PRODUCTION DIARY
21st of January
Prior to starting my first few experiments, I already had an idea of where I wanted to head with my short film in year 11 as I had been constantly thinking about a movie surrounding Basketball. I had this stylistic shot I was thinking of, so I bought this little diary just in case I need to write any ideas that come to mind.
I drew the shot from the crew’s perspective, with the lighting and camera to illustrate the effect I was attempting to give off. I then indicated what the process would be to achieve the shot.
26th of January
My family and I went up to my tennis court when all my family members were finally together and shot the scene at night with my brother being the cameraman, both my parents on lighting and my stepbrothers as the imaginary crowd the protagonist dreams of (experiments 1&2). The shots came out quite well and it showcased the shot I was hoping to construct. Till this day, I am not sure where my inspiration came from to want to make this shot, but I hope it illustrates the emotions the protagonist is feeling.
27th of January
Today marked the day I began editing my footage with music, colour gradients, and cuts to achieve the desired shot. I used iMovie as it is an extremely intuitive and easy editing system to properly reconfigure footage. I also use iMovie as my Mac computer struggles to actually run Adobe Premier. With the help of a dreamy gaze to the footage and a warm toned gradient, I was able to give the following atmosphere:
This scene will cover two of my experiments, one on camera, the other more focused on lighting and editing. I am very pleased with the outcome of this shot; I couldn’t of done it without my families help, nor could I have done it without the appropriate equipment.
29th of January
Today marks the first day of Media 3&4 and we are welcomed into a fresh new year, but sadly I haven’t completed all my homework, I’ve only finished two experiments, so I went home and finalised my first draft of a scene’s script.
The script was roughly based on the coach pep talk scene I had thought of for my film where the characters learn the stakes of losing in the basketball game.
4th of February
I haven’t really worked on anything major as currently, we have spent most of our time preparing ourselves for the SAC’s and exams through our research and analysis of both Get Out (2018) and The Shining (1980). But I did do more writing in my little diary of all the possible story beats of the short film, from the introduction to the ending of the film, all relating to the protagonists internal and external goals. So far I am really involved and enjoying the depth of my story and I am extremely excited to start filming, but before I do, I need to start my research and production.
7th of February
Today I finally decided to start my research on visual storytelling and dialogue, using examples and inspiration from Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012) as its themes and tones are similar to what I want to construct and direct. I’ve also come to the realisation that I do not want to be the main character as I had previously. Talking with my friend Ryder Blizzard, another media student, I am going to have his older brother play as the main protagonist as he is the correct height and stature I was hoping for my protagonist.
March (SAT Break)
During the month of March, I stopped most progress of my filming and research as I began to reconstruct my narrative. I still wanted it to be a school basketball drama, except the approach I was taking it, I had begun pursuing other ideas, such as I had decided to take the protagonists (Now written as Max) main friend called Sam and had him be deaf. This first presents a opportunity for the narratives storytelling, but secondly presents a problem. Having my actor be deaf as well learn and understand sign language is incredible challenge on its own. During this month, I let all my ideas ruminate and take shape
11th of April
On the 11th of April, my two friends (Aidan Vaughan and Ryder Blizzard) and I helped one another with their projects, behind the camera, be their actors, etc. We managed to all complete three experiments of our own. I decided to tackle voiceovers as I struggle to believe I’ll be able to properly record people’s voices amazing on the day, and so if I manage to record their voice afterwards, I still keep the quality of sound.
I firstly worked on voiceovers as my fourth experiments, overall, I got what I expected, good quality audio but it had proven to me that the dialogue is rough, it sounds wooden and unrealistic, which for my film I want to improve on.
12th of April
Once I arrived back home from school, I instantly began working on editing all of the experiments I shot and proceeded to write up the experiments on Microsoft word detailing all the codes and conventions present, using the rubric given nearing the start of the semester. All of the experiments I have worked has helped refine certain skills, so when I actually begin shooting the short film, I will be well prepared.
13th of April
I spent my time at home, instead of working further on any more experiements for the time being, watched and noted five different short films I listed down during the holidays and picked them apart to be later researched upon. Each were different enough to have something to learn from, but they all in common focused on telling the audience something, to overcome a conflict, a challenge, a person, a disability, etc.
15th of April
Finally, I finalised experiment five, which is all about audio and the way it creates an atmosphere and environment that simultaneously impacts the audiences reading, they feel far more immersed into the world as the music positions them into the inner conflicts of the main character. But besides all my experiments, I decided to prepare my website, which is acting as my portfolio for the SAT as the hope is it will be far more intuitive and engaging for users viewing and marking my folio. Plus, I had already done a folio several times in separate classes, and so I thought designing a website could prove useful in my future.
18th of April
Filmed a shot with my Canon EOS5 as I’ve come to the realisation, my Panasonic Lumix G85 has been stolen and so I had ordered a new Lumix Panasonic, this time, the G95 but it wasn’t going to arrive for another month or so due to shipping and the pandemic, I have been stuck with my old camera with cheap lenses and quality; none the less gets the desired effect.
23rd of April
As we were being taught how to collect research from our audiences, I began writing up all the questions I was going to use to interview people, because at that moment, from what I had learnt during computing analysis, interviews is a perfect data collecting technique for heavy details and qualitative answers, in contrast to a poll or any quiz’s, they collect mostly quantitative results, which is not I’m striving for in my audience interviews.
27th of April
This…this is incredibly aggravating. I spent my time collecting proper recording equipment, my Panasonic Lumix G95, I had everything. But all the clips audios cut out every time it hit 15 seconds into the video, so that accumulates for a week of planning and preparation to absolute nothing. The only thing I could scavenge out of this mess was for experiment 8, lavalier testing, which evidently went poorly.
