Person A

Hello everyone!

Asher and I went scouting for people who take Adderall, but who are not prescribed it. It was difficult because some people do not want to be questioned on the subject, and others are not very honest so it would not be an accurate representation of what we need to reproduce. We found two people who were willing to sit with Asher and I and answer any questions we had for them.

We promised our subjects that they remain anonymous, for obvious reasons, and no information about them will be disclosed.

The following interview if with our first subject: Person A.

Interview with Person A:

Question. So why do you take Adderall?

Answer: “I want to do well in school. I started my junior year, I work about 30 hours a week, and it is all just really stressful and it helps me.”

Q: Do you feel like you do better overall in life with Adderall?

A: “Yes. Definitely. I don’t need sleep so it cuts that out. I’ll maybe sleep a few hours a night, but not usually. I’d say I get four hours of sleep per week. So everytime I get tired I just take another one.”

Q: What is it like being on Adderall?

A: "I can become very stimulated. I get paranoid. My heart rate increases so much. It curbs my appetite so I don’t need to eat and take time to do that. I feel just very paranoid like everyone is watching me. I’m walking in the hallway freaking out like shaking. After two days of not sleepy fully I just break down and cry. I just take a really high dosage.”

Q: What dosage do you take?

A: “I take a 45 mg or a 55 mg depending on what I can buy or is available. I think some people take 10 mg but I need more. They are about $10 a pill. I get it from a dealer.”

Q: What’s the biggest difference on and off Adderall?

A: “I get very focus to the point where it consumes me. Like I could be on a math problem for an hour or I’m focused on a dot on my paper for like an hour. It did hurt me on a test, but Adderall usually helps me on my tests when I finish them.”

Q: Are you going to continue using it?

A: “100%.” 

Q: Do you feel like you are addicted?

A. “I don’t know... pretty borderline.”

Q. If you were to stop how would your life be affected?

A: “I don’t think it I’d be affected that much. I mean I remember things better on it but I think I’d be fine. I mean I only take it for school. 

Q. Are you worried about the potential health risks and side effects?

A. “Sometimes. Like if it curbs your appetite like that’s not healthy. Like the way it affects me is not healthy either... so... oh well.. That’s what the school system does to you.”

Q: “How did you start taking it?”

A: My friend introduced it to my my junior year and it helped me in school and I just didn’t stop.”



Stay in touch for the exclusive interview with Person B!

All Exclusive Podcast

Happy Monday!

As I mentioned in my previous post, Asher and I have created a podcast for the development of Nora and for the betterment of the progression of our own planning process. We have found a candidate that is a prescribed Adderall user: Julia Brilliant. Julia is a good friend of ours and she is also an A level Media Studies student. She has ADHD, and since being prescribed Adderall her educational and personal life has been affected for the better. 

To capture the best experience and to grasp this personal testimony to its full potential, it is advised to listen to the following all exclusive 15 minute interview in its entirety, with Julia Brilliant, along with Asher and I!

Enjoy! 

Studying Steroid

As Asher and I were brainstorming plots for our drama, I recalled some information I discovered earlier in the year. Not even realizing it would be a great idea, I just casually mentioned it to Asher, and immediately he fell in love with the idea- the idea based on Adderall. 

"Adderall contains a combination of amphetamine and dextroamphetamine. Amphetamine and dextroamphetamine are central nervous system stimulants that affect chemicals in the brain and nerves that contribute to hyperactivity and impulse control." 

In other words, Adderall is a prescribed drug that is used to improve focus, attentiveness, and organization. That is why it is used to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and certain cases of narcolepsy. However, just as any other medicine, it can be abused and can become addicting. The side effects of this drug, especially long term, are terrifying and irreversible. While Adderall has some positive effects on people who need it and who are prescribed it, it has many powerful negative effects that can change a person forever.  

Adderall is used to increase certain hormones in the human brain to secrete to the rest of the body. These hormones, and neurotransmitters, include dopamine, serotonin, norepinephrine (also referred to as noradrenaline). They all work to ultimately create positive emotions, drive, and motivation. They are responsible for creating and regulating feelings of pleasure and emotion. 

Neurotransmitters Adderall Affects

Adderall works to influence one's brain into thinking that it is receiving these neurotransmitters at a normal quantity, but it is actually receiving them in much larger doses than the body is use to. So over long periods of time of taking this drug, and taking it when one is not supposed to, it alters these brain chemicals and changes them forever, and here's why:

The brain is tricked into thinking that the body has received enough of these neurotransmitters and that they are present for the brain to use. However, since Adderall has affected the rate of which these hormones are secreted, the brain stops producing them altogether. This drug stripped these neurotransmitters, and the natural production of dopamine, serotonin, and norepinephrine is no longer made. 

This side effect is just one of many that Adderall produces. The long term effects are much more dangerous than the short term effects, even though those are incredibly harmful physically and psychologically too. 

