Ewan Wild documents their work over several days producing posters and filming for a project. On day 1, an actor had to isolate, pushing back filming. Ewan instead worked on posters, tracing windows and adding lighting effects in Photoshop. Filming occurred on day 6 with just one actor, requiring Ewan to also operate the camera. Ewan then began work on a trailer, carefully editing footage to music beats to draw viewers in without revealing too much about the neighbor character.

1. DAILY
PRODUCTION
DIARY
Ewan Wild

2. Day 1 - 3
Already, a massive problem has arisen. One of my actors
has placed himself in isolation for a week, so I have had to
reschedule filming toThursday 26th March, rather than the
original day of Saturday 21st. Instead I’m spending the first
few days of production working on my posters. I have
already started one of them, however the screenshots are
on my MAC at college, so I am currently unable to locate
them. I can however still walkthrough how I did each step. I
started with poster 1, which is my cartoon one. I started by
tracing the outline of some windows I got off google. It’s
just the basic shape of them so I have a good simple set of
bay windows for my poster.This took a while as there are
lots of parts of it that needed to be perfected. All the lines
had to be even, and the windows had to be the same size. In
total, this took at least three hours to finish. As well as
perfecting the lines, I wanted to add little bits into it, kind of
like Easter eggs.The one I added here was barely noticeable
but was still fun to add. Each corner of the window is in the
shape of a little knife. No one would notice it, but it’s still
there, I think it just adds something extra to the windows.

3. Next, I needed to get a light for my window.
Originally, I added a very yellow one, but I didn’t
like that too much. As shown in my planning, I
switched to a darker shade, more of an orange.
This mixed with the black gives my film a creepier
feeling, as these colours are very commonly
associated with Halloween, a day considered by
many to be scary and creepy. Once I decided on
the colour, I could add the strange shape to my
poster. Due to the strange shape of my bay
windows, I had to put a load of squares together
and group them.This looks odd on its own,
however once it’s behind the bay windows, it
looks great.
Day one started off rocky. Everything seems to
have gone wrong overnight; however I have
adapted. Once I started the poster, it all seemed
to go okay again, and from what I’ve done so far,
I’ve really liked.

4. Next, I managed to get my poster finished. This
started out easy as I already had what font I wanted
to use for my poster, so it was just a matter of
getting the sizing for everything right for all the
words, it was the silhouette that I found to be the
difficult part. Firstly though, I will concentrate on the
title and credits. I went with the font I chose in
planning, Beckman, and it looks good. I made the
right choice as the font stands out and doesn’t look
too thick.You can clearly see that the title stands out
without taking anything away from the artwork.
Once this was done, I used a font called SteelTongs.
This allowed me to create some credits for the
bottom of my poster, giving it some more realism,
making it seem like a more professional poster.The
way this font works is that everything is in caps,
however when you try to write a capital letter, it will
create a new credit, such as ‘producer’ or ‘co-
director’.
The final step is creating the silhouette. I didn’t draw
this from scratch, it was again tracing from a google
photo. However I changed it a lot after the tracing,
smoothing it out to give it a more cartoon style so it
works better with the rest of my poster.

5. After this was done it was all about placement. I put it
quite high up in the window to make it clearer when the
light buzzes on.The problem with this was that my
silhouette wasn’t big enough for the window, so I had to
make changes which ended up improving the overall
look. Adding more to the body on the bottom almost
gives the shadow this ghostly look adding to the horror
aspect of it. Next, I decided to add a blood splatter.This
just adds something to the poster, making it seem like
more is happening. I looked at it both with and without
the blood, and I much preferred it with. Next time
however, I’d change the brush.The one I used here was
a bit too pixel-y for my liking, and that takes away from
the final look a little bit.
Finally, I had to get it moving. Using photoshop, I
created a short animation which flickered the light on
and off.This was simple, and only involved me changing
the visibility of the orange layer. After that was done, I
exported it and put it into Premiere Pro. From there I
added little electrical sounds whenever the light turned
on and uploaded it toYouTube. I also exported a still
version from Photoshop, so I have finished with both a
still and an animated poster.

