Development of Magazine Cover

- Donjeta Salihi and Jack Breckell

Evaluation

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Within out A2 media trailer Breaking Faith we have challenged conventional aspects of social realism due to our accessibility. Typically, social realist trailers are set in gritty flats - this can be seen in the 2009 film Fish Tank. However, because none of us had access to a working class environment and we wanted to film indoors, we decided to portray social realism in middle class families and areas. Our aim being that we would inform the audience that these situations can happen to anyone. Therefore, we chose our main theme of cyber bullying because this is a common social realist topic; before deciding this would be our main theme we researched relevant films such as the TV film Cyberbully this gave us an idea of how to approach our trailer and influenced some shots of our trailer such as being online on a social networking site with a close-up of the message received.

We also included some experimental film making such as the steam from the coffee cup, this can be interpreted as a metaphor emphasizing the blackness of the situation and her depressed state.

How did you use media technologies in construction, research, planning and evaluation stages?

As the editor, I had to consider many aspects of the trailer - not just the cinematography. To edit the trailer I used Move Studio Platinum, this is a software we used last year during AS and therefore I knew this programme was reliable. Movie Studio helped me perform the basics such as cutting footage and adding transitions between the shots. However, I felt the text offered on this software was weak; therefore I developed my skills by using After Effects to add the graphics. This proved to work well as it enabled me to add effects such as typing to the typography on screen. Alongside this, the sound engineer and I used Adobe Audicity to edit the sound for the trailer; this software allowed us to add snippets of sound that correlated to the trailer such as the sound of typing at a keyboard whilst seeing the letters individually appear as if it were being typed at this time. For the ancillary tasks such as the magazine cover, we have used Photoshop, this is software we are all familiar with from previous experience and so we knew this was the best option to complete our magazine covers and posters. Photoshop allowed us to enhance the aesthetics by applying effects to the main image.

How effective is the combination of the main product and the ancillary tasks?

For our A2 media coursework we decided to create a social realist trailer along with a poster design and magazine cover as our ancillary tasks. It was important that the trailer and ancillary tasks work together and related to each other as they would work as a marketing campaign for the trailer. They had to link and relate to the main product by including the same information, promote Breaking Faith and emphasising the main genre we were representing in our trailer which was social realism. Many products that we looked at at had a flowing colour scheme between the trailer, magazine and the poster clearly linking them together. However, it was decided that the ancillary tasks did not require the exact same font or colour scheme as this would allow us to present the trailer to different audiences and the font would indicate the type of audience the product was aimed at. For example, younger adults would respond more positively to a more urban, rougher typeface whereas older, middle class audiences would respond better to a cleaner, more stylish modern typeface. This is often a common practice in the distribution of films, particularly in international markets. When creating the magazine, we took the same approach, this is because when looking at mainstream and independent magazines they don't link to each type of film/trailer so we used different typefaces. However, there is a clear link between the magazine and the poster as we used the same picture, making it recognisable as it shows the same actress.

What have you learned from audience feedback?

Interview 1: (Girl, 17) I think this is a good trailer and I would want to go and see this film in cinema because it is relatable to my age group and it contrasts to many other social realist films because it doesn't look gritty. Instead, it just portrays real life situation that could happen to anyone.

Interview 2: (boy, 18) In the film trailer, I think the graphics work well because it looks more professional. The subject matter throughout the trailer appeal to my age group because I can see it's partly set in a school environment and the theme of the film relates. 

From Audience feedback we have learnt that most people expected our target audience to be teenage girls varying between 15 years old and 20 years old. This is something we had anticipated and therefore we feel we have achieved this aspect by reaching the target audience due to the relatable themes. We learnt that males and the older audience were not enticed by our trailer because of the subject matter within the genre, boys in general prefer social realism films such as Shifty where the main focus area is on drugs and the film looks much more gritty; however, because as a group, we challenged the conventions of social realism by including middle class we have lost the majority of our male audience. We were informed of this by one of our male candidates from the feedback questionnaire who knew what the social realist genre involved but did not consider our trailer to explicitly represent typical elements of social realism. Furthermore, from our questionnaire we found that males in general would not watch nor recommend this film trailer to anyone else. Alongside this, in our interviews we have discovered that our trailer does not appeal to an older audience because they are not interested in the main theme of our trailer this contradicts our goal to strike the audience and present narrative enigmas which would entice them to watch the film, however, this has not had the desired effect.

