Prop Creation Research: Cocaine

When writing out the drug aspect of my script there were many thoughts going through my head, was I going to have prop cocaine or just use camera angles and actions from the actor to portray drug sniffing? If that was the choice would my actor be willing to intake prop cocaine? Then again what do you use to portray cocaine? What is used professionally and is it actually safe? From these questions I decided to do the following research, before beginning my research I made the conscious decision to have “cocaine” shown in my drama but it is really up to the actor that has to intake the “cocaine” as he may not be comfortable with doing that or may have some allergies that I need to be aware of. All this is to take into consideration when I go to interview and my possible actors; hence forth I am going to start forming a list of question to ask my actors for the day.

As I have mentioned in previous blogs, Tom is an emotionally broken teenager and spends most of his time in tacking cocaine and/or other drugs. By the audience viewing this, it will force them to have a negative opinion on this character as he appears to have no value of his life and seems to care for no one else. He takes it constantly and I believe would be more effective if the audience saw him constantly snorting “cocaine”.

At first I thought it would be quiet simple to imitate “cocaine” with any form of powder but from my research I realised that different types of powder are more authentic, also you must be aware of which powder you intended to be snorted as some may be harmful.

Precautions

Ever wonder what movie actors are really smoking and snorting when they do a line of coke or lift a joint to their lips?

Turns out that many cocaine look-alikes are ingredients you might use in a cake, like powdered sugar, powdered milk and baking soda, while herbal tobacco fills in for genuine cannabis.

Though the fakes are legal and don’t provide a high, sometimes they can make the actors feel a little buzzed. On Showtime's "Weeds," for instance, where potheads Doug and Andy are often lighting up, the herbal tobacco makes them feel a little lightheaded, says "Weeds" executive producer Roberto Benabib.

“According to them, it gets them higher than regular marijuana,” he says. “They end up smoking so much of it they get very lightheaded, and they don’t like it. Sometimes they do take after take, and you will see them getting woozy because it has a strange effect on them. But it’s totally legal, and it is what we are supposed to use.”

Ingredients

There are quite a few things that are used, depending on the action taking place. Laying around/bagged or actually snorting:

Mainly bagged/laying around
Talcum Powder
Baby Power
Flour

Snorted
Powdered Sugar
Vitamin B-12 Powder
Powdered Milk

Doing this may be difficult due to the fact it is a health and safety risk but as I previously  mentioned I think it is a critical aspect which the audiences needs to see. But before production I am going to purchase each of these ingredients and view them on camera, seeing which one looks the most realistic.

The research was provided from the following websites;

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20071125005025AA7xOrt

http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/tv-movies/smoking-scenes-call-pot-cocaine-hollywood-turns-stash-faux-drugs-article-1.427128

I also watched this video of creating a cocaine brick, my prop doesn’t consist of that size but I found it interesting how authentic it actually appears.