This week's hotshot is a powerful anti-drugs spot directed by Arran Bowyn of Bare Films through AMV BBDO for the rehabilitation centre, Focus 12.

Shot as four vignettes, a collection of elderly people are depicted going about their daily lives. But their daily routine is not reflective of a typical octogenarian's life, for it involves snorting, smoking and injecting heavy narcotics.

Two old ladies cut up cocaine with a playing card while reminiscing about their time as Wrens in the War; a man tightens the tourniquet on his wife's arm before injecting her in the vein; in a dilapidated kitchen an old man uses a makeshift pipe to smoke crack; and most disturbing of all, an old dear injects between her toes before slumping in her armchair. The tagline? "There's no such thing as an old junkie."

"I wanted to create a juxtaposition: obviously there's no such thing as old people doing drugs," Bowyn told shots.net. "The point is that if you do drugs when you are younger you're not going to live to be that age.

"It was originally set in an OAP home but we decided it would have given the impression that people are actually prescribed these drugs," he added. "With that in mind we developed it further so that it was set in each of the individuals' own environments."

Production for the spot was funded entirely by Bare Films and AMV. Bowyn, whose background lies in shorts, persuaded his contacts to provide free services for this, his first commercial spot in the UK.

"I had previously worked with Mike Bond and Bernard Hunter, the creatives at AMV, when I shot an Aids Awareness campaign when they were at TBWA/Paris," he explained.

After joining Bare Films in September he re-established contact with the pair, who by then had moved to join AMV in London.

"They told me about a script they had originally written for Drugs Free America. I loved the idea so I reworked it with them," he said.

The atmospheric soundtrack is by Bing Crosby, a song which AMV managed to procure for free. As the spot develops and the drugs begin to kick in, the track mimics the characters' state of mind by echoing and distorting, an effect inspired by the ballroom scene in Stanley Kubrick's The Shining, said Bowyn.

The characters were commissioned through a combination of street casting through Mark Summers and traditional casting using Spotlight. Bowyn said that teaching the talent about different methods of drug-taking was an interesting aspect of the shoot.

"I got the client in to brief them on how needles were prepared, the colour of heroin, how to make a personalised crack pipe and how heroin is injected into toes because there's so much abuse of the rest of the body. Then I snipped off the end of needles and gave them each one of their own so they could go home and practise," he said.

To watch the spot, click HERE.