- Lauren Abbott and Darcia Kopycka-Wright

Development of Film Poster

This is our film poster. We took inspiration from existing independent film posters, 'Submarine' being our main influence. We started off by photographing Naomi Porter in various different poses

- Donjeta Salihi & Jack Breckell

Trailer - Final Edit

This is the final edit of our trailer edited by Donjeta Salihi and Jack Breckell.

We used Movie Studio Platinum to create the majority of the transactions and to develop the cinematography into a film trailer, with the help of Adobe After Effects to create graphics such as reviews from magazines and newspapers. For the soundtrack we used Adobe Audition CS6 to adjust the tempo of the music in order to fit in with the dialogue used in our trailer, as well as adjusting the tempo of the sound effects.

Film Magazine - Graphics Style

This is our design for the ancillary task (magazine). We chose the title 'canned' as it is a short, snappy name that is memorable, it also is quite relevant as the word 'canned' is media terminology, it is also suited to our genre 'social realism'. For the main image, we photographed our lead actress Naomi Porter, and edited the photo using Photoshop; we took inspiration from the independent film magazine ‘Little White Lies’ and added a posterized effect to create an illustrative style image. By adding a pink overlay to the main image, we hoped to create contrast between the image and the masthead, our reasons for choosing the colour pink are because it is visually striking, and fits in with our film theme. We have chosen unconventional typography and have stuck to two main fonts so that our magazine has a theme and is coherent. We believe have included most of the typical conventions for film magazines whilst maintaining our individual style.

Jack Breckell & Donjeta Salihi 

RECCE

          Breaking Faith - RECCE

Choosing a location to film was a decision that we thought long and hard about, it was very important to us all, as we knew that the location is what would make or break the film. We wanted to choose a house with a relatively middle class interior, in an average suburban location, our reasons for choosing this setting was because we wanted to steer away from the typical working class environments that social realist films are usually set in as we felt like it would be intuitive to push the boundaries of the genre and show that these sorts of current issues can happen to anyone, no matter what your social status. The bedroom in which we see the main character, Faith, is simplistic and clean. The reason for choosing such a neutral setting is because we wanted the audience to focus of the emotion of the character and not be distracted by her surroundings. The world map that is on the back wall of the bedroom was placed there to give the impression that the character is fairly intellectual and well travelled, which emphasises the fact that the trauma she goes through can happen to anyone.

-Jack Breckell

Storyboard

- Lauren Abbott, Donjeta Salihi, Jack Breckell and Darcia Kopycka-Wright

Cyberbully Film Analysis

-Lauren Abbott

FilmMaker

-Lauren Abbott

Cyberbully

-Lauren Abbott

Feedback Questionaire

Feedback Questionnaire

This is our social realist feedback questionaire that will have given to a group of a variety of different students with different views and opinions to get a wide range of comments on our social realist trailer.

(please circle)

1. What is your gender?

Male    Female

2. How old are you?

15-17    18-20    21-23    24-26    27-29    30+

3. Do you know what a Social Realist film is?

Yes    No

4. Do you think we represented the social realist genre well in our short trailer?

Yes    No

5. Do you think the sound track ‘Digital Controller’ suited well with our trailer?

Yes    No

6. Who would you imagine watching this type of film? _____________________________________________ _____________________________________________ _____________________________________________ _____________________________________________

7. What type of channel would you expect this trailer to be seen on? ______________________________________________ ______________________________________________ ______________________________________________

8. Would you recommend this trailer to anyone else?

Yes    No

9. From watching this trailer would you want to watch the film?

Yes    No

10. What do you dis/like most about this trailer? ______________________________________________ ______________________________________________ ______________________________________________

- Darcia Kopycka-Wright

Choosing a Film Title

We believe that the title of a film plays a very important role in how the film is perceived to the audience. From an early stage we decided to include the main characters name because the name we chose for her could be interpreted in more than one way.


