Diary Entries

Diary Entry: 28/09/2017

Within this lessons, me and my media class watched the film 'The Others' where we gathered up notes whilst watching the film for different conventions and techniques. This included the basic ideas such as the setting, iconography and themes within the text. The main ideologies in the film were the dull, gloomy weather and abandoned house. I also took down important notes such as how the director implemented fear within his film with such little props and editing, he did this by playing with the darkness as that was the main aspect involved in the film. This was very helpful for me as due to the low-budget I will have to make my film, I was able to grasp some ideas as to how I can create fear and make it look realistic at the same time.

Diary Entry: 10/10/2017

Whilst planning, I had to make sure everything was my final idea so I had to take longer than I thought planning the production. After taking pictures for my location the first set of photographs were in Salsey forest and at an abandoned house near where I live. I decided after those photographs that they did not suit the direction my film was going as even though they were conventional, for example the abandoned house is very conventional it did not go with my film idea which had elements on terrorism and stalking. So, as a group within our lesson we went to Buckinghamshire and I decided to retake the pictures and go to the Stowe area as well as a forest within Buckingham, where the antagonist could easily hide behind trees and follow the protagonist into the forest. For my production I did not need to make permission forms which was easier for me, as all the filming would be done outside of school hours so all the crew and the actors/actresses would just need to inform their parents when they leave the house.

Diary Entry 13/10/17

Within my lesson today, it was important that to finalise our film idea with a clear perspective on what our target audience wanted we needed to create a questionnaire. This questionnaire will be given to my target audience, with relevant questions related to making my advanced film production as conventional as possible. After seeing the results, I will then have to put them into a table so I can get a more clear understanding, which will allow me to know exactly what people like and dislike.

Diary Entry 15/10/17

After creating my first storyboard, it had scenes that were taken place within the school building which I will not be able to do. This is because, the people within my crew have different lessons at different times so it would be difficult. Also, the scenes within the school were not very conventional to the horror genre so I decided to redo the storyboard and some elements within my film production and plan and decide to only video them in school uniform in the forest or at my house.

Diary Entry 19/10/17

I decided that within my free period in school I was going to watch a series of short horror films, to look at the conventional camera angles as that aspect is something I tend to struggle within, especially last year when I was trying to make my foundation film production as conventional as possible. By doing this I was able to advance my camera schools and understand that the more conventional shots are more point of view, 1/3 (which is something I did not use last year), low angle and a pan shot.

Diary Entry 22/11/17

After attempting to my film my film production within the forest, it was very complicated and did not work efficiently. My final idea was to film at my house to had elements of moral panic as a house is very personal to the audience and everyone else, it was also very easy to film. As well as this I decided to film in an empty parking lot as I believe this would be very scary and I would use this location as flashbacks within the film.