Production Diary

23rd May 2023 - By the end of today, in our first media lesson of the day with Mark, I
was assigned into a group with my peer Oliver, who I will be working with for the rest
of this course in order to complete the film unit of the course. The first task we
completed was creating a mind map of all the qualities of working in a production
crew. Me and Oliver came up with a length list of various qualities of working
together to produce a short film e.g reliability, teamwork etc. Me and Oliver worked
well together, coming up with different ideas and discussed it together. We managed
to finish this task quite quickly. We learned the skills and qualities needed to make a
sufficiency, good production crew. The second task we completed was coming up
with numerous, unique ideas for our short film that we are going to produce such as
the plot, title and other details. I learned how a film is supposed to be planned
through the typing up of information on the film and the characters to feature in it. Me
and Oliver worked well together, sharing our ideas and made a decision on what we
are going to do. Finally, in Lindsey’s lesson we started typing up the synopsis of our
film. Me and Oliver worked well in what we got typed up in the lesson, but struggled
to start it off and got distracted occasionally.

24th May 2023 - By the end of today, Me and Oliver had two tasks to complete. The
first one was to finish off our Treatment task, which we started last lesson, I finished
typing up the beginning of our short film, Oliver typed the middle and briefly started
the end of the film, which I finished off. We also had to include camera shots in our
film synopsis and the classification of the film (age rating). By the end of Fran’s
lesson, me and Oliver had completed the Treatment task, and were ready to start the
BBFC - Film Regulation task where we have to research the BBFC, their role and the
history of the organisation. In Lindsey’s lesson, me and Oliver individually began
typing up our BBFC task, which I hope will be completed before next lesson.

25th May 2023 - By the end of today, in the first media lesson the day, I had my
Treatment task sent back to me by Lindsey to complete amendments such as adding
in more camera shots in order to understand how to record our short film. Later on in
the day, I carried on typing up my BBFC task which I aimed to get completed by the
end of the day so that I it was completed for half-term. Unfortunately I didn’t get the
task finished in time which means that I will have to get the task finished in my own
spare time during the half-term holiday. What went well for me and Oliver today is
that we worked to their best of our abilities as a team, and made considerable
progress on certain tasks such as the Treatment task. What didn’t go well was that
the BBFC task was taking longer for me to complete than I expected it would. This
was because I struggled to understand the task at first, particularly unsure of what
information I needed to include about the BBFC itself, eventually though I began to
understand what I needed to do. I could have worked a little bit faster with the BBFC
task and asked for support off my tutor (Lindsey), earlier so that I would have got
more work done. My role within the group today was t get what outstanding work I
had completed whereas Oliver began the new risk assessments task as he was a
little more ahead than me.

5th June 2023 - Today, I handed in my BBFC task assignment to Lindsey via Google
classroom, and re-handed in my Treatment task following amendments given to me
and Oliver by Lindsey. Me and Oliver also started a new task today, which we have
to work collaboratively together on which is the Shot list task, where we have to log
every single different camera shot that will be used in the short film, detailing the
action of the shot used and the number of takes of that particular shot we use. Me
and Oliver worked really well together today, focused on our different roles in order to
complete the task as quickly as possible. My role was to type up the camera shots
for the beginning of the film, Oliver began typing up he ending shots and we are
planning to meet at the middle of the film. I wish we had go more finished today
which is what we could have done better, but we worked as hard as we could. We
are hoping to complete the shot list task by the end of tommorow (Tuesday).

6th June 2023 - Today, in Mark’s lesson at the start of the day, myself and Oliver
continued to type up our shot list, working as a team which is what went well for us
as I did the first half of the shot list which was the beginning of the short film and the
start of the middle. Oliver completed the second half of shot list which was the rest of
the middle and the ending of the film. Although we took some time to finish this task,
which is what didn’t go as well, we still managed to get the shot list completed by the
last media lesson we had today which was our lesson with Lindsey. Afterwards, me
and Oliver briefly started our storyboard task where we began drawing each
individual shot that will take place in our film.

7th June 2023 - Today, myself and Oliver continued working on our storyboard task,
working through the drawings where we decided that I would draw the first 50 shots
of the short film and Oliver would draw the other 50, totalling 100 shots in total. I tried
to get as many drawings completed as possible. Unfortunately I didn’t get the
majority of my drawings finished, which is what I could have done better but both me
and Oliver tried our best to get as much of the storyboard completed as possible.

8th June 2023 - In the media lessons we had today, me and Oliver continued to
work through our storyboard task, getting as many drawings done in order of our
shot list as fast as possible. We spent Fran and Mark’s lessons to do this, but we had
that much to finish that we unfortunately still did not get it complete before the end of
the day. Me and Oliver could have worked a bit faster to get more done in time. I
decided that I would get my storyboard drawings finished over the weekend.

