Drugs

Most of our target audience when interviewed said they expected to see drugs being used in a Social Realism film. We also believed that the use of drugs could show the mental decline of our protagonist.

This article explains some methods towards using fake drugs on set, with my thoughts detailed around them.

 

Here is the article, without my annotations:
http://nypost.com/2013/10/23/what-actors-really-snort-shoot-and-smoke-on-set/


One way we could create fake drugs is by buying tick tacks or placebos and dipping one half of them in red food dye. However, it it hard to create any other pharmaceutical drugs in this way. To be effective, we would need a various amount of drugs that are different colours to look more striking. Another way this could be done is to use various pharmaceutical drugs and cleverly film the actress putting them up to her mouth, but not actually in.

We could create cocaine in various ways, as they look very similar. Either using cornstarch with baby powder works, or powdered lactose. If we were to use this drug, and try to snort it, we could also line the straw with Vaseline so that the powder sticks rather than going up the nose.

Other drugs substitutes I researched include using Oregano as Marijuana, crack rocks from glue and baking soda and magic mushrooms with some freeze-dried fungus. However, we do not believe these are the sort of drugs that our actress will be consuming.

UPDATE

Here is a link to what we decided to do: http://ihedgerfocus.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/health-and-safety.html