Shooting Days

The time we took to shoot our trailer took about 5 different days (not including the alterations we intend to make after we get feedback). For the street scene we were planning to go on a location recce and take some test shots with Lily. However, when we arrived in Calverly Park, Tunbridge Wells we realised that it was the perfect set to film for the actual shots. Therefore, instead of wasting our production time and little time we had with Lily we started to film as if this was the footage for the real product. As a result, we got the effect we wanted as many social realism films use everyday areas rather than high budget sets. This made it seem more realistic as if these issues could happen anywhere and to anyone and it also meant we did not need to carry out a location recce for the street scene.

Test Footage

https://www.youtube.com/edit?o=U&video_id=iFcEy-drd1Q

The Characters

This is a list of our character in order of appearance in the trailer:

Character One: Harriet Young or "Cupcake" (as referred to by her abuser)

Character Two: Ian Young- Father to Harriet

Character Three: Debbie - Prostitute, vague mother figure to Harriet

Character Four: Mikey P
Pimp to Debbie- although he is an important part of the narrative as he eventually traffics her, this character is never shown in the trailer.

Character Five: Reece Taker
Harriet's abuser

Influences

Once we had decided on a genre, we started to look into other social realism films that might inspire our own product. We gained an understanding of the term "kitchen sink realism" to describe the rise of the arts (particualrly film) in the 1950s/60s that depicted disillusioned characters in modern society. 

Journey to the End of the Night- Theatrical Trailer

Not only does this film/film trailer, in a very explicit way, expose the brutality and violation within society as the social realism genre does, its trailer also conforms to many conventions which we now wish to include in our own trailer.

London to Brighton- Theatrical Trailer

This film was our main source of inspiration as it centres around the struggle of a 12 year old girl who faces sexual exploitation, homelessness and voilent threats.

Like many social realism films, London to Brighton's narrative concludes with a balanced equilibrium whereby, although both main characters escape their horrorific situation that they face through much of the film, they still return to their original or worse point of struggle. For example, the final shot of the film is a shot of Kelly's back walking out from an London train station to a street which will inevitably lead her back to a life of prostitution. The most innocent of the victims though in this story is Joanne who, although it appears at the end of the film that going to a secure, potentially more loving home than before may improve her life considerably, the audience are still aware of the mental scars that this experience would have left her with.

Fish Tank- Theatrical Trailer

Following the story of a teenage girl struggling against the sexual exploitation from her mother's boyfriend and other issues such as poverty and violence. We see Mia going away at the end of the film and although it is evident that the series of events that lead up to this point were horrorific, we are still unsure whether the ending of the film is one of brutal reality or hope.

Albatross- Theatrical Trailer

This coming of age drama following the story of a girl battling the struggles she faces in life after the loss of both her parents. After befriending another girl, she starts having sex with her friend's dad and she is confronted with even more worries.Themes such as these are very common within social realism and this is the reason this film was such an inspiration to our trailer.

Health and Safety Precautions

Risk Assessment:

Risk	Threat	Severity	Actions to take
Vehicles whilst filming very close to a busy road in the town center.	Crew or cast member falling into the road and being hit by a vehicle.	High	We will ensure to maintain a 1metre gap between the road and the shot at all times.
Being distracted during the scenes inside the car.	Other road users misinterpreting the car which could lead to collision and angry drivers.	Medium	One member of the crew will be on constant lookout for cars and hazard warning lights will be used when other car users arrive. We will also film on a quiet road.
Falling over during the filming in dark scenes.	Tripping over during the night time shoots. This could lead to injuries such as cuts and potentially a broken bone.	Low	If the pavement isn’t clear, use the torch on your phone to make it clearer and avoid injury.

The Vision

The Story-

In desperation to escape her life of poverty and neglect, school girl, Harriet Young, attempts to find a job. One night, when vulnerable and reluctant to return home to her alcoholic father, she meets a woman whom she believes will improve her life. Eventually Harriet is manipulated and begins to lead a life of criminal activity and prostitution. She want to get away but fears both the failure to support her father and his debts and harrassment from her pimp. Will she ever get out of this situation?