11th of April
It’s time to complete all of my research. I firstly started by researching and writing down various camera techniques and movements to then further use and develop into my short film. I had already completed some notes on five different short films, talking about story beat act structure, and compared it to a short film which lacks a proper 3-act structure, coined as an ‘experimental’ structure. I then used another short film to research depression within film as Max, the protagonist ends up having symptoms of
depression and suicidal thoughts. And so from my audience research, that was cut because no audio carried over, he told me that if I am going to film and involve depression with my characters, they have to be presented appropriately because you don’t want to misrepresent what it is like to have depression, so I thought it was best to do various searches on depression so I don’t misrepresent it in any fashion.
3rd of May
At this moment, I realised I have a massive deadline to fulfill, everything, including all experiments and research is due on the 5th of May and I still haven’t filmed any of my research as the previous footage I collected had no audio, rendering it completely irrelevant and useless. Because I do not have the proper equipment and individuals for my interviews, I was unable to film anything for today, so I spent most of my day just recorrecting all of my experiments, fixing spelling mistakes and maximising the style of the website/folio itself.
4th of May
Finally, I was given the time to film four various subjects/interviewees in the attempt to collect analytics that can further help support my outcome of my film. It all was going well, the quality of sound, the individuals, the actual research. But all the footage was out of focus, but because I’m a genius, I used this as an effect, like you were watching an 80s crime investigation, adding some grain and warmth to the scene, making it seem if it was shot on film, which shifts the attention of it being out of focus to being a stylised filter.
5th of May
This is where everything went south. Although I had finally set everything up, I had two crashes working early at 6-7am on the website, resetting the entire research section which literally killed my motivation for a while, but thankfully I have kept everything documented and archived on my computer with Microsoft Word, however this still was incredibly annoying, resulting in me having to hand in the work not from my website, but just from the documents on my computer. I will complete everything whenever I have space and time, but currently, I need to focus on educating myself on media’s SAC as I am quite underprepared.
6-7th of May
After working endlessly on my research and experiments, we jump straight into production, starting with each of our statements. Intention, the main premise, narrative being the story and character, style/genre is certain accentuated codes/conventions and the tone, and audience is simply using what we learnt from our audience research and applying it, figuring out our main demographic and target audience.
10-14th of May
I have compiled all three of these days together as its pretty much the same thing, each class, we slowly piece together our statements, through drafting and refining until we have our final statements, we have an entire week of media classes working on each of our statements which made everything that much better, to be able to directly getting help from the teacher whilst working on your SAT. from the 14th, each statement was roughly done, all I really needed to do was to refine and spellcheck them before formatting them into an adobe pdf.
21st of May
I have worked a bit here and there on my statements but nothing major, so I decided not to write them into the diary as I see no worth in a few sentences, but today on the 21st, I made a start on my written documentation, mostly starting with my Treatment and script. I am very proud of my treatment as it truly follows a detailed scene by scene analysis on my short film I intend to make whilst keeping it grounded. The script however I am happy about it, I do struggle with writing dialogue that sounds realistic, that the audience can forget they’re actors and start seeing them as people, not fiction.
24th of May
Although I am proud of what I have achieved with my production, it is going to be a hard four days as I am coming to the realisation how difficult of a feet it is going to be to design each section of the production. I will lose some sleep as I am realising how long it is to draw the storyboard, as it roughly takes me ten minutes to do simply three or less shots in my storyboard and understanding the quantity of shots to come, which in the end equalled up to 85 shots, means it will take a heavy amount of effort, time and consideration. So, I put it on the backburner and finalised both the shot list and call sheets.
26th of May
I’ve only got two days left and both the script and storyboard are proving to be an incredible challenge to my time. The script however easy, I don’t want it to sound wooden, unrealistic, so I want to spend considerable time on having it be more realistic. With the storyboarding, I am scared about the workload, and I am going to have to work each minute before handing it in on the 28th.
27th of May
Everything is gone, almost half of all my storyboard was corrupted, nearing only two more shots two draw down, the computer runs out of battery, rebooting it up realising the application wasn’t properly saved and various parts of the illustrator were missing, it only recovered half of it and this really put me in a bind, I either grind it out overnight, destroying my sleep schedule or let myself rest and continue it, hoping for a simple extension. This was such a step back from all the momentum I have been having and having it be the most difficult section of the production didn’t help.
1st of June
So, I got an extension and coincidentally, everything is to be handed in to today; happily, enough, I was able to hand in all my work, including the storyboard. It was a hard two weeks, but it all paid off with an amazing outcome, I think the storyboard is perfect and I couldn’t be happier with it, completing 20+ pages of straight drawings was more difficult than I originally realised. Next time, I will attempt to now leave everything so last minute.
4th of June
So, it’s the 4th of June and today was meant to be my first shoot, but I will most likely need to amend all the dates I had listed down as it is going to be more difficult than I originally anticipated
Holidays
So, I got an extension and coincidentally, everything is to be handed in to today; happily, enough, I was able to hand in all my work, including the storyboard. It was a hard two weeks, but it all paid off with an amazing outcome, I think the storyboard is perfect and I couldn’t be happier with it, completing 20+ pages of straight drawings was more difficult than I originally realised. Next time, I will attempt to now leave everything so last minute.
18th of July
I haven’t been able to really do much due to the pandemic, but I have set up and prepared dates for filming, both August 6th and 7th, I have emailed my schools head figures to try and attempt to use the day for filming with the entire year 12 cohort. I haven’t got a response back, but I am hoping in the next week it may be confirmed.
