wider secondary audience.

I will advertise my documentary on YouTube. As BBC Three is online, it is more likely my audience would watch the documentary if they saw an advert on YouTube as they are considered an ‘online generation’.

Commercial Viability The total cost of my documentary is £39,318.These costs cover my editing, camera and sound equipment as well as the people involved in creating my documentary. I have been able to cut costs. For example, I would not need an assistant producer or director as I would take on both roles.

I would fund my documentary through Kickstarter. This is because Kickstarter is a project that helps both big and small films which I feel would be the most relevant of funding support to get for my documentary.

Legal Issues

Ethical Issues

If you need anymore information regarding my documentary, please visit my Wix Page:http://kiyapf123.wixsite.com/13comm