Planning: New found representation and location

 New Found representation and location

During the creation of our script, my cinematographer and I found a new way to show representation. In our world, teens have access to too much harmful substances; there are many cases of teens abusing harmful substances like alcohol and drugs. According to National Center for Drug Abuse Statistics, a statistic which dates to 2023 states, "25.6% of 8th graders have abused alcohol at least once. 61.5% of teens have abused alcohol by 12th grade. 9.15% of all 12- to 17-year-olds used alcohol in the last month. 2.7% of 12th graders drink daily." It is a real life problem and as a teen, I seen cases of it almost everyday, all around me. We wanted to represent this in our film. As a person with power and wealth, our main character, Dariah, is exposed to a lot of this, due to her unlimited freedom and toxic friendships. We wanted to show her in a terrible position that essentially caused her to switch schools in the first place. This will occur during the montage, while she quickly states that an "incident" the occur which resulted in switching schools and identity. To keep it PG, instead of using obvious substances, we resorted to using a Red Solo cup, which by global standards, indicates that there is alcohol in it. Furthermore, because we decided on an a new representation to add to our film, it has also came with its own location, which leads me to this...

New Location added:

We are currently keeping the Walk Plaza, Barnes & Noble and the Boca Raton mall, this time we are adding one more location; the director's house or my house. We will use this house to film the part where Dariah is seen receiving the immediate consequences of getting drunk. This film will take a lot if creativity, especially since the setting is a "house party". We will have to work with a lot of editing for when she gets "filmed" by other people and sound designing for diegetic music playing in the background. We are also debating between having this part be a still or a short clip. On the day of filming, we will do both options, then commit to whichever one is more effective to the plot and allows us more time.

                                       A stock photo of what we are trying to achieve

                                                    Snippet from Young Royals S1 EP1

A Film we also referenced for not only it's narrative but it's light design is Young Royals(

2021); specifically Season 1 episode 1. 

Narrative:

In this episode the Prince of Sweden gets into a fight at a party, most likely due to intoxicated actions, and as a consequence he was forced to switch to a private schools. Essentially, we are grasping a similar thing here. Dariah is caught filmed in a very drunken state, which is then posting and causes a lot of negative publicity to her family. Part of consequence of her illegal underage drinking being made public was to switch to a different school and fake her identity. 

Lighting:

As you can see in the episode's fight scene, strobes of neon and bright colored lights are presented in the background of the party. Each colored light has a different meaning. Red lighting in films is powerful and conveys emotions, foreshadows events, and shaped the audiences perspective of the character. In this sense, we want to use red lighting the shift the audiences perspective of Dariah. The are set to believe that she is a innocent young teenage girl looking to start a new life; quickly the thought is deceived as the see the real reason onto why she switched schools.  Another main color seen is green which means renewal. We can manipulate this in our film to she the renewal of her life as she starts a different path, with a different mindset and attitude than her last. 

Props needed:

• Red solo cup
• Iphone

Actors needed:

• Dariah 
• Bystander to take a video of Dariah
• Old Friend

                                            A still of the red solo cup, key prop for this scene

A "red solo cup" is widely considered a symbol of a party or casual gathering, particularly in the United States, due to its association with inexpensive, disposable cups often used at college parties and social events where people are likely to be drinking alcohol. We can use this instead of an actually bottle, which would be difficult to access, when filming this scene. To sum it up, movies and TV shows often depict party scenes with red solo cups, further solidifying the association.