When creating our storyboard we knew we wanted to use a lot of close-up shot 

1. Split screen (black), girl walking out the house in school uniform, versus, in tight skirt and laddered tights.
2. Father in front of television, flashing blue lighting coming from TV (only) booming sound
3. Empty fridge, match on action, crab/compartment shot in fridge. Blue tone.
4. Broken shelf, weird jar of condiment 
5. Job searching, montage: different people saying no, different locations
6. Lying down on bed, stained sheets
7. Over shoulder shot, opening card with £16 in change 'Happy Birthday, Dad.'
8. Close up '16' cupcake, focal point = orange candle light (voice over, "so, how old are you?" "18." Low angle = focal point face, onto cupcake, focal point candlelight (orange)
9. Quick fade: orange street lighting, night time
10. Meets guy, looking into car, night time (promise)
11. Shot looking into cafe, protagonist with food, eating quickly. Male not eating.
12. Stroking leg shot, gradual moving up the thigh, high angle. (Grab thigh?). No tights, same tight skirt.
13. Bedroom, mid shot, frustration and anger: hitting mattress, scream into pillow (mascara stains on pillow) 
14. Lipstick mirror shot, (numb look, unhappy) (continues throughout trailer, milli seconds) 

• Montage: More lipstick shots, smoking, male pushing down, falling into bed (slow-mo), leaning against brick wall (one leg up), putting tights on

1. Protest shots, slow-mo, shouting 
2. Ambiguity: "He won't let you go now, it's too late"
3. No music. Girl directly looking into camera "It's never too late."
4. Credits

Storyboard and Animatic

This is the final storyboard containing coloured images and detailed captions for each picture allowing us to follow it easily when filming and editing.

Film Animation

Film Title

Sound

When looking for the music that we wanted to cover the whole of our trailer, we firstly went on epidemicsounds.com. We knew this website was a copyright free, no cost, easy to use music website. We could also narrow down the music we were browsing for by using the filter options that would find music specifically for films, a sad atmosphere, a specific genre, etc. After some time browsing, we eventually found a piece that felt was appropriate for our trailer. We want something which created an eary atmosphere to show that this girl is heading towards a dangerous situation.
Although our trailer does not involve much artificial diegetic sounds, we were aware that another copyright free music website was available for us to use called BenSounds.com.

Although we did come up with an original script, in the end we did not use it that often because our actresses were talented and with knowledge of the context, they could often improvise. When editing we really liked these improvisations so we kept them in the final piece. Also, once we reviewed the typical conventions of many trailers, we realised that they do not have much dialogue.

Permission Forms

Technology

iMovie: Using iMovie we were able to insert smooth and professional transitions and exciting text, which enhanced our trailer considerably. We also discovered an option to use a trailer template but we decided to not use this in the end as it limited our freedom of what shots to include.

wix.com: jkbkb

Adobe Photoshop: 

Copyright Free Music Websites: The background music for our trailer was a struggle to fins at first. We originally went on bensounds.com to look for music but there was no soundtracks that we felt matched the atmosphere we wanted to create. Then we went on to a copyright free music website called epidemicsound.com. 

Eventually, we found a track called 'Distance 12', which we could download for free and import onto iMovie. This music is ominous and tense, which is the mood we intended to create. 

Canon DSLR vs. iPhone: We did originally consider using the Canon DSLR camera but after a couple of test shots we actually found it harder to get the image to focus. 

As a result, we filmed the entire trailer on one iPhone 7 camera. At times, especially in low lighting, the quality of the film was not so good. However, we are glad we used this new technology because it meant we did not waste time charging camera batteries, clearing memory card space and downloading videos.

Film and TV Streaming Services: This was used throughout our research stages.

Certificate Rating

Due to the strong language, scene of nudity and references to sex and violence within this film, the BBFC rating of our trailer, and the film would be 15. This follows the British Board of Film Classification and its guidelines for a 15 rated film. Although the trailer only references and insinuates scenes of sex and violence, it does have to include this green warning at the beginning of the trailer.

Shooting Script

'CUPCAKE' Trailer: Shooting Script

0. Production Company Intros

1. Split screen (black), girl walking out the house in school uniform, versus, in tight skirt and laddered tights.
2. Father in front of television, flashing blue lighting coming from TV (only) booming sound
3. Empty fridge, match on action, crab/compartment shot in fridge. Blue tone.
4. Broken shelf, weird jar of condiment 
5. Job searching, montage: different people saying no, different locations
6. Lying down on bed, stained sheets
7. Over shoulder shot, opening card with £16 in change 'Happy Birthday, Dad.'
8. Close up '16' cupcake, focal point = orange candle light (voice over, "so, how old are you?" "18." Low angle = focal point face, onto cupcake, focal point candlelight (orange)
9. Quick fade: orange street lighting, night time
10. Meets guy, looking into car, night time (promise)
11. Shot looking into cafe, protagonist with food, eating quickly. Male not eating.
12. Stroking leg shot, gradual moving up the thigh, high angle. (Grab thigh?). No tights, same tight skirt.
13. Bedroom, mid shot, frustration and anger: hitting mattress, scream into pillow (mascara stains on pillow) 
14. Lipstick mirror shot, (numb look, unhappy) (continues throughout trailer, milli seconds) 

