Fully Focused on Youth-Generated Content

They’re fully focused. [Image: Fully Focused Productions]

By Erykah Cameron

Based in London, Fully Focused Productions is a non-profit, youth-driven production company that invests 100% of its profits back into training programmes. Offering training, insights, production opportunities, and much more, Fully Focused Productions is run by Nick Bedu and Teddy Nygh, who co-founded it in 2010, making this year their 11th in the business. 

Accompanying Fully Focused’s production arm is its popular YouTube channel, Million Youth Media, run by Alex Simpson and which has, to date, gained over 63 million views and 380,000 subscribers since it started in June 2012. The channel uploads a new film every Thursday, and features a variety of content from documentaries, to spoken word, and everything in between.

The ethos of both Fully Focused Productions and Million Youth Media are heavily focused on producing diverse and meaningful content, with their three main focuses being on ‘Purpose, Perspective and Progress,’ as well as remaining youth-led, driven and focused. Clients of Fully Focused Productions include the likes of ITV, E4, MTV, BAFTA, BFI, Netflix, Adobe, Paramount, 20th Century Fox and many more. They also accept films from the public which are voted on by their Youth Panel, who decide whether the film is up to their standards and reflects their ethos.

After a six-year hiatus, only being available to stream online, BBC Three is set to make a comeback to our TV screens in January 2022. But before that, there are some interesting shows being added to the channel on BBC iPlayer; one of these being PRU, produced by Fully Focused with the pilot episode having aired on March 2nd and three more episodes to soon follow. 

“Fully Focused bring their ethos and emphasis on authenticity and representation of young voices both on and off camera”

— Shane Allen, Comedy Commissioning Controller, BBC

In the 18 minute pilot episode, we meet four students at a PRU (Pupil Referral Unit). Hana, Halil, Jaeden and Belle have all been permanently excluded from mainstream education and have ended up at PRU as a result. The comedy has been commissioned as a four-part series by the BBC, with the aim to provide an insight into the world of pupil referral units that most of us don’t usually get to see, with lots of authentic youth representations, and of course witty humor along the way.

At the time of commissioning, Shane Allen, Controller Comedy Commissioning at the BBC, said: “This script crackles with terrific dialogue from sharply drawn characters in a world we haven’t seen before in sitcomworld - all imbued with truth, heart and hilarity. Fully Focused bring their ethos and emphasis on authenticity and representation of young voices both on and off camera and we’re excited to go on this journey with them.”

The values of Fully Focused Productions are very clear in PRU, with lots of race and gender diversity among the cast, all of whom are from a range of acting backgrounds too. From new actors, to those like Kosar Ali who plays Hana and is a 2021 BAFTA nominee at just seventeen years of age for her supporting role in the 2019 coming-of-age drama, Rocks. 

During the making of PRU, the production managed to achieve diversity of 56% women, 53% BAME and 9% LGBT on set, with people from all sorts of backgrounds being involved. 

After the release of pilot episode, the series has been praised for its authentic and genuine representations of youth, and for highlighting the often-mistaken world of teenagers who have been excluded from school, which was the aim of both Fully Focused Productions and BBC Three. The series opens up a door for more realistic portrayals of teenagers that just say it as it is, and hopefully we’ll see more of this in the future, both from Fully Focused, and from the BBC. Fingers crossed the next three episodes are as much of a hit as the first!