Victoria Secret Models

Group: Francesca Battaglia, Marta Cerda Martinez and Benedicty Sukama

The brief

This was to make a film exploring one aspect of the following proposition: “Sexualisation and other pressures from social media, music, and other parts of popular culture is leading to mental health and other problems in particularly young girls – and while the corporations behind this content rake in the cash, the establishment is doing nothing to help.”

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How we decided to respond to it

We felt motivated by this proposition because as young women, we are aware of the pressures put on us to look and behave in a certain way, so that we can be accepted according to our society’s current canons of beauty.

During our research we found an interesting article in The Sun with the following headline: “Angels and demons. Dark side of Victoria’s Secret catwalk – from Kendall’s 400 calorie diet and fights backstage to the VS ‘curse’”. This article inspired us to investigate the hold on some young girls that Victoria’s Secret (VS) has.  For example Adriana Lima, one of the most famous VS models, has nearly 13 million followers. However we felt the world she represents was over idealised and that young girls should know more about the real situation. So we decided to try and show how potentially unhealthy it would be for a model to get their body in shape for a VS show. 

During the execution of this project, and while being mentored and supported by Rishabh, we soon realised that pre-production was the most time-consuming part. It took us over a month to get everything in place so that we were ready to film. 

Finding the right people to film was particularly difficult. We soon discovered that most people are unable or unwilling to support a student film without getting anything in return, and we had no budget of course. So we decided to look for professionals on social media who did not have many followers, so they could promote their work through our film, and that’s how we found our nutritionist. One little problem was that she was in India! So the way we got round this was by asking her to film herself! 

We also needed a personal trainer, so we went to the UEL SportsDock to find a Sport Science student. After asking around we found Viktor, who at first didn’t want to do it, but eventually agreed for the experience. He turned out to be very confident on film, which just goes to prove that you don’t always need to hire people who are used to performing in front of the camera.

Then we had to find a girl who was willing to try the VS programme out for a day. That meant following a strict regime, and persuading someone to do that was not easy. So we thought the best option would be to look for a student on campus, since she would have more free time than a professional. In the end we found Joana who was a student who not only lived on campus but importantly was interested to try the programme. We also decided to film on campus so that it would be easier for everyone get together. As we could not get to campus early we had to coach Joana on how to film herself in the morning, as if she were filming her own vlog.

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What we think of the end result

This project has changed our way of looking at film production. It’s definitely harder than it looks, and very time consuming. Everything must be carefully prepared, otherwise it won’t work out, and even then many unexpected problems may occur. For us, this has been a wonderful experience, and a first step in filming documentaries. Making sure the message is crystal clear was difficult, and relies on a well-planned structure. We think our film worked well in the end, but to make the message clear we had to insert titles when it would have been better to ask Joana the right questions!

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Three specific things hat we learned

1. Good teamwork is vital, but not easy, because people let you down. We for example began as a group of three but in the end - during production anyway - were reduced to only two.

2. Perseverance is also vital. The project will never go smoothly, so if you can’t persevere when times get tough, you will fail.

3. Professionalism is paramount. The point of this collaboration was to give us the opportunity to work with an external client - The Samosa. Having Anwar to answer to, rather than just a tutor, meant that we approached the work more responsibly than we might have otherwise. Working with The Samosa has taught us skills that have made us more confident about working professionally in future. 

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Conclusion

This project was very hard but also very rewarding. Rishabh taught us to plan very carefully and had we followed his advice more closely we might not have had so much material to edit down into three minutes. Our first cut was about ten minutes long! So another thing we learned was that if help is offered take it! The insights of those more experienced than you is invaluable in allowing you to progress. Although we sometimes felt dispirited, we have nothing but gratitude for our teachers and professional partners for the way they supported us to make sur we finished what in the end is something we as a group can be proud of.

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Sexualisation & Society - A Samosa Media and UEL Journalism Project