Elephant synopsis: 'The story is about two high school students Eric (Eric Deulen) and Alex (Alex Frost), two close friends and students in a suburb of Portland who calmly plan and perform a mass execution of their classmates and school administrators in the course of one day. Eric and Alex are ordinary and very much a part of the fabric of the high school and its array of student actions. In fact it’s hard to distinguish them from all the other students. The school is filled with various students discussing each other, playing sports, and learning about Science and Civics. Alex plays classical piano and Eric plays video games and they are interested in seemingly average things. They calmly watch Nazi programs on TV and purchase and demo automatic weaponry that they buy over the Internet. They seem just as ordinary and interesting as any of the other students. They analytically draw up plans for their killing spree, indicating that they have enough bombs and ordinance to last the afternoon. They walk through the school killing their school peers and there is no rescue from the authorities.'Gus Vant Sant, the writer and director, cast teenagers to play the appropriate roles. For the specific shooting scene, the camera cuts between different areas of the school showing people being shot, running, screaming etc. This creates the impression for the audience that the two boys are moving casually around the school. At the start of the sequence there is only digetic sound of people being shot and talking, as the sequence progresses non-digectic music is used to build tension and create fear for the audience but also create a sense of sorrow and pain.
Bang, Bang, You're Dead Synopsis: 'For the most part it's a tale of an adolescent, Trevor, who gets picked on a lot at school. Not as much as he used to, because the year before he called in a phoney bomb threat, complete with a working bomb (minus anything that would actually explode). Because of this, parents and teachers are afraid of him, and his fellow students generally avoid him, except for a group of outcasts called the "Trogs". As violence by the Jocks against the Trogs escalates, Trevor is the suspect for anything gone wrong, even though he didn't necessarily do anything. One teacher is willing to give Trevor the benefit of the doubt, and casts him in a highly controversial play about (what else?) school shootings. It all comes to a head as some other students create a plan to bring guns to school and kill everyone in the cafeteria.'
Zero Hour, Columbine High School Massacre: A discovery channel documentary about the shooting, here is a summary of the true events from the Discovery Channel website.
11:10-12:10 - 20 April 1999 Two students walked into their school on the morning of 20th April 1999, produced guns and began shooting their fellow pupils and teachers. They had planned the attack for over a year and, with a stockpile of explosives, they had schemed to decimate the entire school. Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold prowl through the school with shotguns and semi-automatic weapons. Eric Harris was rejected from the Marine Corps 5 days before the shooting. On the morning of 20th April, 1999, two students walked into their high school in West Denver, Colorado, armed with guns, bombs and grenades hidden under trench coats. In just 16 minutes, they shot and killed twelve of their fellow students together with one teacher and injured 21 others. At first it was thought that Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold were two depressed teenagers carrying out an act of revenge. However, their actions weren’t impulsive, as most revenge attacks tend to be. Harris and Klebold planned the attack for over a year, collecting weapons and making explosive devices with the help of information from the Internet. Investigations have reported their aim was to achieve infamy by killing as many people as possible and their school was the most convenient target. In the lead up to the shootings, they vented their hate of society on websites and in personal journals and boasted on video that they wanted to inflict “the most deaths in U.S. history”. The pair planned to plant explosive devices in the cafeteria, hidden in duffel bags, as students gathered there for lunch. The bombs were to be detonated by timers and, as survivors from the blast fled the building, Harris and Klebold would be armed and waiting in the car park. More bombs were left in cars, timed to go off when the emergency services arrived on the scene, creating even greater casualties. The pair even planted decoy bombs in a field a few miles away from the school to ensure the local police and fire service were distracted. Thankfully the devices in the cafeteria failed to explode. If they had detonated, up to 600 students and school staff may have lost their lives.
I found the documentary more shocking than the film clips as although areas have been dramatised everything shown is completely true. The mix of material and footage from the actual event and the dramatised sections work well together to create an image of the event, it helps the audience to begin to imagination what it would have been like to be there.
Nineteen Minutes, a novel by Jodi Picoult Synopsis: 'In nineteen minutes, you can mow the front lawn, colour your hair, watch a third of a hockey game. In nineteen minutes, you can bake scones or get a tooth filled by a dentist; you can fold laundry for a family of five....In nineteen minutes, you can stop the world, or you can just jump off it. In nineteen minutes, you can get revenge. Sterling is a small, ordinary New Hampshire town where nothing ever happens -- until the day its complacency is shattered by a shocking act of violence. In the aftermath, the town's residents must not only seek justice in order to begin healing but also
come to terms with the role they played in the tragedy. For them, the lines between truth and fiction, right and wrong, insider and outsider have been obscured forever. Josie Cormier, the teenage daughter of the judge sitting on the case, could be the state's best witness, but she can't remember what happened in front of her own eyes. And as the trial progresses, fault lines between the high school and the adult community begin to show, destroying the closest of friendships and families. Nineteen Minutes is New York Times bestselling author Jodi Picoult's most raw, honest, and important novel yet. Told with the straightforward style for which she has become known, it asks simple questions that have no easy answers: Can your own child become a mystery to you? What does it mean to be different in our society? Is it ever okay for a victim to strike back? And who -- if anyone -- has the right to judge someone else?'This book is perhaps the most useful. Although it is fiction (based on true events) each chapter takes the view from a different character, therefore you get a 360 degree view of the event and get inside the mind of the shooter and the victims, parents etc.
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