County Lines

Tackling drug issues

County Lines short film

The term “county lines” refers to networks of drug runners that operate between the UK countryside and suburban or city-based clients.

These networks are operated by adults who groom young people from outside of the areas they want to target. These young victims are then used as traffickers and dealers, taking the emphasis off of the dealers and putting vulnerable people at risk.

County lines are a national emergency, and Leicester City Council wanted a hard-hitting video to educate young people on the warning signs, the risks and the dangers of this social phenomenon. Arch Creative were approached to conceptualise, organise and shoot this important piece of content.

Real lives, real stories

Our take on county lines was that the most valuable information would come from people that had experienced this specific type of grooming first-hand. Through the Council, we sourced a young person who had been involved in county lines drugs trafficking, and interviewed them and one of their parents over the course of a day.

This interview was pre-planned, and designed to elicit a mix of responses – some which we’d anticipated in advance, and some which were entirely original. This interview was then used as the basis of a dramatisation featuring actors.

Filming style

To create the sense that we were dropping in on a character’s life, narrated by the interview, we deployed an edit-heavy montage effect. Footage was shot in a high frame-rate to allow us to slow the action down, adding dramatic weight, and the cameras were well equipped to let us pull focus, creating a hazy, memory/drugs-use effect.

The film was shown across a number of Leicester schools, aimed at teaching young people about the warning signs of county lines drug running.

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