Krokodil: Russia’s Deadliest Drug

Emotional Manipulation and Over-dramatization:

-Warning of extreme and disturbing content

-Camera always shaking, zooming in and out

-Voyeur angle: tree in the foreground, subject in the background

-Observing from a shelter distancing ourselves from the subject as well as the problem

- Close ups of a visual feature of a person (dirty clothes, scars, syringes, etc) to form our opinion about the person before we see him or hear him

-Opening with disturbing and portending music and foreign unclear speech makes a regular building look scary

-Camera moving along with the viewers, low angle, poor lighting music creating tension, a feeling that something is about to happen, music fades in and out, like a video game or a scary movie

-Close ups of random objects while we hear the interview

-Dogs barking, sound starting before we see the person speaking

Sound and Narration:

Credibility of Sources, Manipulation of FactsFacts presented as:

-“We’ve heard stories”, -“We were told”, -“There were rumors”, -“They explained to us”, -“There is a widely held belief”, etc.

“Nowhere are Russia’s

drug problems more

evident than here.”

“Small Siberian city of Novokuznetsk” – actually one of the biggest in the region, largest metal and coal industry

Fake tension created with music and narration - “… People started beeping and yelling so we decided to leave…Get the f**k out of here! Let’s go, let’s go let’s go!”, “We went back to meet Sasha somewhere safe…or so we thought…”

-Random people from the street-Orthodox Church Priest-Alternative Religious Rehab Leader-Former drug users currently religious cult members-Youtube footage of a person’s body rotting from the drug-Funeral Director and leader of an alternative congregational church

“Experts” and “Evidence”:Experts don’t look much more reliable than the

addicts themselves.

- Subtitles often differ in tone and simplify the information that is actually being said, Russian phrases cut off halfway through- Incompetent journalist - “It kind of just feels like walking through a forest in the middle of Syberia.”