6. Day 4 - 5
On day three I worked on the second poster.This one is using
my own photography, and so it was completed a lot more
quickly than the other poster. Once I got the photo, I knew
what I wanted to do with it. I started by using the quick
selection tool and selecting the part I wanted to be in colour,
in this case it was the girl. Once I did this well enough, I invert
the selection and set the image to black and white. I still
wasn’t happy with this however and wanted to change the
colour a little bit more, so next I made the blacks in the black
and white more vivid.This gave the poster an eviler feeling,
notice in that photo the house has a dangerous feeling too it,
it looks a lot more like it’s towering over the girl. After this, I
lowered the brightness of her. Due to how bright it was
before, the poster looked tacky and so it needed a change,
slightly lowering the brightness of her really fixed it. After
this I added the words in. I already knew of the font, so it was
just the colour I needed to do. Nothing really worked on the
black and white and so I went with another black and white
combo, creating a gradient. (cont.)

7. Once I was happy with the poster, I exported it twice.
Once as a full version, and another without the
photography.This is to later add it to the video version,
so both are similar. I had to redo the colours on premiere
pro once I had rotated the image, as I am using a
separate video to create this version of the poster.This
was a slightly different process, I set everything to black
and white, then created a mask.This mask allowed me
to draw an outline of what I wanted in colour, and then I
can make the effect just the background, keeping the
foreground in colour. I didn’t want to do it for each
separate frame, as doing that on my own would take way
too much time and doing it automatically doesn’t work
very well (I tried it, the mask doesn’t follow well at all).
Once this was done to an acceptable degree, I could add
the words.This didn’t take long at all, and I only had to
drag it in. Finally, I added some royalty free wind sounds.
This is just to pair it with the moving hair and add an
extra ominous item onto my moving poster. All in all, I
am happy with how this poster turned out, however I
don’t like it as much as the other, and it felt harder to
complete, but that’s what I will talk about in my weekly
diary.

8. Day 6
For day 6, I spent the day filming. It proved to be
difficult as I only had one actor, so I had to both act in it
and film it.This also meant I had to make changes to my
shotlist, as I couldn’t both move the camera and have
both characters on screen. Because of this, my final
project will be mostly still shots, but I’m just glad that I
have footage to create my final piece. I ended up with
66 shots which should be enough for both a final film
and the trailer.To go with the trailer, I had my main
character do some audio work, basically to create the
story so people know what’s going on. It was important
to avoid people as I went outside due to the ongoing
virus, so we had to stay away from people. We also
classed filming as our exercise usage, so we were sure to
stay in for the rest of the day, both before and after.
Although we say people, we kept well away, and so did
they, so we did a good job in keeping safe.

9. Day 7 - 9
Today I started work on the trailer for my film. I got all the footage the day before so I can
finally start my main aspects of work. I wanted to start the trailer before the main film as I
had a lot of ideas for the trailer come to me during filming, and I wanted to capitalise on it
before I forget about those ideas. I wanted to do more of a horror style trailer around a
minute long. It’s quite short as far as trailers go, however since my main film will only be
around three minutes, a minute-long trailer works pretty well. As I knew what I wanted to
do, I had to change the music slightly, cutting it in various places to not only make it
shorter, but make it work better with my trailer. Once this music was finished, I could
start adding some of the actual footage.The original plan is to show hardly any of the
neighbour, I wanted to keep him more of a secret, make the fear shown in the trailer
seem more psychological.You can see how I’ve cut the music, the scenes shown will be
frequent short shots, a couple of these will show the neighbour, he is clearly seen once
for less than half a second, yet he stands out.This could leave the audience confused,
they don’t know anything about this character watching the trailer, and it doesn’t
mention the neighbour, so it makes them think “who is he?”.This draws them in, wanting
answers that the trailer leaves them with.

10. The next step is to start adding in the footage. Notice at
the start of the music there’s a little tick tock sound. I
decided to do the cuts on that sound. Making a trailer
for me is not dissimilar to making a music video. I use
the beats of the music to change cuts, creating a more
satisfying and well put together product. For the start I
added scenes where something happens that involves a
fast action, for example, quickly turning heads. This
means that I can make the scene change quickly, so
people can see that something is happening, rather than
just seeing a load of nothing.To make the timing
perfect, I had to slightly speed up some of the footage,
but this was just to make it fit properly, and the change
in speed is barely noticeable. In between these quick
shots, I added some fake quotes about my film.This is
just to add some qualities of a regular film trailer. It adds
some time and substance to it, as well as telling people
to watch. If you listen closely to the trailer, you can see
the quotes appearing and disappearing on ticks, going
to another quick bit of footage each and every time.This
repeats three times to add some suspense. So far you
don’t know anything about the story, however it’s
creating tension to draw in the audience, from this they
have an idea of the genre, and want to know more about
the story.

