Draft:Graduation (2021)

Graduation (2023) is a 55 minute drama film written, produced, directed and edited by Liam Adam Treacy.

The film was shot over the course of a weekend in 2018 and subsequently took 5 years to edit.

There was a cast of 12 and a crew of 3. It was filmed entirely on location at a university in the UK.

It concerns a period of time around 2009 when a legal drug called Mephedrone took the UK by storm.

It is noted for a 12 minute slow motion scene in the middle of the film.

It is part black & white, part colour, with a mixture 1:33:1, 1:85:1 & a unique square-centred aspect ratio.

PLOT:

Jordan is eating breakfast after being up all night dealing drugs to students on his university campus.

He goes to collect another shipment of drugs but finds out that the package has already been given out by mistake.

He walks back to his room and orders more to be delivered the following day. He has a casual chat with his roommate about the previous night. He then turns his phone off and goes to bed.

The next morning he awakes and cleans his kitchen. His friend comes round and they discuss work and then his friend asks to use a laptop that he has leant to his friend. He needs top use it to upload some t-shirt designs to an website. His friend talks about a time when he created t-shirts with the photograph of Rhianna after she had been beaten up by Chris Brown on them and made a lot of money.

Later that night Jordan prepares his drugs for distribution. He sets off for a night of work.

The first deal of the night is Sophie.

Sophie is with a group of friends who are all still up from the night before.

They tried attending an event that was oversold. They came back to someone’s flat and carried the party on there.

Sophie says they tried getting ahold of Jordan the previous night. He lies and says he was flat out busy.

The transaction takes place and Jordan exits.

There are several other people in the flat.

They’re trying to decided if they should go back out or not.

A couple argue about smoking inside. The person who’s flat it is wins and the smokers go outside.

Other people stay and prepare the drugs.

They have a discussion about the issues that the arguing couple are having. It transpires that the guy is pissed that the girl is moving back home instead of staying with everyone else.

The smokers return. Someone goes to the bathroom.

Someone gives a line to someone who hasn’t paid for any of it.

This person hasn’t tried it before so is sceptical about it. The person giving the line feels like they’ve had too much. The new person has the line.

The person giving the line tells the new person not to tell the bathroom person he is having some for free as she gets annoyed easily when people do that m.

The person returns from the bathroom.

The group discuss if they should go back out. Some are for and some are against. Some don’t feel too great so a suggestion that some stay and some go is put forth but this is countered with the notion that everyone should stick together. The group eventually decide to all go out.

Someone borrows a phone charger, other people gather their belongings, the arguing couple argue some more.

The group decide to have one more line before they head out.

The new person jumps in before anyone else.

The bathroom person quickly bats him away in a state of frustration.

The group recoil at the outburst.

The arguing couple argue about what just happened.

People storm out and try and mediate the situation.

The bathroom person decides to have all the drugs in two massive lines as a form of revenge or to prove a point.

This causes the arguing couple to come to blows.

The bathroom person collapses and the group all freeze. They panic and don’t know what to do.

The following day we see a porter sorting through mail in his lodge.

He gets a phone call summoning him to his bosses office.

His boss asks him to describe what happened at the party. He does so but lies about the fact that he froze and didn’t help. His boss says the girls parents are coming to see him later but he isn’t sure how to play things yet. He then goes on to ask Ashley how his first week has been and then asks him to put any suspicious packages that come through the lodge to one side.

Ashley conducts his general porter duties over the coming days.

Ashley is summoned once again by his boss. He introduces him to the OD girls father, he wants to collect some things from her room and they need Ash to take them over. They discuss things on the way and it transpires that the girls parents run a newspaper business. The father collects some documents that the girl was using as references for some work she was doing.

Ashley fixes parts of the OD girls room.

Ash’s boss thinks the girls dad is being too nice so thinks he needs to stay one step ahead by trying to get more information out of the OD girls friends. His boss also adds that he knew this was a problem and similar issues has been brought to his attention before but he couldn’t do anything about it.

Ash and his Boss go to visit them.

One girl doesn’t say much other than the OD girl only has herself to blame. Another girl says they just need to be left to get on with it. One of the girls tells the boss that he should hold Ash accountable cause he was the one who is supposed to look after them but he didn’t do anything.

Ash fixes the rest of OD girls room.

Ash gets a visit from the father and states that his boss told him that he didn’t offer any assistance to his dying daughter. He then goes on to say that he doesn’t think the situation is bad enough and that there needs to be more deaths for real change to occur. He informs ash that he wants him to do nothing and threatens him if he doesn’t go along with it.

Ash sorts through some mail and comes across a suspicious packages. He considers whether or not he should keep it to one side, like his boss asked him, or if he should let it go through, like the father asked him.