Across the Universe (2007) - Julie Taymor

"Across The Universe is a fictional love story set in the 1960s amid the turbulent years of anti-war protest, the struggle for free speech and civil rights, mind exploration and rock and roll. At once gritty, whimsical and highly theatrical, the story moves from high schools and universities in Massachusetts, Princeton and Ohio to the Lower East Side of Manhattan, the Detroit riots, Vietnam and the dockyards of Liverpool. A combination of live action and animation, the film is paired with many songs by The Beatles that defined the time."
Source IMBD

This films appeared on my the list of films about drugs to thought this would be an interesting one to watch. the main drug scenes in it are when they are on the hippy bus travelling around. They use a lot of animated effects to create a trippy feel to the scene. It seems as thou they gave put a negative effect on the shots. I think this is effective in creating a weird effect but personally I don't like it as I think its too much, its not realistic. In our film we want more realistic effects so I think I can play around but wouldn't use a negative this extreme but it could possibly work on a smaller scale.

Earlier on in the film there is a scene when they smoke a drug. This scene is a lot more realistic, it doesn't show any viewpoints of the character but I think that is had portrayed the characters on drugs really well. I think this is due down to the directing and acting from the character more then the edit. If we want to create a realistic effect we are going to have to rehears over and over until the actors are comfortable with they roles.

Films about drugs

In our purposed film the main influence that pushes the plot is drugs. So therefore I thought this would be a good starting point in my research, looking at previous films and how the interpret the use of drugs and the ways they portray the effects. On Wikipedia I found a list of films involving drugs and here is a shortened list of the films involving LSD that I am going to look at in further detail:

• A Name of Evil (1973)
• Across the Universe (2007)
• A Home at the End of the World (2004)
• Almost Famous (2000)
• Apocalypse Now (1979)
• The Big Lebrowski (1998)
• BongWater (1997)
• Bully (2001)
• Conspiracy Theory (1997)
• Day Maker (2007)
• Flirting with Disaster (1996)
• Gambling, God and LSD (2002)
• Harvard Man (2001) 
• Majic Trip (2011)
• Shot List (2009)
• Taking Woodstock (2009)
• The Tingler (1959) - The first featuring LSD
• The Guard (2011)

(Wikipedia)

Initial Ideas ready for Networking Event

The original Crew is Ali, Hannah and Me. Ali being director, Hannah on sound and me on edit. All throughout the summer Ali and Hannah has been creating a Pinterest Board of ideas and inspiration for the film. Looking through this I have become very excited to do the editing as there is so many effects and colours that I am going to be able to play around with in Post.

Link to Pinterest Board

The initial ideas that Ali and Hannah had explained to me about the plot is that the film will focus around a group of four friends that meet up and go camping in a forest and take some drugs. While in the forest they grow as people finding out new thing about themselves and their relationship with each other. Once having took the drugs some have good trips and some have bad, this is so that we can both create some humour and darker scenes.

At this early stage we didn't have a full crew but at the Networking event we plan to scout out some crew member so that when it comes to pitching we are able to pitch with a full crew. Ready for the networking event we plan to bring along Ali's Tablet to show people the Pinterest board. As well as this, we have spent a few days creating mood boards of a selection of the images off Pinterest and Ali created Character profiles for the main four Character. We hope this gives us an advantage in the Network event as our table will be very visual and give people a clear idea of what we see in this film.