11. Next, I moved onto a build up scene. This is designed to
force a lot of shot bursts of footage in, showing off
shots, and building up tension. Notice on the right how
the shots slowly get faster and faster.The pace quickens
to build excitement before it all goes away at once.
Some scenes were sped up yet again, and some were
slowed down. It’s important that they’re all the correct
length while still showing something, whether it’s a
shot, or giving away parts of the story. It took a while,
however they needed to be the exact right length.Two
slow and it slows down the whole part, too fast and it
makes the trailer clunky and parts go unnoticed. After a
while though, I managed to get everything to a time
that I’m happy with.
After that was done, I had to get rid of the tension, slow
down the video, and change the style.This was done
using two different types of sound. I used an explosion
sound and a heavy breathing sound.The explosion is
used to release everything I’ve been building up to, and
the breathing is to add something more to this bit. It’s
another staple of the horror genre, so it’s something
that I wanted to add, and this was the perfect
placement for it.

12. During that initial release, I slowly lowered the sound using
keyframes. This allowed me to make the sound gradually
fall to nothing, and the entire trailer falls into nothingness.
This lack of anything allows people to process what they
just saw.There’s fear in silence, something almost scary
about a black screen. After a few seconds of this, I star by
adding in a lighter (yet still slightly depressing) electric
guitar.This is the beginning of the style change of the
trailer.The one guitar note just lingers there for a second,
introducing what could feel like a second trailer, before
everything else starts.
This area is a lot different to the first, almost like opposites.
In the first half I was more concentrating on the visual
aspect, however for this second half, it’s the audio I’ve been
concentrating on more.The music is more relaxed, almost
boring, but I had the main character do some voiceover
work for me.That’s because this area will tell some more of
the story. I came into an issue with this as the audio
recorder I used didn’t work, or at least I couldn’t get it to, so
instead I used my phone, it worked well and the quality is
still okay, it just might have been better had the recorder
worked.

13. It’s not all just filler footage, however. For example, I’ve taken some of the footage that I
will use for the montage and used it for a completely different style.Walking down the
street cutting between different clothes gives the audience the idea that she does the
same thing every day, adding to the story.This is shown at the bottom. Underneath that
you can see the audio in which she is talking about her life below it.This is the biggest way
that part of the story is explained.
Partway through this, I wanted to add some fear back into people. I didn’t want this whole
last part to be slow, so in between I added some more horror aspects. Quick flashes of
what would be considered some of the scarier parts of my film, partnered with flashes of
classic horror shock sounds.The trailer then goes back to normal, as if nothing ever
happened. It’s so sudden that it could almost act as a jump-scare in the trailer, reminding
the audience that this isn’t a relaxing movie, and they should stay on edge at all times.

14. After this, I decided to make it dip to black before my main
character says her last line.There’s no particular reason for
this, I just tried it with some different shots, and I didn’t
like any of them as much as a sudden dip to black. From
that, there’s another silence for a couple of seconds before
music and the title fade in from black, ending the trailer.
This was easy enough for both as all it took was one effect,
and the music was just a matter of keyframing. I really
enjoy fades and fading in to reveal the title just looks good
in my opinion.
This was the end of making the base trailer. I was very
happy with my results and only felt like I needed to tweak
a few things.This firstly was fixing the sound. Some parts
were quieter than the other, and so I just needed to even
out everything. This took longer than anticipated to get
perfect, however I managed it, and it fixed my trailer a lot.
Finally, I wanted to add a filter to make the trailer seem
darker.To do this, I just added an adjustment layer on top
of all my footage, and added a filter to that, changing the
opacity.This gave my trailer a darker, more horror-like
feeling, and I plan on doing the same thing for my main
film.
Note:The screen recording of me editing didn’t work so I
don’t have any footage of my making this.
Before
After

15. Day 10
For day 10 I wanted to do the film trailer analysis while it was
fresh in my head, so I started watching the trailer and making
notes of the time every time I wanted to talk about
something. After a few watch-throughs, I had the script ready.
I wanted to make sure I got everything that I wanted to talk
about written down no matter how long this was, but luckily
the video was still just under six minutes, so it doesn’t drag on.
After the script was done, I recorded the script on my phone
and moved it over to my computer. It’s a simple process,
making notes on premiere pro as to where to cut and stop the
footage. I exported some frames, so the screen doesn’t just go
black when I start talking and instead just acts like a freeze
frame, instead it stops at the point where I start talking, as
though the trailer was paused. There was plenty to go through
and I got everything that I intended to do. It was less technical
and more about meaning, which is why I don’t talk about how
I did things, just why. For the more technical areas, I have
written all of this, the daily production diary.