• Montage: More lipstick shots, smoking, male pushing down, falling into bed (slow-mo), leaning against brick wall (one leg up), putting tights on

1. Protest shots, slow-mo, shouting 
2. Ambiguity: "He won't let you go now, it's too late"
3. No music. Girl directly looking into camera "It's never too late."
4. Credits

Props, Makeup and Costume

Props List:
Red Lipstick
Cigarette
Plate of food
Out of date food (butter)
Birthday Card
Cup cake
'16' Candles
A car
Dirty Sheets
Dirty Pillow
CV
Empty beer cans/bottles
Tights
Protest Signs
Red Light
TV
Fridge
Broken shelf
Cupboard

Posters (seeking workers)

Shower
Phone (poor quality)
A matress
Wrappers
Nail polish 

Costume:
Harriet- will be wearing clothes that match the colour palette and do not appear too expensive, otherwise it does not matter too much. It is important for health and safety that she wears something warm as we will be shooting in January weather.
Debbie- a furry coat, jeans and a cheap knock-off hand bag with a chain. hair down but unwashed.


Makeup:
The only makeup essential to our trailer was the red lip stick that Lily would be putting on for the montage section of the trailer. This follows a similar shot that is in London to Brighton where the 12 year old girl has on red lipstick as a show of loss of innocence. Other than that, we talent sourced Lily specifically because we felt she had the right look for the part without makup. Any blemishes on her face just simply adds to the realism of the trailer.
Maeve (as Debbie) may wear more makeup than others including badly put on false eyelashes.

Casting

Casting our Protagonist

In our film trailer we are introducing our female protagonist and should look something like this:

Gender: Female

Age: teenager between 15 and 18 years

Hair colour: no bright outstanding hair dyes

Height: anywhere between 5ft and 5ft 10inches

We felt that there was no need to audition each actor as they would not have to deliver any lines or perform very physically to get the shots we need as the character stays fairly stationary in each scene. Also, by analysing the acting experience they each had we realised that they could easily follow direction on the day of the shoot of how we want our main character to be portrayed. However, if we were to create the whole of this film where the character would speak and become more physical and emotive, we would think about getting them to prepare an audition piece or deliver a few lines from an extract of our script.

First profile

Name: Ebony Paice

Gender: Female

Age: 16

Hair colour: Brown

Height: 5'6 ft

Acting experience:

3 years of training at the Oast Drama

Performed in amateur dramatics clubs

A* in drama GCSE

Second profile

Name: Lily Fulton

Gender: Female

Age: 17

Hair colour: Brown

Height: 5'5 ft

Acting experience: A* in drama GCSE

Toured a performance of "Tin Man" to local primary schools as a theatre company.

Final decisions:

Protagonist:

Name: Lily Fulton

Age: 17

Contact number: 07758861112

Eye colour: Green

Hair colour: Brown

Height: 5,4 ft

Debbie:

Name: Maeve Wigham

Age: 18

Contact number: 07803207998

Eye colour: Green

Hair colour: Dark brown

Height: 5,7 ft

Protesters: 

Name: Jasmine Warren

Age: 18

Contact number: 077015684

Eye colour: Green

Hair colour: Brown

Height: 5,4 ft

Name: Lauren Haynes

Age: 18

Contact number: 07771622374

Eye colour: Green

Hair colour: Auburn

Height: 5,5 ft

Name: Georgia Wray

Age: 18

Contact number: 07917284931

Eye colour: Blue

Hair colour: Blonde

Height: 5,3ft

Name: Jess Chapman

Age: 18

Contact number: 07880236041

Eye colour: Green

Hair colour: Blonde

Height: 5,9ft

Name: Jo Foucher

Age: 18

Contact number: 07887243214

Eye colour: Brown

Hair colour: Brown

Height: 5,5 ft

Name: Katie Forster

Age: 18

Contact number:

Eye colour: Brown

Hair colour: Brown

Height: 5,4 ft

Name: Louisa Richardson

Age: 18

Contact number: 07775333118

Eye colour: Blue

Hair colour: Blonde

Height: 5,7ft

Name: Rachael Gilby

Age: 18

Contact number: 07342677484

Eye colour: Hazel

Hair colour: Blonde

Height: 5,4ft