Lauren Abbott, Darcia Kopycka-Wright, Donjeta Salihi and Jack Breckell

Sound

Through the process of editing, the music that we originally chose didnt seem to fit in well with the actual feel of the trailer sequence we were trying to get as it seemed to be to calm and the sound didnt seem to change much, so we have had to change it to 'digital controller' which we sourced from the felt music library http://www.feltmusiclibrary.com/ which is where the original sound track was obtained from.

The new track is alot more upbeat and dramatic to grab the auidiences attention, the track also includes a female vocalist, which makes it more like a social realist soundtrack like the one we hear in Fishtank. The vocals of the song are pretty interesting as they seem to have certain lyrics that relate to the storyline.


- Darcia Kopycka-Wright and Donjeta Salihi

Breaking Faith Film Poster

Breaking Faith Film Poster Version 1 Of 3

Breaking Faith Film Poster Version 2 Of 3

Breaking Faith Film Poster Version 3 Of 3

 - Jack Breckell

Once Were Warriors

- Darcia Kopycka-Wright

Roles and Responsibilities

Our group has shared out the roles and responsibilities equally throughout, making sure that everyone has one specific job to do, even though the set job roles are specific to each person we all contributed to help each other out on every task.

Lauren Abbott, the cinematographer was in charge of shooting the scene and taking responsibility for some of the camera work. Skills involved were; correct angles appropriate to the shot, right camera settings to work with the lighting and composition of the shot itself.

Donjeta Salihi, the editor was responsible for uploading the footage to the editing software, Movie Studio Platinum 12.0, and using various computer skills to achieve a movie trailer that ran smoothly through the use of cuts and transitions. This also involved adding in the graphics using Adobe After Effects

Darcia Kopycka-Wright, the sound engineer's main role was to find and upload a suitable soundtrack that correlated to the edit and filming in the overall trailer. Alongside this, when filming it was Darcia's job to ensure that the sound was recorded properly and this involved using a tascam.

Jack Breckell, the art director was in control of the costume and mise en scene design that would be appropriate for each scene. This included composition of the set-up so that the cinematographer was still able to get a clear shot with no obstruction.

- Darcia Kopycka-Wright and Lauren Abbott

Movie Poster

This is our first development of a movie poster for our film. We used my poster design layout to guide me, although we have made some small alterations to fit the text on. For this poster we photographed the female protagonist sitting on the floor in the corner looking distressed, she is in a school environment, you can tell this by the lockers in particular. This correlates to the movie trailer because there are scenes involving the school. We decided to add a 'posterize' effect to the image to make the photo look more effective and again portraying the social realist genre because the image has become grainy through the use of the edit.
For the typography we used the 'Prestige Elite Standard' font, this typography indicates typing therefore relating to one of our main themes within the film of cyber bullying. We edited the title and the release date fonts to have a drop shadow and an outer glow; our intention with this was to catch the viewer's attention.
On the poster we have also included a quote and rating from an independent film magazine, relative to our work because this looks believable enough to be rated by this magazine. Alongside this, we have also included small print at the bottom informing the viewer of the institution and other information with the film certificate; again this would appeal to our target audience.

This is our second development, we decided to use a different design layout to work better with the different image. This photograph was taken on school grounds but it is an exterior shot. For the main image we decided to duplicate a section of the image of our female protagonist so that we could overlay this colour image on a black and white background. we wanted to experiment with this style because it shows there are themes included in the film that aren't always positive and therefore it relays the mood of the film. Similar to my first poster, we kept the same font for the same reasons, however, we only added a drop shadow to the title.

-Lauren Abbott

Magazine Layouts/Design/Final

 

When looking at making a magazine cover I took inspiration from the layouts I created. The overall layout of this particular magazine cover is extremely simple, this is because the colour makes it stand out a lot and the idea was to draw the audience into the main image and title of the film, as you can see I have the same magazine layout but I have just changed the filter from vibrant to a more monochrome effect. I like the way the monochrome effect works in contrast with the title 'Blackout' however it slightly washes out the other text. The typefaces used have been kept very bold and clean rather than having anything too distracting drawing peoples attention away.