16. Day 11-15
On day 11 I started editing the final film. I could get straight
into it because I already had all the footage recorded from
day 6.To begin with I wanted to start with the parts that I
knew for sure I wanted to do.This happened to be to Edgar
Wright-style montage towards the start of the short film.
This is several short shots lasting around a second which
shows the passing of time. When I finished this, I didn’t like
the audio paired with it.There wasn’t enough emphasis on
sound for my liking, in comparison to films like Shaun ofThe
Dead and Hot Fuzz, so I added some royalty free sound
effects to add that emphasis that I needed towards the end
of the editing process. After this I decided that the best way
forward was to put all the shots in the right order. Most of
my shots are short so this took a lot longer than I thought.As
I was both playing a character and working the camera, there
was a lot of cutting involved of me running back and forth
between the camera and where I was supposed to stand in
the shot.

17. Towards the end of making all the cuts, I had to fix some
sound issues.The sudden scream towards the end wasn’t
in the place I want it to. I wanted to make it perfectly cut,
then cut to black. To do this I had to move around the
audio. Because there isn’t any dialogue, I was able to
change the sound without any problems.You can see on
the left the sound has changed by what ended up being 1.3
seconds. This made it so the scream was cut out at the
perfect time, making it what I want to be.
After all these cuts were done, I had to make a couple of
adjustment layers.The first one at the top is a filter. I
added the layer to make the whole short film look darker.
It was really bright when I was filming and adding a blue-
ish filter that I custom made gave the film more of a horror
feeling. The second adjustment layer is added just for the
most intense part in the film. It uses a crop tool to add
black bars at the top and bottom. I won’t go into much
detail now, as that’s for the analysis which I will do later,
but it makes the scene more intense.

18. Adjustment layers are simple to do and very useful, so it
didn’t take too long, the only part of those two that took
some time was creating a decent filter for my film, but
that turned out fine too.
Originally, the plan was for me to put the film on a loop,
starting it in a similar way to the ending, however
halfway through editing I came up with an idea that I
preferred. Using cross dissolves and breaks in shots, I
added more intense scenes to start with, making them
fade in and out in between black. These short shots add
intensity to the start and force people to ask questions. I
also used a similar technique at the end; however this
was for the credits, using still images taken from
photoshop to create them, using the same font as
everything else, and finally ending with the film title. I’ve
used quite a few cross dissolves and dips to black in this
editing. I just like the look of them, and I think they work
very well with this genre.

19. The next step involved me working on individual shots.
Some of them weren’t up to scratch, so I needed to make
some improvements. The main this I needed to do was
stabilize the shots, so I added the warp stabilizer tool.
This smooths out the shots to make them look better.
Sometimes a shaky shot works, but in the cases where I
used this tool, it looked a lot worse without.
Another improvement I needed to make to some of the
shots was the sound. Sometimes there was background
noise that I didn’t want, such as people talking, so I
needed to reduce this.To do this I used the DeNoise tool.
This was simple enough to do as I experimented with it
earlier in the project, so I knew what I was doing. Mixing
this with lowering the volume slightly meant the
unwanted sound couldn’t be heard at all, and completely
fixed the sound. After this I rendered all of it to see how it
ran all together.Watching it back, I knew it was close to
finishing, I just had to add one more main item.

20. The last thing I wanted to add was sound. Using two different royalty free pieces
of music, I created a different aura. It’s not the normal style of music, but rather
more horror-style to create tension. As there’s no dialogue and some of my
audio is crackly, I put a lot of faith in the music making the audio better and it
did. At the beginning I used a different song. It was horror, but it almost acts as a
title sequence rather than part of the film, however it still creates those
questions I was talking about earlier.The second song was more difficult to get
right. Using keyframing, I slowly turned up the volume on the song, making the
peak when the more intense scene starts in the house. I also managed to make it
finish at its peak of fear.The silence is a lot more powerful than music
sometimes, and complete silence is more effective at the end. Finally, once I got
all the sound mixing right, I was done. This took several days to finish and took a
lot of time to get little bits perfect. As you can see down below, there’s a lot of
little cuts which are the main reasons it took so long, as everything had to be
perfect.

