Inspiration

As we are thinking off doing a urban drama focusing on the use of heroin we will have to get some ideas about the drug and how it is displayed in film and TV shows. As none of our group know how to use heroin or what it does to the body the only thing we can do is look online about how people use it and the effects it has. We can also look at how heroin is displayed in the media . I looked at the film "Requiem for a Dream" for inspiration and also how they display the class A drug.

 

I looked at a extract from the film called "Drug sequences from Requiem for a Dream". In this sequence the main things they looked at were: Cells in the body changing due to drug, Getting the drug, Using the drug.

 



The first thing I am going to look into is cells in the body being changed by the drug. In the extract there are a lot of shots of cells changing inside the body. These cells give a much more atomically view of heroin and its effects on the body. It is also a really interesting and effective idea to incorporate to break up shots. These are some screen shots of shots used.

 

 

Red blood cells speeding up through blood stream

Cell in pupal expanding making pupal dilate 

 

The second thing they focus on in the sequence I looked at was picking up or getting the drugs. The shots used where manly about swaps of money for drugs and breaking into car looking for money or things to sell so the addict could support his addiction. they also used am interesting close up shot of someone's eyes where the eyeball would roll from one side of the screen to the other to act like a swap between money and drugs was made. This speed up as the cuts became for fast pace to represent the addicts spiral into an addiction.

 

Drugs coming out of dealers pocket to be sold

Money switching hands as payment for drugs

 

The last important thing they looked out in the sequence was using the drugs. There where lots of little shots cut in-between the rest about how to use the drug. This included stuff like heating up the drug, sucking it up through a syringe and putting the filter in the mixture they had boiled. 

 

The filter absorbing the drug to get rid of  impurities

The sucking up of drug through the syringe before injection

 

 

This sequence has given me inspiration and a good idea about how heroin is represented badly in TV and films and also about how to use it and what to include in our film. This also shows me how scientific it is and all these ideas should be included in our final piece.