Reseacrh and Planning: Production Brief

We are going to produce a film trailer for a film in the style of social realism. This film focuses on a young couple, named ‘Lizzie’ and ‘Ty’ who both end up having to face the struggles and difficulties of a drug addiction. ‘Lizzie’ at first, is a strong-minded, intelligent, middle-class young woman with high aspirations. However, this all becomes clouded once her boyfriend, ‘Ty’ begins to lead her down the wrong paths in life. ‘Ty’, is older by 2 years, and comes from a lower class background. His interests are of low-aspiration, and his career path is non-existent. ‘Ty’ tends to have a larger interest in taking drugs.

When, ‘lizzie’ is to learn of his bad habits, she tries to understand his reasons for doing so. However, this aspect of the narrative is very secretive and creates a sense of curiosity for the audience as well as the characters themselves. ‘Ty’ becomes very aggressive and defensive at this point, and refuses to open up to his girlfriend. After some persuasion, ‘Lizzie’ herself, experiments with the drugs under her boyfriend’s influence.

‘Lizzie’ begins to also enjoy the ‘buzz’ of the drugs and soon becomes an addict too. This encourages the idea that we are still living in a very patriarchal society, and men are ‘longing’ to be dominant in most situations. As the story unfolds, we learn as an audience, that the class differences have caused huge problems with ‘Lizzie’s’ family structure, her parents disapprove which leads her to rebel even more. She sacrifices many things to stay with ‘Ty’, however he is not the man that she believed he was. We learn the reasons behind his troubled mind and begin to understand his love for drugs. This all is revealed as an uninvited guest, (Ty’s brother) turns up out of the blue. After this encounter, ‘Ty’ goes missing and cannot be located or contacted. ‘Lizzie’ is franticly searching for him but fears the worst. She convinces herself that her boyfriend is dead and ends up over-dosing because of this, however, ‘Ty’ is alive and in fact just in hiding from those who are chasing him. When he hears the news of ‘Lizzie’s’ death, he pays his respects and attempts to get his life back on track.

The whole influence behind this particular narrative, is based on the Shakespearian play ‘Romeo and Juliet’, however in a much more modern, and realistic way. The main focus is on the social issue of drug addicts, however combined within this complex storyline, we have family break ups and dramas, a constant romantic drama as well as the main, social realist theme which runs throughout the film.

In order for us to create a trailer on a film, the whole narrative must be planned out so that the most important scenes can be selected to be shown in our trailer (without giving too much information away).  This is a low budget production and will be filmed on location, to further more emphasise realism.