Weekly Journal

Regular evaluation updates are required, as with every unit. Please

remember to take photos and get behind the scenes footage as you film.
You might find it easier if you note down a record of what you did each day
in a diary form.

Please use the following guidance to help you with each week.

Week 1 This week you worked on your research

What have you been asked to We have been asked to choose what kind of
do? production we want to do and my group and me
decided that we wanted to do a short thriller film
based on the many ideas that came to mind when it
was mentioned.
What I have learnt from this week was that it is really
good to have loads of ideas from lots of different
people because you can chooses between them all
and all put input in to it to create a much better
thought out idea.

How has writing the brief helped We came up with the decision of making a robbery
you to finalise your idea? short thriller film with a twist were it starts off with a
child and his dad playing hide and seek and his dad is
killed and he uses his hide and seek skills to hide from
the robbers.

What did you learn from practising What I learnt from the codes and conventions
the conventions you researched? research was all of the different things that trigger
emotion in a thriller like the different audio cues that
show different emotions and how to show lots of stress
in the actors like having a fast moving camera flowing
the two actors changing angle from the front of the
actors to the back constantly and I feel as if this makes
a drastic change to the feel of the scene and how
much tension there is.

Are you on track for this week? If Yes all on track for this week we got lots of ideas down
not, how far behind are you? and have looked at many examples of different
thrillers to solidify our idea.

What work do you need to Out Side of lesson we have do a little bit of extra
complete outside of lessons to research to make sure we are set on our idea and
stay on track? what different technics are used.
Week 2 This week you worked on your planning

How has analysing videos helped Analysing videos was extremely helpful because it
you to understand the genre showed me all of the different technics that we need
better? to incorporate to make the effect of the film possible
otherwise it wouldn’t make people feel on edge and
that would completely wreck the idea of it being a
thriller and that is not what we want.

How did making infographics help Making an info graphic was helpful to show all of the
you to process your research? information in one little easy to read place so that if I
need to grab some information for something It is all
there and can use when I need to.

What did you learn from your What I have learnt from planning is that having a
planning? How has it helped you cooperative team is really important to the
to progress your idea? smoothness of the planning and knowing what
happens sadly this time I found that the team that I
choose to be in didn’t work and was really inefficient
in getting the planning done so partly down to
extremely bad communication between each other
which was partly my fault and I take blame as well but
I am not going to choose to work with this group again
if we need to work in a group again.
But the idea has progressed to some degree and in
the end after lots and lots of disagreeing we came to
one final idea which we all agreed on.

How has your idea developed/ Our idea has changed a lot dew to the many physical
changed during the planning limitation that we would face in the filming of the
stage? production and so we tweaked some of the scenes a
bit to make sure we had the ability to make these
different technics work in the environment and the
equipment that we would have.

How did you ensure that your We ensured that all of the story was to a high standard
storyboards were to a high by giving the task of creating the story board to the
enough standard? best drawer of the group sam and as he went along
we gave him input on what he could change to
improve the clearness and understandably of the final
story board so that when it came to the filming of the
production we could have a quick glance at the story
board and film the shot instead of trying to figure out
what it was that we planed to film if the story board
wasn’t clear enough.

What issues did you have when We had a lack of communication in the planning of
planning your production? How this production which caused a few issues but we sort
did you overcome them? of overcame them and made up for by all individually
checking over anything that was missed and added it
in ourself outside of lessons but was really inefficient in
getting it all done it would have just been better
working well as a team.

How much work did you complete I aded to my weekly blogs to stay on track with that
outside of the lessons? and I added a few extra bits of planning that I didn’t
get finished in the lessons.
Are you on track for this week? If Yes mostly on track there is a few bits of planing and
not, how far behind are you? getting the other planing from the other people in
group to upload which I will do on the weekend.

What work do you need to upload extra planning from the different people in my
complete outside of lessons to group and adding to this weekly blog.
stay on track?

Week 3 This week you worked on your production

What practical work have you We have completed filming for the first three scene
done and how helpful was your which the planning worked really well for we could just
earlier planning? glance down at the story board for where the camera
needed to be and what the actors needed to do.
The script was a bit vague and didn’t really help with
the filming but we overcame this by adding a few
camera angles in to the film.

Upload your behind the scenes I don't have the images yet dew to Dylan not having
photos and videos (explain what his camera on him at this time but will add as soon as I
they show) get hold of the videos and images and will make a
beside the scenes edit.

What issues did you encounter A few issues that we encountered was that we only
when filming and how did you had us to film and act in the production so three of
overcome them? use acted in some of the scenes in our production and
one of us filmed and in the scenes were there was only
three actors required two of us filmed which wasn’t
ideal but we made it work and it seems that we pulled
it off.

What locations did you use and The location that we used was Dylan's house because
why did you choose them? it has lots of space to film in and was all square so that
we could fit the cameras and the actors in all of the
places we filmed.
And it has really good lighting everywhere so that
there is no issues with not being light enough so that
you cant see the actors

How did you find the editing The process tock a-lot longer than I wanted it to
process? because there was a problem with not having all of
the clips that we had filmed so I thought that we had
forgot to film a lot of scenes but I just didn’t have all of
the clips so I got all of the clips the next day and
finished the edit.
The edit didn’t come out as good as I wanted it to the
story didn’t really make sense in a few bits which was
disappointing but towards the end people could
understand what was going on which was good.
What new skills did you learn when New skills that I learnt filming this production was how
editing? to make a scene really dark and eerie but so that you
can still see the actors and the surrounding area to
give a more scary effect.
I also learnt how to edit an Non linear narrative
production where we filmed the robbery character in
our film walking past the first person of our child
character hiding in the cupboard and then had the
same shot with the Childs brother walking past to
change the place in time and then finds the child and
says “found you” and that is how we showed the jump
in time.

