Poster Creation

Following our photoshoot on the 12th December for our poster and website we now had an image suitable for our poster, which we edited using Photoshop. 

Original Photo

Opening the original photo I cut around myself and the grass, then inverted this

I then tried to lessen the opaque on the wall. This didn't noticeably work and I was unsure of how to fix this until a friend with more experience on this software explained to me that if I copied the background then deleted the original background then I could separate the two parts of the image. I did this and was able to split the two sections of poster into different layers. I opaqued the wall to 50%.

Wall With Person On Separate Layer

Following this I inserted the previously saved title of 'Eating Me Up' by opening it as a separate file and dragging it to the file the poster was on. I then resized it and placed it half way down the poster, a convention in social realism films and supporting the golden rule.

Insertion of Title

The tagline we came up with was 'She's dying to be skinny', with the word 'dying' in italics to emphasise it. One problem we came to with this was that the typography this was in should match with what was used on our website. However the typography we currently had on our webpage was not available on photoshop as it was a Google font. This meant we had to find a font that was available both on Wix and Photoshop, but also fitted our genre. We settled on Courier New. I typed our tag line on and inserted it below the title in a size 12 font. 

Adding Tag-line

Following this I used the same font to add in the reviews to the right of the crouched girl. This reads 'Powerful and moving, this tackles the prominent issues of society in a beautiful way'. The words that we decided were the most important are 'powerful', 'moving' and 'beautiful', and we made these two sizes larger in font that the others. I also added 5 stars and 'The Guardian' below this, as this is commonly seen in social realism posters.

Added Review and Directors Credit

I also inserted the actors names at the top of the poster and 'Directed by Caitlyn Watson', as, again this is a common convention. 

Caitlyn made us a Pinterest styled background as is used in the website for the background to go over the wall. I added a layer at the bottom of our layers and inserted this. It was black and white, however it was originally very dark in colour and our writing was hard to read. I overcame this problem by increasing the brightness on the right hand panel, leading to the images all being visible and the text to be able to remain the same. 

With Pinterest Style Background

Finally I inserted the billings block in the grass which Stacey has made for us.

Final Poster

Age Ratings of Social Realist Films

Cyberbully (2011) film inspiration

We have looked at lots of different films for to inspire our trailer in the past, and this is one of them. Cyberbully (2011) is a TV film that follows the ordeal of a teenage girl who falls victim to bullying online through a social networking site. The main character, Taylor, is given a laptop for her 17th birthday and is excited for the freedom that this would bring her. However, she finds herself the victim of a cyber bully attack which pushes her into attempting suicide.

Cyberbully (2011)

Because we have decided that we want our film to show the idea of body shaming and body image through social media, this film had been very helpful to us in thinking about how we could portray things, and giving us ideas how to show a attempt on suicide scene. However, we later thought that this type of ending for a teaser trailer was too final and went with the idea of showing our character, Jane, at a clinic instead. 

attempting suicide scene in Cyberbully (2011)

• From the scene starting at 3:29-4:58, the scene begins with her friend running to Taylor's house as she has just seen a video that Taylor had posted suggesting that she is going to commit suicide. 
• She finds her room empty, and searches the house until she find Taylor in the bathroom.
• (EDITING TECHNIQUE) shows Taylor's family running up to the bathroom to find them both
• Close up shots of their arms show Taylor and her friend fighting each other to take the pills away.
• Close up shot shows that the pills have fallen on the floor
• A two shot/ reaction shot shows Taylor screaming that they have fallen to the floor as now, she cannot take them, and her plan has failed. 
• A shot reverse shot is used to show Taylor crying in her mother's arms and to show a reaction shot of her brother looking panicked and helpless.

There was quite a lot of time given in the film for the whole scene of Taylor's suicide attempt, to portray it in the right way. Because of this, along with the scene being too resolved, we decided that in a teaser trailer we would not have enough time to portray this scene in the most sensitive way, and so changed the idea of our trailer ending to that of in a clinic. However, the whole film has been helpful to our trailer as it has helped us with the theme of social networking a cyberbullying.

Inserting reshoots to trailer

Having done our reshoots we now had to insert them, but we also had to make sure the length of these was the same as the ones previously used, as the sound had been created and inserted, meaning any difference would affect the accuracy of sound.

The first clip we did was the balloon scene with the 18 year old girl. I originally found a section of the footage from the new that we liked, and having selected this I then cropped it directly above the pre-existing footage. 