The problem with Adderall is that no, more than ever, it is being used recreationally and is being retrieved illegally. It is becoming an extremely prominent drug among generation Z and millennials (coincidentally our target audience), specifically high school students and college students. They use this drug to enhance their focus for studying, concentrating on tests, and staying awake for all-nighters. 

"Adderall is abused as a 'smart drug' across college campuses."

Adderall, as I like to call, is a studying steroid. I tend to view this drug as a method of cheating because it alters one's brain to have a higher performance than it normally does, giving others an upper hand than the students who actually study and try their hardest. 

Asher and I have never taken Adderall, however, we both have more friends than we'd like that take it, and not because they are prescribed it. It is becoming a problem in my school because students are getting a hold of it more frequently and it is traveling throughout our campus by word of mouth. Even though we have done our fair share of research on Adderall, we thought it would be best to have testimonials on both people who are honestly prescribed it and on people who take it recreationally. We feel that these interviews are crucial to the development to our film and to adapting the personality of Nora, our main character. 

Our plot will revolve around the idea that Nora is one of those people who take it recreationally and to increase her success in school. However, she neglects to understand the effects this causes and it takes a severe toll on her life, turning it completely upside down. 

Asher and I had a meeting to check up on the planning process of our project with our AICE Media Studies teacher, Mrs. Stoklosa, and she is very fond of our idea. She, too, agrees that Adderall has become a large problem in our school. We also had a group meeting with our peers in our class to discuss the development of each one of our projects and they loved the plot. They all said that is was a smart choice to focus on this drug because they all either have friends who take it or have heard stories about people who have. They understand how important this topic is becoming, and they all thought it was refreshing. Asher and I were very happy to hear that others loved our idea as much as we do, and that just gave us even more motivation to produce a complete and utter realistic representation of the effects Adderall has on our generation. 

Check back for more updates on our research on Adderall and Nora's experiences. 


Talk soon! 

Naming our "Baby Girl"

Hi everyone! 

Previous Design

First, I want to address that I did redesign my blog to match more of the overall theme I am trying to cover with my film promotional package. I think that it is important for your blog to match the style of your project, and match the style of you. As you may remember, my previous design matched my AS level project, a cooking magazine, so I used a dark wood background to capture the essence of my product. Now that I am doing a promotional package for a drama, something completely different than before, I chose a background that alter's one mood. I think the rain drops and the shades of blue are a great way to feel those intense somber and serious emotions. 

 Since we want to use the true conventions of a drama, we were going for some pretty emotional and intense ideas. As were brainstorming, we decided to do some character mapping first. We both thought this would help stir up our creative juices and help keep things flowing because we can branch out ideas based on what character we decide to create rather than starting from scratch. I did some research and this is actually how most plots are created, by making the character first. So Asher and I decided to name our future baby girl. 

We both want our main character to be female, either in her last years of high schools or first years in college, and we want her to follow the more unconventional route. I think this will help target our audience because most of late generation-Z and millennials either are still in school or just finished school. We don't want her to be a stereotypical pretty popular girl that everyone loves, but we also don't want her to be some stereotypical nerdy, loser-ish student who gets bullied and then makes her mark in some way. No none of that. Asher and I decided, it would be best to make our character a somewhat average student who is going through daily struggles and has a serious conflict. 

Asher and I were thinking of her characteristics, and before we went for her looks, we needed to choose a name. We went to a baby-name search generator and answered a bunch of questions of how we want our potential "baby" to be like. After numerous quizzes and questionnaires for our baby girl, we found some names we absolutely hated and some names we didn't agree on. That was the most important, and hardest part, because we needed to find a name for our character that we both liked so we can continue branding her and fitting her into our story. We finally chose a name for our "baby," a.k.a. the future star of the best drama of 2017, is... drumroll please... Nora Brawn! 

Nora will be put in some very difficult situations, that she may or may not overcome. Some of our ideas for our plot are as follows: 

• Family Issues 
• Abusive Relationships
• Drug Problems

Those are just some of our ideas that I will explore in depth in my next post, but I'll let you in on a little secret... we didn't end up deciding on the first two.

Stay in touch because Nora's drug problem might not be what you're thinking...

Continuous Find For Genres

Hello happy readers!

Now that we know what genre we are going to pursue, there are a few more things I need to narrow down to start getting this ball rolling. As I mentioned in my previous posting, there are many types of sub-types of Drama. As Asher and I explored the list, there were a few that we were interested in creating. Our top two were Melodrama and Comedy-drama. 

We thought Melodrama would be something that would be fun conducting, however, after looking more into it we decided to toss it.

"Melodrama Films are a sub-type of drama films, characterized by a plot to appeal to the heightened emotions of the audience. Melodrama, a combination of drama and melos (music), literally means "play with music."

