Cyberbully- deconstruction of Film Trailers

The film cyber bully was made in 2011 starring Emily Osment. The film starts with the main character Taylor Hillridge being a normal teenager having friends, good grade and a nice home life but then she gets a laptop for her birthday and signs on to a social networking site which then gets hacked and people start to bully her online and her life starts to change, people at school start to make fun of her, her friends start to leave her then she is soon left on her own and one day runs out of school and goes home where she sees a video someone put online about her and she then goes into the bathroom to try and kill herself but her friend comes round and finds her in the bathroom trying to take the lid off a bottle of pills, then Taylor goes to hospital and her mother finds her there. It then goes to Taylor’s mother going to her school to see what can be done to stop what happened to Taylor, but the head teacher says they have no control over what the students do on the their own computers at home. So then Taylor decides that the law needs to change to stop other teenagers going through what she went through.

1) How is meaning being represented at connotative and denotative levels?Denotation: The Main character Taylor is sitting at her desk looking at her laptop with one hand holding onto the side of her laptop looking at the screen very upset and worried.

Connotation: is that some has happened or someone has put something online about her or has done something to upset her.

Connotation: is that some has happened or someone has put something online about her or has done something to upset her.

Denotation: Again the main character is on her own in the toilets at school with a group of other girls circling around her laughing and the main character is in the middle looking visibly upset and also very alone.

Denotation: Taylor is on the floor crouched over crying with her mother hold her from behind.

Connotation: This shows us that Taylor has given up hope and doesn’t care anymore and has let the words people have been saying to her get to her and doesn’t want to be here anymore and wants to die.

Denotation: Taylor sitting on her own on a bench in a locker room.

Connotation: This shows us how alone she is and shows us that everything that’s happening online is really affecting her and she feels like she cannot talk to anyone.

2) How are non-verbal communications (gestures, facial expressions) being used?

» Facial expressions used are mostly commonly coming from Taylor upset and these facial expressions grow as the bullying online gets worse, they grow with each other throughout the trailer.

» The facial expressions of anger most commonly come from Taylor’s mother when she realizes what’s happened and when she is talking to Taylor about getting help for everything that has happened.

» The Gesture of Taylor’s hands over her face lent against a tree after reading everything that has been said about her, this is a continuous thing throughout the trailer as Taylor loses her confidence and friends her hand are around her face a lot because she is closing up and becoming very introverted.

3) What can we tell from the positions of characters or objects?

The position of bullies is at eye level with the audience which suggests that the audience could start to think ‘am i like that?’ so it makes people think that they could relate to the bullies as they see themselves in the bullies. Also as Taylor is walking down the corridor back home the camera is looking up at her following her which suggest to the audience that she is leaving to go and do something not right and that she isn’t in the right frame of mind because of everything that has been going on. And also you know that something is about to happen to Taylor.

4) How have clothing, props, mise-en-scene, sets and setting been used? » In the shot with the bullies in the bathroom taunting Taylor this setting is in an American high school which is where the majority of the trailer is set as this is where the majority of Bullying takes place within school time or online but this can also happen in school times.

» The clothing throughout the trailer is just casual bright clothing worn by Taylor but as the story continues Taylor clothing starts to get more and more darker colours and more laid back this is because she starts to stop caring about they way she looks.

» Most of the other characters are usually in plain-like clothes to link in with there personalities.» Throughout the trailer there are minimal props used apart from the central prop which is the laptop used by Taylor which is where most of the bullying takes place.

5) How have soundtrack, commentary and language been used?There is only one song used in the trailer is Perfect by Pink and this is played towards the end of the trailer and fades out at the end. It starts just as Taylor is on her own in the locker room. Also the audio in the trailer always feeds into each other, so there is also little voice overs from each scene as it fades into the next one.

6) What is the tone of the text? How does it change? The tone of the trailer changes from the beginning to the middle and then the end, this is because at the beginning the tone is happy and calm but then as you see Taylors laptop the tone changes instantly, this is because she starts to get bullied and her mood changes completely and that is linked into the tone, then as she starts to over come the bullying and standing up for others who are going to through this themselves.

This Trailer will influence my trailer because I want the audience to really feel the emotions that are going on within the shots they are watching to make them want to go and watch what happens to the main character throughout the rest of the film.

Painful Secrets

Painful Secrets is a film trailer I looked at that in connection with my trailer ideas as it is the same genre of teen drama; it follows the same story-line that I want to use and the same subject which is Self-Harm. The Trailer starts of with a voice-over ‘rejected by her peers’ is the opening sentence which gives us an insight straight away into what might happen in this trailer this then leads into a panning shot across a classroom and onto four teenage girls looking directly towards the camera which shows us that the main character is the centre of this film and that we are seeing things from her perspective.

It then goes into the main character telling her dad that ‘no one likes her’ and as she says this it dissolves into another shot of the same group of girls laughing at her, it then goes on to dissolve into her talking to her mother and shouting at her saying ‘iam trying to get you to hear me’

It then moves onto a pivotal moment in the trailer it shows the main character with an art knife aimed at her wrist it then dissolves into her parents talking about it to the principle of her school and the principle explaining it by saying that ‘high strung kids, troubled kids’ cut themselves

It then moves on to the main character with a therapist helping her to get better and helping her to stop cutting. This shot then dissolves into a shot of the main character taking a blade out of the bathroom this shot then immediately changes into a shot of the main character in a hospital bed with her arms strapped down which shows us that she needed to be hospitalized.

But this then moves into a panning shot of the main character sitting with her therapist looking at pictures of her cuts then it dissolves into the main character about to cut herself but then she stops which shows us as an audience member that she is learning to stop cutting with the help of her therapist.

Theory connections:

From looking at the trailer it follows Todorvs theory of equilibrium/disequilibrium. This is because it shows the main character Dawn Cottrell in a normal life with normal parents but then you start to see her world break down because of her cutting and the fact that she tells no one about it because she cant express her negative emotions through words she can only do it through cutting. The target audience for this is almost the same as the target audience i am looking at because i am aiming for my target audience to be from 16+ because i believe that this type of film isn’t suitable for anyone under that age; i think that’s what this film was doing and aiming for as well as it overall a delicate subject. This film also shows us an authority figure that is willing to help the main character and is seen as very kind and helpful and willing to listen, that is what i would like to portray in my trailer having the main character someone to talk to by the end and finding help with dealing with her problems. looking at the types of shots there are in Painful Secrets it is clear that this is being shown from the main characters perspective as we are see her reactions to her situation and what is really going on so as an audience member we can sympathize with her and understand a situation most people don’t know a lot about, that is the message i would want to get across in my trailer, seeing it from the main characters perspective so that the audience can sympathize with her and understand her problems and situations better.

This Trailer will influence my trailer because it is based on the same concept of Self-Harm and it shows the problem from the main characters eyes not from everyone else’s perspective and we get to see how it affects someone and those around them, it influences my trailer also because it then shows the main character getting help and trusting someone and finally getting help, my trailer is about the main character finding out that she isn’t alone and that she can trust people.