Thumbnail

This part of my blog will detail the research & development for our thumbnail which is done by me and Beatrice

Research

As we are doing a medical crime documentary, I looked into medical crime documentaries specifically to better understand what their conventions may be. 

From here, we can see that, for medical crime documentaries, white is more commonly used compared to crime documentaries from other genres. I assume this is because white is associated with medicine as people often use it to symbolize cleanliness and purity which is what the field of medicine is expected to be. This white is usually contrasted with darker colours which may show this 'purity' being tainted. Medical-related props are also often shown (pill bottles, statoscopes etc) which further emphasizes the medical setting. 

After that I decided to do a more in-depth research. I decided to pick Painkiller: The Tylenol Murders as our documentary was inspired by the Tylenol murders.

Liked:

• The Tylenol murders case is a case of medicine tampering that killed people through the Tylenol that people bought and unknowingly consumed. If you look closely, the dark background is actually a map. This paired with the contents of a broken pill spilling out all over it may symbolize how the medicine tampering has affected various people across a certain area.
• The 'PAIN-' half of the word painkiller is coloured red while the '-KILLER' part is coloured white. This parallels with the pill shown on the cover

Disliked:

• It's not really clear that the background is a map unless you look closely as it is quite dark and the text on the map is quite small. If I were the one creating this thumbnail, I would have made the details on the map (text, roads, etc) in white so that it contrasts with the black and becomes visible.

Conclusion:

I quite enjoy this thumbnail overall and I might be taking inspiration from the broken pill part of this thumbnail for my own. The map bit also got me thinking about ways I could show that this affects an entire school. 

 

Development

After conducting research and reading Beatrice research, we gained a better understanding of what we wanted to do for our thumbnail. However this was met with the realization that we had not come up with a name for our documentary. Beatrice reminded us of this and we immediately started coming up with names.

I rushed to my phone's notepad to immediately start brainstorming name ideas

However, none of these particularly stood out to us. After that, Beatrice sent us her ideas

She asked our group for our preferences and Regine & I found The Silent Dose, The Lethal Remedy, Prescription for Deceit and Misdiagnosed to be most compelling. However, after some further discussion and teacher feedback, we decided to go with Prescription for Deceit. This is because the word 'prescription' provides the audience context for what our documentary will be about while 'deceit' adds an element of intrigue.

Thumbnail Photography

We started by taking some pictures in school during lunch. However, we had some issues with my camera's setting which took up some time to fix and since we had limited time, our end pictures were rushed. 

Some of the blurry pictures

After that, Beatrice focused on developing potential directions we could go with for our thumbnail. Taken from her blog:

"The following day, I began sketching potential concepts for the documentary’s thumbnail, planning to draft four designs using the images Aurel and I captured as references. However, Regine proposed that we re-shoot the images and contributed two additional concepts that she had sketched. Below are the ideas we've developed through our sketches.

[Regine's sketch]

We used Regine's thumbnail concept as the foundation for our re-shoot. Learning from our previous challenges, Regine and I opted to conduct the re-shoot after school, allowing us more time to set up the mise-en-scène and explore different camera angles and compositions. We utilized a phone camera for the re-shoot, with Regine directing the process, articulating her vision for the imagery while taking the pictures. My hand was used to model for the thumbnail, maintaining continuity with my role as the perpetrator in the documentary. However, since one of Regine's ideas involved using medicine or pills outside of their packaging, we decided it would be safer to capture this shot at home to avoid any potential risks. This allowed us to ensure a controlled environment while adhering to safety considerations. 

Thumbnail Image Selections 

Here I will be showing the selected images that we ended up using to develop as potential thumbnail.

Images taken by Regine ↓

These are the images captured by Regine at the school clinic. Similar to our previous concept, we aimed to convey the idea of the perpetrator tampering with the medicine through the imagery. To achieve this, we experimented with multiple shots, exploring two different ways of holding the medicine packaging to better communicate this narrative element.

These are the two images we ultimately considered for our thumbnail. I personally prefer the bottom one (the 5th image) due to its more balanced composition. However, Regine favored the top image (the 2nd image) as she suggested altering the word "Panadol" to "Deceit," which adds a deeper layer of meaning to the design. Furthermore, it presents a more conceptually compelling and thematically relevant idea for the documentary.