Making our film a Melodrama would not do justice for representing our style. It is not the type of film I am looking to promote because it involves too much focus on music, unrealistic pathos-filled plot, and relies on primarily a female audience. For many reasons, this is not going to work. Some of the main reasons are because we want to make our film absolutely realistic and an audience for both men and women. 


A comedy-drama is something that we also seemed interested in. We looked into a few and our main example for a comedy-drama is The Edge of Seventeen.

We both enjoyed this film and thought it was a really great representation of high school students and teens in general. It has many awkward comedic aspects to it that are attractive, but it requires an acquired humor, that truthfully, Asher and I do not really possess. This type of drama usually relies on the humor to draw in the audience and create an outlet for them, inducing laughter. Another convention of this sub-type is that they usually have a happy ending, and we have not decided if that is what we want. We also wanted our film to be much more serious and intense, which is not a characteristic of comedy-drama. So, possibly the only convention we would adapt from the Edge of Seventeen is the very accurate representation of the film. But other than that, we are also ruling out this sub-type of Drama. 


So at this point in time, we are sticking with a pure Drama genre for our film promotion. We think this is the best bet for us because it contains the serious aspects we want. Until we discover another sub-type or genre, we are keeping this as our main point of focus.


Talk to you all soon! 

Good To Be Back...

Hello again everyone! 

I am so excited to finally be blogging again about the process of my A level Media Studies project. I have been brainstorming all school year about what I am aiming to produce this time around. This time it will be slightly different, partly because I'm not going to be conducting another magazine, but I am also working with the lovely Asher Michelson! Asher and I have worked on a few projects together and our collaborations with one another are really great. We have a similar mindset when it comes to many of the technical elements and the plot routes we want to take, but we both have strengths that balance out the other's weakness. We both did really well last year on our AS Media Project, and I think this year is going to come out even better because two heads are better than one. 

So this year, I am going to be creating a film promotion package. This includes making two trailers, a website, and a poster for the film. I started off this whole project by brainstorming what genre I wanted to delve into to. Asher and I have very similar ideas and we resulted in choosing three genres, then we would begin to nitpick each one and see what is most suitable for the ideas we have. 

Top 3 genres: 

1. Drama

2. Thriller 

3. Mystery

After watching numerous trailers, I fell in love with the elements of two films that have just recently been produced. These two films include Nocturnal Animals and Before I Fall. Both of these films have awesome trailers that have elements I have been envisioning. I am so excited to adapt certain parts from both, such as the intense fast paced editing, the build up and the main chorus of the high instrumental music, the low key lighting and the close ups of the main characters. 

(Both images have links to the trailers below.)

Nocturnal Animals

Before I Fall

           

I do not want to create a film that was scary in a gory or creepy way. Personal, I do not like these films and I choose not to watch them, so it would not be smart of me to produce something to that effect. After researching, I noticed a pattern that thrillers often include the conventions I was not fond of. Nocturnal Animals is a Drama/Thriller, and while I really like many aspects of the trailer, the film itself is not a route I am aiming to take within my film. There certainly are more extreme routes to thrillers that producers can often take, and I understand that not all of them include these conventions, but I would prefer not to. The main outcome of thrillers is to make their audience feel scared, and that is not what I want, so we can cross thriller off the list. 

Top 3 genres: 

1. Drama

2. Thriller 

3. Mystery

Another one of my main focuses was my target audience. I want to target the Millennials and the higher spectrum of Generation Z. I think that it is important to cater to the needs and likings of these generations so that they will be more apt to go and watch my film after seeing the trailers and the promotional products. Before I Fall targets the same audience I am aiming for, which is probably why I liked it so much. The movie actually just came out in theaters so I have not yet seen it, but I will let you all know when I do and keep you up to date on what I thought about it. The genre of the film is Drama/Mystery. After sifting through what the conventions of mystery are, I decided that is not what I am going after either. Mysteries usually have a victim and a brutal antagonist, and the film's main purpose is to solve this "mystery." I do not want my film to just have one mystery that needs to be solved per say, but rather I would allow the audience to solve it on their own, meaning there could be more than one explanation. After that, I can cross mystery off my list too. 

Top 3 genres: 

1. Drama

2. Thriller 

3. Mystery

Clearly I only have drama left on my list, which is very coincidental that both of the films I am inspiring from have. All of the elements I like in these trailers derive from the conventions of the Drama side. I am going to continue to dive deeper into my research on this genre because there are many sub-sections of drama that I may possibly be interested in producing. 

But until then, I hope you all follow my updates and stick by my side through this exciting journey! 

Stay tuned!

P.S. I will be changing the design of my blog in the near future, but I am waiting until I know the full details of my future film because I want it to resemble the aspects of it. 

Creative Critical Reflection

Click HERE to access and watch my Creative Critical Reflection.