21. Day 16
Day 16 was very similar to day 10. I went through exactly the
same process, but with the main film instead of just the trailer. It
took longer than day ten however, as there was more to analyse.
It started with the script. It was around three pages, and
according to a website, would take around seven minutes to say.
This proved to be fairly accurate, as the end product was around
nine minutes. After this was done, I had to record it all. I often
make mistakes when I speak, so I record it in sections. That way, I
make mistakes less frequently as I can take breaks in between
what I say. I’m still recording from my phone as the recorder
doesn’t work, the quality isn’t as good, but it’s still decent enough
to make a good analysis video. Once I transfer all of this from my
phone to my computer, I can start editing. I use time signatures
to remember which part I recorded goes where, so I have to make
note of that before I begin, so I don’t mess up all the timings. It’s a
fairly simple process but it takes time. I have to cut out bits from
the audio to stop having lengthy silences.

22. Day 17
Day 17 is different to everything else I’ve done so far. I interviewed someone about
all my production work, asking for improvements. I started by asking about the
posters, then the trailer, before finally, the final film.The interview went as follows:
■ What do you think could be improved with the photos?
– Firstly, the names need to be fix. One of the actors isn’t in it anymore so
that needs to be changed. Secondly, find a different colour for the black
and white poster title. It looks tacky as it does now.
■ What could be improved with the trailer?
– I’m not so sure about this one.The trailer is really good, but if I had to
suggest something, I’d say to add the same filter you did for the final
film, to give everything some consistency.
■ Finally, what could be improved with the film?
– The sound is a bit everywhere, it needs to be more consistent and right
now it’s loud and quiet fairly inconsistently.

23. So after this interview was completed, I got to work on the
improvements. Sometimes in the past, I’ve thought that the
suggestions were wrong, and my way is better, but in this
case, I completely agree with everything said. I started with
the posters.This was simple, I just had to change the colour,
and replace it with the old title on Premiere Pro. It was easily
done and was up onYouTube within the hour. Next, I went to
the trailer. All I had to do was copy the colours on the main
film and transfer that all onto the adjustment layer for my
trailer. As you can see on the left, there’s barely a difference.
However look closely and you’ll see the one on the left has
more of a blue tint, just like my main film has. It’s something
small but it’s also something that can make a big difference.
Finally, I worked on the main film.This job is a bit bigger, as it’s
fixing the sound. It’s difficult as all my sounds are cut up, so I
have to change each part individually. It’s easy, however it’s
also time consuming. All I did was make the sounds between
12-18 Db and that means the sound will be much more
consistent.

24. Day 18
For the final day of production, I wasn’t quite sure what to do. I’d
done everything I could on my original plan, and everything big has
been finished. So after some thinking, I decided to design some
merch that could go with my film. Due to the current circumstances,
I have no money, so I can’t actually make it, but I can still make some
designs for what I would have liked. I started by making a t-shirt.
Personally, I’ve always liked the minimalistic look, so I didn’t want
anything too complex.There’s a popular style right now of a picture
in a frame on the front of the shirt, so I added something similar, but
in my own style. On the front you can see how I’ve tried that frame
look, but with my own twist. Adding smoke around the outside of it
just gives it that something extra, makes it stand out compared to all
the others of that style. I don’t usually like shirts with much going on
at the back, but I added my own touch there anyway. It’s something
small, but it leaves its mark. On the back, similar to the writing on
the photos, I’ve added “there is no escape”. These shirts are to do
with the film, so it’s important to make sure there’s plenty of
similarities between the two.

25. Next, I decided not to make another shirt.They’re great to design, but I want some
variety with what I create, so I decided to design a pencil case. It seems like a strange
choice, but these are common merchandise and they’d be used by a wide variety of my
audience, as they’d still be in school. Again, I decided to go for my poster design as it’s the
most suitable picture for merch.This process involved a lot of tracing around a pencil case
so I can actually make it look realistic, but it still looked cartoon-like so more needed to be
done. Using the effects panel, I could add a texture. As you can see below, I added
diagonal lines and lowered the opacity of it, making it look fairly realistic, more so than it
was before. It doesn’t look amazing, but it doesn’t look too bad either, it’s as realistic as I
can get it.
To view these in wix, go to my ‘Extras’ page, they will be kept there.