Images taken by me (Beatrice) ↓

Initially, I captured a variety of images, experimenting with different camera angles and lighting techniques, as demonstrated in the following example. However, I had to narrow down the selection by deleting some images and choosing the ones that best fit the intended visual narrative of the thumbnail. Below are the images I considered for further development.

These are my initial composition ideas. Aside from the third image (which was taken towards the end of the shooting session), the arrangement of the medicine / pills are intentionally disordered to suggest the pills have been scattered, reinforcing the theme of tampering. However, towards the end of the shoot, I had the idea to arrange the pills in a 'P' shape, symbolizing the title of our documentary, Prescription for Deceit. For compositions 1-3, I considered placing the title in the top-right corner, in line with Regine's sketch. On the fourth image, which features a close-up shot from a higher camera angle, I thought of placing the title in the center, inspired by the 'The Business of Drugs' documentary.

These are my second composition ideas. I decided to remove the cap and the yellow medicine packaging to place more focus on the pills themselves. By using a higher camera angle, I felt this better emphasized the pills while also showcasing the date on the packaging more clearly. This could serve as a subtle narrative device, linking the event’s timeline to the date on the packaging. For instance, the 14/9 appears unpressed, suggesting it should have remained unopened—aligning with our documentary’s storyline, where September 14th marks the day the student suddenly lost consciousness and was rushed to the hospital.

This is my third set of composition ideas, where I employed a similar technique to the second composition by focusing on the pills with minimal distractions. However, this was also when I began experimenting with arranging the pills into a 'P' shape (and re-shooting image 3 from the first composition). Despite these efforts, I find the compositions in this set too orderly, which doesn’t effectively convey the sense of chaos and disruption associated with the tampering of the medicine. Therefore, I’ve decided not to develop these images further, possibly with the exception of the first image.

These are the four images that I plan to further develop. Together with the image that Regine took, I will be experimenting with the placement of the documentary's title to determine which two images are most effective for the final thumbnail. This process will help refine the selection and ensure the most suitable visual representation for our project."

While she was doing this, I was thinking about what I could do for the thumbnail. I thought about how I could relate the thumbnail image to the name to better indicate what the content of our documentary would be which would help attract our target audience better.

Since the title was Prescription for Deceit, I started thinking about how I would be able to involve a prescription in our thumbnail. So, I started creating some fake school clinic prescription templates

Although prescription notes are typically black & white, I picked a turquoise colour to match our school's theme (since that's where the plot takes place) and because it was a colour often associated with medicine. I also planned to print it our put fake blood on it for the thumbnail so I believed that this cooler colour would contrast well with the red of the blood as they are complimentary colours which made it more eye catching. However, Beatrice suggested a more blue tone and created the draft below

I agreed with her decision as blue was more often associated with clinics than turquoise is while still being a complimentary colour to red so I decided to go with her idea.

After that I printed it out. I used old paper rather than using a brand new one as it made the prescription note look more used. Then I applied red food colouring on a paint brush and flicked it at the paper to create a blood spray effect. These are the examples of what the pictures ended up looking like:

After that, we tried to experiment by creating mockups:

Using the mockups, we experimented text placement (such as seen in the above where we were trying to decide whether the text looked better tilted to follow the paper so that it looks like the word 'deceit' would appear as if it were directly on the paper or not) and how different effects (shadows, colours) would affect the thumbnail

We decided to go with this one for our thumbnail. A cooler tone was edited in by Beatrice as cooler tones are more often associated with medicine and gave our thumbnail a 'colder' feeling

We decided to conform to typical crime documentary conventions by using darker colder tones as it suggests the 'darker' contents of our documentary to the audience. Blood is also commonly seen in crime documentaries. Here, we've decided to use it as a symbolic code to show how the medical field (specifically in the school's), shown using the prescription, has been tainted by a gruesome incident. 

Although we mainly conformed, we also subverted a little by not including a person in our thumbnail. This creates a sense of mystery as the suspect's identity is obscured which we feel would better attract our mystery seeking target audience

Self Reflection:

• Thumbnail research helped us understand what we needed to attract our target audience's attention
• I think I should have experimented more with different directions I could've taken the thumbnail by sketching different mockups. However, since we were rushing to get the thumbnail done as soon as possible so we could move on to our critical self reflection, I just immediately started working on my idea as soon as it came to my head. Next time, I think I want to start creating the thumbnail earlier so that I don't have to rush the process