Drugs are over glorified

For my first assignment, I wrote about The Weeknd Blinding Lights. I wrote about the impact his drug abuse had on his relationship with Bella Hadid. For my second assignment, I decided to focus on the impact the cocaine industry has had on local communities in Colombia and their youth. I narrowed down my topic for the second assignment because there wasn’t a lot of data on the impact of drug abuse on relationships, and the data that was present didn’t really have a lot of complexity. For my third assignment, I would like to focus on celebrities and their addictions as that was my original topic. My film would focus on drug abuse in the media, the sensationalization of certain drugs in music and film. Recently, a lot of mainstream rappers have died from overdose, for example Juice Wrld and Mac Miller. 

In the beginning of Blinding Lights, The Weeknd is seen hunched over with a pool of blood covering much of his face and mouth. I would like to open my film with this imagery and maybe cut to various scenes of addictions depicted in the media. Unlike the Blinding Lights music video, I would like to imitate the style of a documentary as the Vox one cited in my second essay.  I would grab recordings of various interviews of these rappers and celebrities before their deaths with their messages about substance abuse. For the background, we can even add in audio from their music. I would use a lot of jump cuts as well because I don’t really like the look of transition fades. I am familiar with a lot of the edits I plan on using as I’ve used Premiere before, however, I’m not sure where I’ll find all the shots I need. 

For the research aspects of this assignment, I’ll be looking through archives of youtube videos and vimeos, and any other free sources. I’ll have to watch a lot of interviews in order to find the right clips for the film and the overall message I’m trying to send. The message that I’m trying to send is drugs are bad and over glorified by the mainstream media. I don’t think it’ll be hard to portray drugs as harmful substances mainly because that is already an accepted belief. The hard of this assignment as I mentioned will be piecing everything together. A lot of these celebrities rarely speak out about their addictions in interviews because it is a very personal topic, but there’s a lot of mention of it in their music, so hopefully I’ll be able to tell a story through their music. Right now, my film isn’t focused on one particular celebrity or genre of music, but the industry as a whole. This gives me more sources to pull from. The more sources the better. 

I am excited to make the trailer because I haven’t edited something in a while, so hopefully I still know how to use Premiere. I don’t think I’ll be using any gifs in my trailer because I don’t like how redundant they can look. In terms of tone, I know my trailer will be depressing because I’ll be showcasing a lot of the people that have passed away due to drug overdose.