 

- Darcia Kopycka-Wright

Poster Design Layouts

-Lauren Abbott

Little White Lies Magazine Cover Analysis

-Lauren Abbott

Sight & Sound Magazine Cover Analysis

Jack

The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner Trailer Analysis

Darcia

Looking For Eric Trailer Analysis

-Lauren Abbott

Total Film Magazine Analysis

Jack

Empire

- Darcia

Filming Diary

27/01/2014

Today is our first filming day, we arrived at our shooting location at 9:30 and began filming at 10:30 after setting up vital elements for our social realist trailer. This involved creating a Facebook account for our female protagonist, Faith Brookes, and altering the appearance of a bedroom to make it look more feminine. We were then able to film the first few bedroom scenes with our amateur actress Naomi Porter.
Our next port of call was to create and film the breakfast scene; Jack Breckell, the art director contributed most to the set up of the scene demonstrating his role. Alongside this, within the group we all had an opportunity to film various pieces.
Today we also managed to achieve the scene of our amature actor, Jed Koonin, receiving the text correlating to the plot line.
Today's filming was completed by 14:00.

03/02/2014

After reflecting on what we had filmed the week before we went back to the same shooting location at the same time of 9:30, this time we were off to a more abrupt start because we did not need to prepare a Facebook page or any other scene in particular. We began by filming the scene involving the actual incident that is responsible for our social realist film, the set-up of an intimate picture being sent from character to character. For this scene we experimented with a fish-eye camera lens, this was to convey the personal thoughts of this character of what she see's in the mirror, however this was not as successful as we had hoped. The cinematographer explored different shot types including close-ups and mid shots.
Another scene we achieved today was our character, portrayed again by Naomi Porter, leaving her home and listening to music. This has proved to be the most challenging shot yet because we had to deal with avoiding the crews shadows in the shots and consider the wind (for this scene, the sound was not an issue with the wind because we plan to use a soundtrack throughout the trailer) for elements such as the actress' hair blowing across her face etc.
Today's filming was completed by 13:00.

13/02/2014

We decided we needed more variation of shots, outside of a house. Therefore, we stayed in school to film more shots involving the ex-boyfriend character. Our idea was to get a shot of a dispute in the corridor just between the main female and male, therefore in keeping with the social realist genre. After shooting a couple of these scenes we wanted to experiment by involving another character; a male peer from school who would walk past looking disgusted at the girl. This portrayed how the female protagonist was being treated around school and also showed that she had now been further excluded from social interaction.

3/03/2014

Today we continued filming at our original location in the house so that we could achieve the intimate scene how we wanted it to look because up until this point we were disappointed with the shots when we came to edit them. The lack of a flash resulted in the audience being confused that this was the main focus/ subject matter of the film because it was unclear that our character was taking a private photo of herself.

We began filming at 10am and finished at 2pm.

-Lauren Abbott

Mise en scene

What we need for our trailer scenes;

Props

• Breakfast supplements; cereal, coffee, mugs, bowl, cutlery, jam, butter
• Laptop with Facebook account
• Earphones
• Mobile phone
• School folder

costume

• Faith Brookes; casual clothing (hooded jumper, top, leggings), pyjama top at one point, coat, boots.
• Hugo; casual clothing also, checkered shirt, chinos 

Location

• Sturry
• Interior and exterior of home
• School scenes at Chaucer school

Donny, Lauren, Jack & Darcy

Researching and Planning Main Task

After receiving the results from our questionnaire we sat down together as a group and studied the results, we passed around a lot of ideas with very different themes and approaches but ultimately we settled on focusing on eating disorders and mental health conditions.

Film Synopsis

Our Social Realist film involves themes of cyberbullying, blackmail and eating disorders. Our story features a teenage girl, Faith, from a middle class family dealing with social issues inflicted on her by her peers.

During a brief relationship with one of her classmates, Hugo, Faith is pressured into sending an intimate photo of herself to her boyfriend.

Faith feels uncomfortable in this relationship and regrets ever sending the photo, resulting in her breaking up with him. Although the relationship ends with both Faith and Hugo acting civilly towards one another, Hugo is pressured by his friends to share this photo around.

This results in her humiliation received from peers at school and consequently Faith begins to get cyber bullied and begins feeling self conscious of her body and starts to believe the insults that are being thrown at her.

This leads up to her fight against Anorexia, a more than common issue in teenagers.

By approaching this subject matter in our social realist film we intend to make the audience aware of the consequences cyber bullying can have on impressionable young people.

