Pre Production Unit - Writing The Poem

From my research of poems and looking at multiple examples of free verse writing, I decided to give it a try myself hoping that I could use it to adapt into the production. I first of all thought about the themes I wanted to talk about. I didnt want to write something that was meaningless or random, I wanted to write something that had a real purpose and a message that I could reflect on society. The first thing I thought about was addiction. I felt that in the general scheme of things, a lot of people are affected by adiction. It can range from many different things whether big or small like food, caffeine, drugs, alcohol, smoking, gaming or exercise. When thinking about it deeper I tried to relate this to myself and then people that I knew. This proved difficult as the range was quite vast and narrowing it down to specify one addiction in particular would cut the audience down smaller. This grew as a problem for me as I wanted to appeal to a fairly wide audience. Not particularly everyone, but a wide enough audience so they could identify what I was going to be talking about.

I sat and had more of a rethink looking at mental health, sexual orientation and bullying but I wasnt really getting anywhere in myself that felt right to talk about in the right way. After a while I began to go down the same thinking route of addiction and apply in more general thinking terms. I asked to myself what do people want? What do people really desire in life? It was from here I got the idea of money. I felt money is something that a lot of people aspire to. Money seems to relfect success and self worth. This really interested me so I decided to explore this more. I was researching on the internet and came across a website called World Economic Forum. They had surveyed 2000 Americans asking them what they quantified as success. In total 42% said wealth followed by 37% who said freedom, 14% said respect and recognition, 4% said less responsibillity and lastly 2% said fame. You can see the statistic breakdown below that was on the websites page:

Although I felt that people really aspired to money, I actually was quite shocked how much it reaffirmed what I was thinking. I wasnt just shocked by money being at the top, I was more concered at what people put beneath it. As a person who believe money may be one element to messure success, I believe there are a lot of other things that I would consider equilily alongside if not more so than wealth like respect and freedom. This statistic was followed by another question that was asked. This was, "If you haven't yet made it, whats missing?". A suprising 67% of people said income followed by 22% saying a dream job. You can see this below:

After reading these statistics I felt this is a subject that I can talk about. I want to write a message that money isnt as glamorous and is not a missing puzzle piece that everyone thinks it could be. I researched further looking at successful people and what they felt about money when they were at the top. I came across a quote by Benjamin Franklin, one of the founding fathers of the United States. With someone in such a position of power and wealth he said, "money has never made man happy, nor will it, there is nothing in its nature to produce happyness, the more of it one has, the more one wants". This really made me think that this is a clear valid message that I could write.

I sat down and decided to write starting off talking about how people may view money and the beauty of it. As the poem goes on further I decided to think down the lines of the possesion of power. I questioned what would happen when someone has all the money and wealth in the world? What would happen if that person decideds to go for something more that has to be earned as they are suddenly unhappy with where they are? Power was the first thing that came to my mind and I felt this could be really interesting to play with. From here the poem was developing into a character that I was thinking up in my head of a woman who came from nothing and then suddenly fell into fortune and what this could do to a person. It went on to come full circle for her eventually losing everything in the end and having nothing. You can read the original poem I have wrote below:

I'm really happy with the poem. I feel it conveys a deep message that I wanted to put across. Through research I was able to construct it to read like a poem in terms of structure and use of language and this is something I'm really proud of. I will use this as inspiration when it comes to adapting it into a script for the film.