production diary

1. Production Diary HOPE SMITH

2. Week 1
This week we started the final major
project. The first task was to do contextual
research, I wrote about my strengths and
limitations and which horror movies I have
seen and been influenced by over the past
year. I struggled to write about my strengths
only being able to think of 2 aspects of my
work that I know I can do well. The last
thing I did this week was compile a list of
the horror movies I have watched in the
past year and then I went into a bit more
detail on Candy man as it is so far my
biggest influence for this project.
Contextual research 2

3. Week 2
Contextual research and proposal 3
This week I finished off my contextual
research, I looked into different artists who
have a horror art style then I picked the
three artists I liked the style of the most and
put them into my PowerPoint. I do feel like I
need to wright more about those artists
especially about each one individually. The
next thing I did this week was my proposal
it took me a while to actually get started
writing this because I didn’t know what to
say for the rationale and I hadn’t fully
worked out my project concept yet

4. Week 3
Research 4
This week I started my research, I started
by just looking at lists of the most popular
horror movies of all time. Once I did that I
did some research on the psychological
sub genre of horror and researched my
favourite psychological horror director Ari
Aster. I focused on the themes that Aster
presents in his films and what movies
inspire him as a director. The next things I
researched was scopophobia the fear of
being watched and nyctophobia the fear of
the dark. I researched these phobias as
they are the main concept behind my film. I
know I definitely need to write more on the
first slide about the popular horror movies
as I don’t go into enough detail about them.

5. Week 4
Research 5
The first thing I did this week was make a
survey on google forms about
psychological horror movies and fears, I did
this to collect audience research. Once I
got the data back from my survey I
analysed the answers to each question and
talked about what the results to the
question shows. I didn’t get time to finish
analysing all the questions so I will finish
that off at home.

6. Week 5
Problem solving 6
On Wednesday of this week I went to watch
a zombie film then did a workshop with the
director of the film where we got to ask
questions related to anything about the film,
horror movies, and what are the most
effective ways to do certain types of
scenes. Then for the rest of the week I
worked on problem solving I worked on my
contingency plan and any technical
problems that may occur.

7. Week 6
Problem solving and experiments 7
This week I finished of the problem solving
section of the PowerPoint I am working on
and moved onto experiments. For
experiments I learnt how to set up the
gimble as one experiment and I also learnt
how to us it going out ad filming some
things around college to get the hang of it
before I us it for my film. I do think I could
use a bit more practice with it before I start
filming on shoot day though.

8. Week 7
planning 8
This week I started my planning, I made a
floor plan of my house to show where I will
be filming as a lot of the film will be shot
from the outside looking into the house.
Next I made an equipment list so I know
everything I’m going to need on the day of
filming. The last thing I did this week was
plan out the outfit the girl will wear in the
film and gave some explanation on why I
chose each piece of clothing and the outfit
as a whole.

9. Week 8
Planning 9
This week I did my mood board, colour
scheme, story board and shot list to finish
off my planning. Doing the story board took
the longest and was the most stressful part
of the week because the website I was
using kept glitching making me lose my
work so I ended up restarting the story
board 3 times. Making the mood board took
longer than I expected to because it was
harder to find pictures that fit the vibe of the
film. The colour scheme was easy and
quick to do and so was the shot list as I
already had all the shot ideas in my head
and I had the story board done which is like
a simplified shot list. The shot list was the
last thing I did in the week but I hade to get
It finished because I am going to be filming
next week.

10. Week 9
Filming 10
On the night of filming we started to film at
around 9:30pm and wrapped around 1am. I
checked the camera was set up right and
working fine before the shoot but stupidly
left the battery in the camera so it was dead
when we started to film and the spare
battery was only half charged. When we
started to film we tried to film everything as
fast as wee could in hopes we would finish
before the camera died but I was only able
to film for 10 minuets before the camera
died. Once the camera died I re-filmed
everything I had already shot and continued
filming on my phone. I’m glad my phone
has good camera quality but I might refilm
everything with a proper camera once the
easter holidays have finished and I can talk
to Scott about it and see what he thinks.

11. Week 10
Editing 11
I went back to college this week after the
Easter holiday, the first thing I did was talk to
Scott about if he thinks I should reshoot my
film with a proper camera. Scott thought my
phone camera had good enough quality to
keep the footage I filmed but I do need to
reshoot the last mirror scene as I didn’t film it
quite right. After I talked to Scott I put all my
footage that I was using into premier pro, I cut
all the clips and put them in the right order for
the film then I started to work on the colour
grading. I had to watch a few YouTube videos
to learn how to do colour grading properly
because I’ve not had to do as much colour
grading on one project as I have for this one. I
tried a few techniques to colour grade and
after some trial and error I found one I liked
and I thought worked best using RBG curves.

12. Week 11
Editing and reshoot 12
On Wednesday and Thursday of this week I
continued to do the colour grading on the
footage I hade for the first half of the film.
On Thursday night me and Evan refilmed
the mirror scene at the end of the film we
also refilmed a few other shots that I
decided I could do better. Filming went
really smoothly and we got the last scene
filmed a lot quicker than the first time as we
both already knew exactly what to do in
what order. On Friday I put all the new
footage into premier pro, cut each clip then
started to colour grade the main clip that
plays throughout the whole scene till the
end. I do regret not waiting till it was
completely dark outside to film the mirror
scene because the sun was setting the
lighting in all the clips changes quite
drastically.

13. Week 12
Colour grading and transitions 13
I spent Wednesday, Thursday and part of
Friday just colour grading the final scene.
This took days to do because I had to go
through and colour grade each clip frame
by frame and get the shots of what’s in the
mirror to match the surroundings of the
scene and match the clip before and after
it. On Friday afternoon I put in a few
transitions between some scenes I didn’t
want to put lots of transitions in between
each scene cos I really liked the choppy
jumpy look it gave the film, I think it added
to the suspense and shock factors of the
film. It did take me a whole hour to do one
of the transitions tho which was annoying
because I had to go frame by frame to
mask the scene.

14. Week 13
Audio and final touches to film 14
The first thing I did this week was record all
the audio for the film using foley sound. I
recorded each sound 3 times with different
settings on my sound recording app so that
I could decide which recording I liked best.
Once I had all the sounds I needed I put
them into my film, cut them and adjusted
the volume settings. When I finished the
sound I worked on all the final touches like
the end credits and the title card when I
finished those I watched the movie a few
times to see if there was anything else I
wanted to tweak. I was very happy with
how my film had turned out so I exported it
and uploaded it to YouTube so people
could watch it.