Our film fits into the social realist genre because it faces real life problems, even though it lacks the raw and gritty effect that we see in many social realist films such as Fish Tank and Shifty, our influence was the film Love Actually. Although this film is unconventional and is Hollywood produced it has taken social realism from a different angle, one that is not seen regularly in this genre of film. However it is still fitting due to the fact that the film revolves around ordinary peoples lifes and their stories.

This is how we have gone about approaching our social realist film.

Themes of our film

Cyber Bullying/Blackmail

Main character: girl being emotionally abused, boyfriend blackmailing/peers bullying her

Intimate picture, holds it against her. Writing abuse on online photos

Middle class parents are ashamed, peers laugh along and don’t care

POSSIBLE: ex-boyfriends friend; anonymous texting. Messages on social networking sites

Girl peer pressured by boy to take photo...  boy gets peer pressured by friends to share photo.

Develops eating disorder – gets called ‘Fat/Disgusting’ by ex-boyfriend and friends: Stressed.

Hoards chocolate > binge > sick.

This triggers a series of emotional and stressful events that lead up to the development of an eating disorder.

Character Descriptions

Main character – Faith, 17, female
Middle class, good family life, supportive parents, healthy relationships. Outsider at school, no true friends, gets taken advantage of by peers.
Short (5ft2), long blonde hair, petite, attractive. Self conscious of figure.

Ex-boyfriend - Hugo, 17, male
Middle class, enjoys skating with his friends, good family life, unlikely match for Faith
Average height (5ft7), short blonde hair, casual clothing.

Possible Shot Types

·         Focus on bare back – bra, undoing clips, pans out to side – camera on tripod

·         Toilet door – throwing up sound

·         Sitting on laptop – surrounded by empty wrappers (junk food)

·         Going into the shop and buying lots of junk food

·         Over the shoulder – laptop on social networking site (private mail)

      Close up of carrier bag filled with chocolate/junk food. 

-Lauren Abbott

Mindmap

As a group we discussed possible themes of our social realist trailer and this is our mind-map to show evidence of our thought process. We have decided to incorporate various elements into our film such as cyber bullying, peer pressure, blackmail and a middle class situation. Our reason for doing this was to identify that there are social issues in other classes besides working class; alongside this we discovered that filming in a working class environment would be too challenging as none of the group have access to a home environment portraying working class and we wanted the trailer to sample a bedroom scene therefore working class was not feasible.

- Mindmap presented by Lauren Abbott 

Everyone contributed ideas for the mindmap.

Social Realism Questionnaire/

Here is a copy of our questionnaire that we handed out to a group of people aged between 14 - 30

Questionnaire

Are you male or female? (please circle)

Female          Male

How old are you?

14-18          19-23          24-28         29-33         34+

Are you familiar with the Social Realist genre?

Yes          No

Do you like this particular genre? Why?

______________________________________________
______________________________________________
______________________________________________

When watching trailers do you prefer that they include a lot of scenes from the film or that they are more graphics based and do not give away too much of the plot? 

______________________________________________
______________________________________________
______________________________________________

What do you like most about Social Realist films?

Shock Value            Realistic Issues          

Other (please write below)

________________

We are looking into producing a film trailer for a Social Realist film, which of these topics do you prefer?

Domestic Violence          Eating Disorder          Peer Pressure          Cyber Bullying          Poverty

 

 Results

1.    Males - 6  Females – 9

 

2.    Age

 
Seven people were 14-18

Two people were aged 19-23

One person was aged 24-28

Three people were aged 29-33

Two people were aged 34+

 

3.    All fifteen people who completed the questionnaire said that they were aware of the social realist genre. Their reasons for liking this specific genre were that they can relate to certain topics that social realist films portray.

 

4.    Two people preferred a more graphics based trailer.

Nine people preferred the type of trailer that included more scenes from the film.

Four were not really fussed on what they saw in the trailer.

 

5.    Eleven people said that they like the realistic issues in social realism films the most.

Three people preferred the shock value shown in social realist films.

6.    One person said that they would prefer a domestic violence topic in the trailer

Six people said that they would prefer to an eating disorder based trailer.

Three people said that they would like to see peer pressure in the trailer.

Five people said that they would like to see cyber bullying involved in the trailer.

Zero people said that they wanted to see poverty involved in the trailer.

- Darcia Kopycka-Wright