Makeup Challenge

Group: Katerina Badoova, Ava Rogha and Elena Donatone

The brief

During the discussions around media and sexualisation led by Anwar we decided to focus on the way girls are sometimes encouraged to hide behind makeup that forces them to conform to certain beauty stereotypes. The brief was to come up with an idea that would make people think about this, but in a playful and engaging way.

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How we decided to respond to it

Our inspiration was seeing young girls on social media attempting to complete sometimes ridiculous makeup challenges that influencers and celebrities post online. To subvert the whole idea we chose three well-known makeup challenges, which were the ‘Kylie Jenner Lip Challenge’, ‘The Highlighter Challenge’ and ‘The Contour Challenge’. The idea was to try and get one volunteer to do all three and to see how that turned out. We did not want to ridicule the challenges completely, but to make young girls think more carefully about makeup and how to use it responsibly.

First we filmed a vox pop to establish if people were aware of these makeup challenges and to try and recruit volunteers to try the challenge. Unfortunately when it came to it our volunteers did not show up, forcing us to desperately try and find an alternative.  In the end we found an art student who was more than happy to help us out. We guided her to our booked room and filmed her getting her makeup done by our makeup artist. Fortunately she also agreed to be interviewed. The makeover and interview were filmed with three cameras, that included an iPhoneX and a DSLR. The lighting we used was that rig available in the Docklands TV studio where we did the shoot. 

What we think of the end result

One of the things we learned was that even if you work very hard on a film, things go wrong. There was the problem of being let down by our volunteers. But we also made mistakes. Although we had a script that made sense on the page, when we got the material into the edit suite we could not make the story work in the same way as it had on paper. We were very happy with the way the studio footage came out. The lighting, and therefore the makeup, look strong. But the vox pop lacked much interesting information, so we had to ditch some of it. Overall the film contains elements that we are very happy with, but the structure is uneven, and therefore so is the message. Also, although the art student was excellent, she had to carry too much of the film on her own, and we wish we could have had more volunteers to take our extreme makeup challenge, as we had originally planned. 

Three specific things that we learned

We had never used Final Cut Pro before and so given that this was out first film we think we learned a lot.

We also specifically learned how to access and include footage from the internet - and how to use screenshots - although the fact that this is a student film meant we were more relaxed about copyright than we would otherwise be. 

Most importantly we learned that a film has to be planned extremely carefully. Where our film could be better it is all about lack of planning.

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Conclusion

The experience was sometimes fraught and caused tension, but in spite of that it was the chance to work as a group on something demanding that we enjoyed most. Given that group work is vital in the workplace, this is the professional skill that we were introduced to that we value most.

Sexualisation & Society - A Samosa Media and UEL Journalism Project