Despite believing that this would be the way to do it quickly, I then swapped the footage out and re-watched this section of the trailer and realised that this section was now very short and sandwiched between two pieces of the old footage. 

I undid all the changes I had made and dragged the old clip up. Doing this I realised the mistake that I had made was that the two effects on either side were covering some of the footage, so it was longer than I originally thought. 

To solve this problem I dragged the old footage up again and made a note of where it began, and dragged the new footage beginning to there, then copied the process again but for the end of the new footage.

Swapping in and out the new footage having done this change in approach led to the footage being cropped in the right place and being the same length as required. I did the same process for inserting the scales scene further on in the trailer.

Website editing after audience assessment

After getting the audience of our film to assess our website, we were given some corrections that we could make so, for them, it would be more conventional and what they want to see in a website for a new film, as part of a promotional package. 

First of all, the boxes at the bottom of the website were too big, and they didn't seem conventional for a film website. So, to correct this, I took out the boxes, but kept the text, then added arrows next to the text. I then linked these arrows with the Blog and Charities pages so these could act as buttons. 

We were also told that on a different computer, the social networking icons weren't visible, so to correct this, I moved the typography and the menu down so then I could put the these social networking links at the very top of the page.

We were then told that the boxes on the right hand side, including the Cannes film festival and our production companies were not conventional. To change this, I deleted the boxes and then made the three images black and white and deleted the background. I then moved these to be near the other parts of the text. Editing them to be black and white made them merge in more with the website's theme and they didn't stand out too much.

I was also told that the reviews were too big and so were the reviews' stars as they took up too much space for the website when seen on a different computer. Because of this, I made these smaller and moved them closer together. This also made it look like there was a lot less writing then there was because the text is very small.

Here is what the finished website now looks like:

Adding sound to trailer

Having emailed myself the finished sound clips I added them to our trailer in Final Cut Pro. I had emailed myself a copy of the main soundtrack with voices already on it, and one with them to insert separately. As a group we decided that it was best to use the two individual files.


Inserting the main soundtrack was relatively simple. Simply dragging the imported clip to the beginning of our trailer, then watching it over to make sure that it did all match up with what was happening on screen. Luckily it did, so I was able to insert the voice clip.

Inserting main soundtrack

This proved to need a little more care, as finding the exact place we wanted it to start so that it didn't start too abruptly, but also end within the recorded clip. We did this by zooming right in on the timeline and listening several times when we adjusted it.

Inserting voiceover

the final thing to do was fade the end of the clip so it didn't suddenly end when the titles were on. We did this by dragging the adjustment toggle on the end of the audio section on the trailer's timeline.

Fading the end of the music

Having completed this we were able to upload the trailer as a draft to Youtube.

Excited for music to now be on our trailer we watched the trailer from Youtube (we had already listened multiple times from Final Cut to make sure it was appropriate and edited correctly), however when the two pedal synthesiser notes started there was a weird demonic effect to them. Confused, we re uploaded the trailer to Youtube and listened again. The effect was still happening and this time we also realised it was also affecting the voiceover.

Going back to Final Cut I discovered that the decibel level on the sound was showing as red on some areas of the music and the voice over. I dragged it down to 7 so limited red was now showing and re uploaded the trailer to Youtube. Thankfully the effect had now stopped and the sound played as expected.

Having decreased the decibel level there is now limited red showing

Evaluation of Filming - Balloon Reshoot (30/1/16)

Having finished recording the voiceover at my house, I then drove Georgie and myself to Sutton Valence in order to reshoot the balloon scene of the 18 year old. We are reshooting this scene because on reviewing the previous scene, not all the words could be seen on the balloon.

We stopped at Georgie's house to pick up the red balloon and write our chosen word on it in black pen. The word we settled for was 'hate', as this encompassed what the character felt about herself and was short enough to fit on the balloon completely.

On arrival at the field location we encountered a very muddy field. This meant we had to very careful when going over the stile with our filming equipment. Another problem was that it was very sunny, the total opposite of the overcast conditions we had previously filmed in. We tackled this problem by recording whilst the clouds were blocking out some of the sun. We also made sure not too much glare was on the balloon.

When we first did the filming of this shot it was mid November. This meant we had to find where I had stood before, using the camera screen to line up where I was and make sure it was a smooth transition. We settled on the area that we believed to be the same area as previously used. We took one photo to make sure the quality was good and then filmed for a period of about a minute to get us a range of footage to choose from.  

Overall I think that the shoot went well and we now have improved footage from what we did originally.