12th June 2023 - Today, I returned to college from the weekend, where I managed
to complete the remaining drawings for the storyboard task that I had outstanding to
complete. During LIndsey’s lesson, my role was to complete my legal and ethical
task, where I had to apply every single piece of legislation which will impact my short
film, and the rules I will have to abide by. Oliver’s task was to complete a risk
assessment for the entire college. After I finished my legal and ethical task, I printed
out a Model Release Form, which I will have Rachel to sign in the morning.

13th June 2023 - No Media lessons took place today, as I had to attend a Careers
workshop, which took the majority of the day to do. However, I did get Rachel to sign
my model release form which allowed her to appear in our short film.

14th June 2023 - Today, me and Oliver started filming today, we managed to film the
first few shots of our film but did not get as many done as we would have liked. What
didn’t go as well was that myself and Oliver struggled to use the camera equipment
at first which meant we were much slower getting shots complete, however, we were
given some help by a tutor and student on how to use the video camera, tripod and
track equipment which helped me develop my knowledge of the equipment and the
skill of using it. What did go well was that me and Oliver did try our very best to
understand the equipment as best we could.

15th June 2023 - Today, we continued filming our short film, getting many more
shots completed than we did yesterday which meant we steadily speeded up filming
our short film. What didn’t go as well was that we probably could have got more
shots taken if we had maaintained our fast pace of filming towards the end of the
day. Things that I would have done differently, would be that we got more shots
done, but also that me and Oliver communicated with each other better, in order to
get more things done and less doubt of when we were using the equipment. I
continued to develop my skills with the video camera equipment.

19th June 2023 - Today, me and Oliver had our third day of filming, where we
continued to make a considerable amount of progress, getting over half of the shots
complete over a small number of hours. We only had a handful of shots left to
complete which we unfortunately could not get finished due to running out of time
filming for the day. Things I would like to have done differently would be to have less
doubt when recording the film, only having a few takes per shot to reduce the
amount of excess time spent re-recording the shots. We are very close to finishing
filming at this point.

20th June 2023 - Today, me and Oliver finally finished filming for our short film, we
have both worked really hard to get this complete as fast as possible. What didn’t go
well today, was that by the time we had finished filming, we had ran out of time to
start the next task, but we will start it tomorrow instead. I continued to improve my
skill in handling the video camera equipment and communicating with Oliver as part
of a team.

21st June 2023 - Today, me and Oliver began our logging sheet task, where we had
to log every single shot that will be seen in our final, edited version of of our short
film, including details e.g file number, short description and type of edit we will use.
We managed to complete the logging sheet by the middle of the day, ready to start
the editing decision list task after our lunch break, which we both have to complete
individually from now on. Things I would have done differently is that I would have
worked faster in order to get more of the editing decision list finished.

22nd June 2023 - Today, I managed to complete my editing decision list, which is
what I did well today as I worked conmsistently to get it finished in order to begin
editing my short film. What didn’t go as well as that I sometimes found it difficult to
sometimes navigate where camera shots were stored on the computer which I
needed in order to write the shots in the order I am going to edit them. By the end of
the day, I was finally able to begin editing where I was able to briefly start importing
the shots of my film in order where the image provided here, showcases me using
the the Adobe Premier Pro editing software, cutting the unnecessary footage from
my shots that i felt I didn’t need to meet the target of film being 3 minutes. I did these
by using the marking in and out tool, which can be seen in the top left hand side of
the image.

23rd June 2023 - Today, was a full day of editing my short film, using Adobe Premier
Pro editing software to import all of my footage recorded for my short film. Again, I
used all the tools needed to intensively edit my shots by using the marking and razor
tools to cut out unnecessary footage, the arrow tool to move all my footage along the
timeline where I used the ripple delete option seen in the bottom right hand corner of
this image which moves along the footage after cutting footage or speeding it up
using the speed duration tool. What went well was that I became familiar with all the
the tools I needed to use on Premier Pro and became more skilled with it as I was
consistently practising using it. Things I could have done differently was that I could
have done my editing faster than I was.
26th June 2023 - Today I completed editing my film. I spent time cutting shots to
make them shorter to keep up the momentum of the narrative. I had Lindsey check
my short film, and she said that various parts of my film audio sounded extremely
distorted and hard to hear which made me have to alter my sound levels which is
demonstrated here in this image below. What worked well was that Ii tried really hard
to get all my editing complete, which I did.
27th June 2023 - I began today by asking the tutor and other students to watch my
short film. They gave feedback verbally, both positive and negative. I then typed this
up and thought carefully about whether I agreed or not with them. I explained how I
could improve the short film next time. Then I worked on my Personal Development
Plan. I researched the type of entry level job I would want to work in and thought
about what I would need to do to progress working in film. Finally I added details to
my SWOT focussing on skills and knowledge acquired during the film unit especially
the technical skills using camera equipment and editing software and also in
collaborating with other people.