Upload screenshots of the editing

process and discuss why you
made these changes.

In this shot of my editing process I am adding lots of

sound effects to make the impacts of the punch and
the stab of the knife a lot more substantial to the force
of the impacts.
There is nothing fancy with the other clips I just made
them a lot dark and reduced the hum and the audio
of the clips so that the quality of the clips is much
better and that when I switch between the shots you
cant hear them change otherwise it would completely
ruin a scene.

What issues did you encounter I encounter a big issue with not have all of the clips
when editing and how did you and getting confused thinking that I had lost some of
overcome them? the clips but I managed to get them off of sam which
was fine and then half way.
Another issue I encountered was that some of the
shots were way to light so in the editing I had to make
them a lot darker so it looked like it was night time
which was easy to change.

How well have you worked to your We worked pretty well to our schedule we had to film
production schedule? a few bits on Thursday which we didn’t want to do but
it worked out ok we edited quickly on Friday so that
we finished it on time.

Are you on track for this week? If I need to redo the location recce in to separate
not, how far behind are you? documents because I did it as one big location recce
which I wasn’t supposed to do.

What work do you need to Make the new location recce to upload and send out
complete outside of lessons to to the other people in my group.
stay on track?
High Grade Tips

Use screenshots to support your analysis – especially when comparing your work to other
pieces.

Considered and capable demonstration of processes – detailed documentation of your

production process – such as still images, and annotated screenshots of your specific
production and editing process – including ‘what’ and ‘why’ and not just ‘how’.

Specific – be specific! Don’t just say e.g. ‘the lighting was good’ – show us where the
lighting looked good and why you think that.

Week 4 This week you worked on your production

What were your production What I got from my feedback was that the camera
strengths? work was really good and gave the right effect and
made it have a high production value because of the
the high image quality of the shots and all of the
different creative camera technics that we
incorporated in the to the production which were
really effect in the development of the effect in the
film and the enjoyment of the watching of this
production.
Also what I got from my feed back survey was that the
music worked really well with telling the viewer that
something was going to happen and made the film
suspenseful and effective to the effect I was trying to
create in the story.
Another production strength was that thought editing I
manage to make all of the scenes look like night time
which was perfect for the scary effect I was going for.

What were your production There were a few production weakness which were
weaknesses? raised in my feedback one of the most prominent one
was that the story didn’t really have time to develop
so it was had to understand what was going on in the
film dew to the shortness of the story and the people
who watched my film had to ask about a few scenes
to see what was going on.
Another production weakness was that the scene
where the story jumps from the future to the past it was
a bit jumpy and left a few of the people how watched
my production a bit confused and I had to explain
what was going on.
How did you work as a group? As a group I didn’t think that we work very well
because we didn’t really help each other out very
much it was really slow to try and get different bits of
other people like when I didn’t have all of clips for
editing it took ages to try and get them off of my
group.
And there was a lot of arguing between us during the
filming of our film which wasn’t effective in getting
everything done efficiently and I thought that it would
of been much easier if everybody just chilled out a bit
more so that we could decide on things but on the
last day of filming on Thursday we worked much better
as a team and all made a disunion on the shots and
acting stye instead of just one person deciding what
we were had to do which just caused arguing.

What was your role and how did My role was to create location recces, production
you perform? schedule and to act in the production and to film the
production when I didn’t have to act.
I think that I could have been more efficient in my
roles to make sure it was all done well and fast but I
don’t think completely failed because I did a lot of my
work at home to try and stay on top of all I need to
complete so when everybody was in Paris I completed
everything I hadn’t completed in those three day
which was helpful to the completion of all of my roles.
Complete a written comparison of My production compared to the two productions I
your work to professional researched was not two different to the second
productions you researched production I researched “ hallucination “ because
there is a lot close up shots of the actors and there is
previously. Use screenshots of both
lots of tension in the story which was the effect I was
productions to support your trying to create in our short film and I feel that it
analysis. worked and what I go from my feedback was that the
camera work was really good and the music created
lots of tensions in the scenes.

As you can see with these two images we used the

same sort of shots as the short film “hallucination”
which create tension in the scene where something is
going to happen and I feel like it shows that well.

High Grade Tips

Use screenshots to support your analysis – especially when comparing your work to other
pieces.

Considered and capable demonstration of processes – detailed documentation of your

production process – such as still images, and annotated screenshots of your specific
production and editing process – including ‘what’ and ‘why’ and not just ‘how’.

Specific – be specific! Don’t just say e.g. ‘the lighting was good’ – show us where the
lighting looked good and why you think that.
We also used action shots like in the other film to also build tension in scenes I feel that this also
works really well in our film like it does in the professional production I think that I should of got the
actors to move a bit faster to make it create even more tension but our hole film is about him trying
to hide it wouldn’t fit the story very well so the way that I know what to do next time is to add lots
of motion blur like in the two professional to make the scene seem faster paced.

In my individual edit I made the hole effect

of the film really dark because I was going
for a late night after dinner game of hide
and seek and I wanted it to be a realistic
time for a robber to break in to a house and
take the risk of killing someone were he
thought he wouldn’t get court so I made it
as dark as I could with it still being light
enough so that you see the actors and props
and to see what is happening like in the
short clip of the film devil it is really dark
though out the hole film so I used this
example to make the same effect in my film
and I think it really complimented the story
and made it much more scary.