Production Diary

Week 1-2 

• We learnt about the conventions of the opening of a film. This helped us come up with ideas for our own film opening. For example, we looked at Productions logos, Titles, Establishing the genre, locations and key characters, and themes etc

Week 2-3

• We learnt about genre signifiers, and what is used to tell the audience what genre that the film is within the first 2 minutes. For example we spoke about the 'Chicken and Egg' dilemma. Commonly recognised formal elements and common features of a specific genre need to be identified 

Week 3-4

• We learnt about the analysis of a still image and what to look for when analysing a still image. For example, using CLAMPS (Costume, Lighting, Actors, Make-up, Props) to analyse a still image. We also learnt about camera work and camera angles, for example, close up, mid shot, long shot, high and low angles etc

Week 4-5

• We was introduced to the preliminary task. To complete this, we had to make a film opening following a certain set of criteria to make this successful. We had add the following shots: Match-on-action, Shot/reverse shot and the 180 degree rule. Also the character had to be shot opening a door, crossing a room and sitting on a chair opposite another character. 

Week 6-8 

• We were set a task to re-create the opening scene to the film 'Juno'. First we had to watch the opening, and create a storyboard of all the shots involved, we then was given a week to film and edit the piece. Finding the location for the filming had to be very specific due to the actual opening of Juno being very precise.

Week 8-9

• This week we was told to get into groups and to start to plan our final opening. We started by brainstorming genres and then looking at previous film openings to gather ideas for what we would put into our film opening. We then looked back at our theory work to find some what genre signifiers go into a action/thriller film. We learnt about how hard it was to pick a location and to gain permission to film there. We learnt from our preliminary task that location is everything in a film.

Week 9-10

• This week we looked at film openings again and we started to evaluate them. We also looked at script writing. As a group, we understood more about script writing due to our preliminary task and therefore we spent more time writing the script and tweaking parts to make it the  best we could. We also started to look at title sequences and how important they were to make the film what it is.

Week 10

• We went on a school trip to BFI - the British Film Institute where we learnt about the importance of film openings. We also watched successful film openings for example, Catch Me If You Can. The main speaker told us the downfalls of film openings and what we should avoid. This was extremely helpful as we then knew what we shouldn't do. This helped us in the later weeks when it came to producing our film opening.

Week 11

• This week we done all the production work. We made the storyboard and planned all the shots. We also started to make the production logo. We did this using Adobe After Effects. At first this was very hard for us to get the grip of as Adobe After Effects have many things that could go wrong with the slightest slip up.

Week 12

• This week we told photos of our main actors as we wanted to put photos of the characters in the house. This will therefore make the film opening a lot more realistic as the audience will see this and build a picture of who our main character is. We also made a shot list and a storyboard so that we could see what shots to film and when to film them. This made filming so much easier as we were much more organised. We learnt this from our preliminary task as we were very unprepared whilst filming it!

Week 13 

• This week we started filming. We spent the whole of this week filming. We filmed this whole week as we had the chance to change any shots that we didn't like. We also filmed many different shots from different angles so that we had too many shots just in case some got lost or we wanted a different perspective. Towards the end of the week, we edited the final piece and put it together with our production logo.

Week 14

• This week we got all the feedback from our teacher. She told us what we could improve and how we would gain more marks. We then made these improvements and then we started the evaluation questions!