Reseacrh and Planning: Why we chose 'Drugs' as a focus point in our story?

The drugs we focus on in our films are those that contain illegal substances, that make them class A/B to the general public. These drugs are a source of tackilng depression and act also, in some cases as a 'pulse raiser' which can improve your heart rate and help making it feel more lively and careless. The reason we chose to feature drugs in this film, is because drugs can easily be portrayed as a representation of destruction, and through addiction and over dose they can seriously harm or danger the human taking them, and can not only physically but mentally affect someone, causing them to ruin stages of their lives, i.e friendship or relationships with family and friends.


In relation to our trailer/story, we use drugs to cue the destruction of a relationship, and in fact the human mind. It emphasises the affect Lizzie recieves from the drugs, which is negatively re-inforced by 'events' within the trailer. She eventually loses her life, and it's this negative representation of drugs we wanted to emphasise through our trailer, which links to conventions of social realism as a theme; as already used as an example in social realist films such as 'Shifty'. Due to our storyline having such a real brutality about it, it's what determines our trailer to be a social realist genre-based production.

Reseacrh and Planning: Location Research

The style of our film involves certain codes and conventions which can be emphasised by using particular techniques. Most social realist films are shot on location to reinforce the 'realism' of the film. This means that we will have to use appropriate locations which will correspond to the style of the film. Quite often, social realist films focus on 'Urban Britain' and the lower classes of society. The locations we choose must reflect this.
These may include:

• Subways
• Parks
• Council Estates
• Block of flats
• Graffiti on walls
• Run down houses
• Bus stops
• Train stations

All of these locations are the type of areas which are often featured within social realist films and are the type of areas which we need to involve within our trailer.

Reseacrh and Planning: Character Profile: Ty's Brother 'Ralph'

Ralph plays a very low key role in this trailer, only featuring in a few scenes. He is the brother of Tyrone and plays a very unknown, sudden role as his random and sudden appearance seems to be the cue for the drama and action to unfold in the trailer. He seems to know alot about Ty, something the audience and Lizzie clearly don't know, this helps create the area of suspicion around the persona of Ty. A fairly tall, popular boy that comes across very angry in the trailer, with masculine and stereotypical characteristics.

Reseacrh and Planning: Character Profile (Ty)

'Tyrone Stirling' is known socially as 'Ty' and is a 19 year old boy, who comes from London. With a unknown and troubled past, 'Ty' is known in the film as Lizzie's boyfriend. From a lower class, uneducated background, we come to understand through the trailer that Ty is fairly popular, however has a bad drug habit and this acts as a barrier from him and Lizzie developing as a couple. Their relationship is very secretive, as Ty comes across very untrustworthy and tends to tell lies, which upsets Lizzie and is a contribution to the troubles identified in the trailer.

Reseacrh and Planning: Character Profile: Lizzie

Socially known as Lizzie, her real name is 'Elizabeth Barrow'. A tall, attractive girl with long blonde/brown hair. From a middle class, educated background Lizzie is from London, and lives with her Mum and Dad making her a lone child. Her boyfriend Ty, is also from London but has a complete different background; and we intend to emphasise this difference in class through our social realist trailer.

Lizzie is also a popular, fashionable girl as the audience will intepret from the opening scene of our trailer, and its after this scene the audience will then identify the slow disruption in the life of Lizzie and the journey she then takes after Ty gets into some illegal troubles.

Reseacrh and Planning: Trailer Title (Film Name)

The title of any film has to be carefully chosen, and we decided to call our film "Subsidence".

In relation to Social Realist trailers, films like 'Fish Tank' and 'Jar of Hearts' have carefully chosen names, and evidently have a secretive meaning, in relation to their story and genre. We opted to follow this path, as we felt it was important for our film name to represent a hidden message, in this case it represents a our main character 'Lizzie' and her journey through teenage life after she is introduced to drugs and new social groups.

"Subsidence" means to 'sink to a lower level' which is relative to our film, as its all about how a middle class girl sinks to a lower level of class and image through drugs. We aim for the trailer to emphasise this dramatic lowering by ordering the shots to represent the change and the negative impact drugs have on humans. Through image, verbal language and body language we intend to show how 'Lizzie' subsides to this level and how it ruins her life; which had a great level of potential. Her boyfriend 'Ty' is also a reason for this 'destruction' and the name of the film we chose was short, catchy, teasing and unique. This then links with the film, and its a title we can link to many areas of the film and the characters journey. It also then links with the themes of gender, class and violence which is important and a key asset.

Other names we considered was 'Human Destruction' and 'Breakdown'. These two were average and lacked appeal. The feedback we received from our questionnaire agreed with, and confirmed our decision to pick "Subsidence" for our social realist trailer.

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.