A Christmas Carol 

 Tuesday 24th September - 

Today we are making the final edits to our media CV's and preparing any required work needed to apply for the crew roles for our TV movie project 'A Christmas Carol'. We are all going to have an interview with Kelly to apply for the role we want on set.

I am going to be applying for 3 roles - 

• Production Manager

The production manager makes sure that the shoot runs to schedule, they make sure that health and safety laws are being adhered too and are overall in charge of the on set shoot.

• 1st Assistant Director 

The 1st AD's main duties are assisting the director, coordinating the production activity and supervising the cast and crew. They also help with production paperwork such as shooting schedules and production reports.

• Marketing Manager

The responsibility of the marketing manager is to create marketing initiatives for the production to create an interest and audience for the final product. They will make campaigns to attract the audience and sell the product. 

Thursday 26th September - 

Today we got told our job roles for the production, we all got jobs that were based on our interests on and off set, our experience on past projects and our interviews. 

Based on all this I got given the following three roles -

• Production Co-ordinator
• 1st Assistant Director
• Marketing Manager

I am very happy to have received these roles as is it want I want to do within the production and very close to what I actually do in a real job role. This is good as I will be getting great experience co-ordinating the cast and crew.

Research on Job roles -

Matthew Hooton

Research for Production Co-ordinator

I have been given the role of production coordinator on our project of A Christmas Carol, this is exciting as this is our biggest project yet and I will have to control a cast and crew of over 50 people.

My key roles and responsibilities when taking on this role will be supervising the production and keeping it in line with the budget and schedule. I will be responsible for organising the logistics of the production such as hiring crew members, getting kit organised and making the production schedule.

I have done this on previous projects before but never to the scale that is going to be required for this production. I will have to research more about the production co-ordinator role to make sure that I know what it is going to entail and what skills I am going to have to use to make sure the production runs smoothly.

 Research of period dramas –

To make sure that our TV movie looks right and Asif it was in the Victorian era we first need to research what life was like in the Victorian era. We must also make sure that the theme runs throughout the film and there aren’t points in it where it feels like the time period may have changed.

For example, we will need to think about what they wore, how they spoke, locations and how they looked. And many other aspects that will really set the theme in place.

We can also take a look at other period dramas that have been made and see how they make sure you can tell what time period the film is set in. For example, downton Abby

Monday 30th September - 

Today was our first look at the script we were using for the production, as a production group we read through it and made notes of things that we were going to change, add or remove. We made notes of ideas that we had while reading through like locations for scenes and costumes for characters. We then decided what scenes we were going to keep and what to remove, after a final few tweaks we had our shooting script ready for filming.

This was exciting for us as this was going to be our biggest project yet, we had never done such a large on-location period drama shoot before.

Tuesday 1st October - 

Now that we had our script ready it was now time to cast for the film. We made a list of characters that we needed actors to play and we started to plan auditions.

 This project was going to utilize all our different departments in college, this was made up of us (film and tv), makeup for production arts and acting for stage and screen. This meant that we had to all work together all the time to make the project as professional as we could. 

We made a Facebook group with everyone from each department in it so that we all could communicate easily and share important details and updates such as on-set photos and call sheets for the cast and crew.

We set a date for the auditions and told the actors so they could prepare for their audition.

Monday 7th October - 

Today we held the auditions for a Christmas carol, we set up our green room for the actors to come in one by one and audition for their chosen part. 

We had a designated casting team who were in charge of the auditions and casting the roles of the characters for the film, this was made up of me, laura, Anya, ollie, tom and two first years.






Below are the actor's auditions:

Thursday 10th October - 

Today myself and the casting team sat down and decided on a cast for the film, we watched the actors auditions again and recalled the ones that we liked. We brought them back to the green room and asked them to go through another scene of their choice so that we could see them preform more. 

We then decided as a team who should get what role and play each character, this was really hard as multiple people went for the same role and obviously we could only give the role to one person. We eventually came to a joint decision on all roles and had a finished cast list for the film.

We then typed up the final cast list and posted it on the Facebook group for the actors to see what role they had been given. 

One of the biggest difficulties we had when casting was casting the main role of scrooge, as we were limited for numbers of male actors we had to seriously think about the casting of this character. Scrooge had always been a character played by a male as the character is an old man who is set in his ways of hating Christmas. As we couldn't find a suitable male actor to play the role we started to look at the female actors as a possibility of playing the role, this was a big move to make as Scrooge had never been played by a female actor before. But we thought this was a good thing as it would make our adaptation of the film very different and unique and not just another remake of a classic film.

We relooked at the female actors again and their audition tapes, and decided on an actor to play the part. This was going to be Kate Whittaker. 

Monday 14th October - 
It was now time to make a start on the intense amount of production planning that we had to do, from finding locations, scheduling shoots, to planning shots and set design. This was our biggest project yet and it included a lot of cast a crew. This meant that everything had to be thoroughly planned out as we didn't have time to mess anything up and behind our proposed transmission date.  As the production coordinator, I oversaw each department's planning and where they were up to. I made sure that everyone had something to do and made each department a to-do list with deadlines on it so that we could get everything planned ready for shooting the first scenes. 

Here is a screenshot of the to-do lists that I made for each department to keep them on track with their tasks and deadlines.

Today the marketing team which was made up of me and Eden made social media accounts on Facebook and Instagram to bring some attention to the film and try and get an audience to come to watch it at the premiere.  This also kept followers of the accounts up to date with the production and what we were doing on and off set.

Paperwork and production planning continued from here... 

One big thing I had to do as the production co-ordinator was scheduling the shooting days for cast and crew. This was going to be quite difficult as this was our biggest cast and crew ever and everyone needed to be in different places at different times to film different scenes. 

We gave ourselves a time scale of 3 weeks of shooting in order to be ready and have enough time to edit the film in time for our transmission date. It was now my job with the help of the production manager (ollie) and of course kelly to schedule all the scenes.

After a few days of moving things around, I had finally made a first draft of the shooting schedule. 

I posted this in the production Facebook group for all cast and crew to see.

Thursday 24th October -
Today was our last full day of production planning for the film before we start to shoot.
I made sure that we had all the paperwork ready for shooting such as call sheets for the first day and risk assessments.

Monday 4th November - 
Today was our first official day of filming, our first day was at Preston Park in Stockton-on-tees, we choose this location as it is a museum and they have a life-sized full victorian street filled with shops and victorian things which is just what we needed to make the film look as if it is set in that time.

I had scheduled to start shooting the first scene at about half 9 in the morning but due to crew not turning up as quick as we thought they would and equipment not being readily available we did not start filming until about 11:30am, this was something that we knew we had to fix and not let happen again as we only had limited time at this location and a lot of the scenes were planned to be filmed here.
Once we got started, things went well and we shot most of the scenes that we had planned to shoot and pushed back the ones we didn't to the next time that we were going to be shooting at the park. 

For me, this was a big day as I was in control of a very large cast and crew at a scale of which I had never really been before, I believe that I did a good job and made sure that everyone knew what they were doing and that making sure that we were being efficient with our time.

Overall the day went well and it was a good start to this major project.

Tuesday 5th November  -

Today was the second day of filming, we only had one scene planned but it was going to be a tricky one to do as we had to get the ghost to disappear in the mirror. We tried a couple of different ways but finally choose a way to do it which involved a bit of editing in post-production, the day went well and the actor's makeup looked great!








Wednesday 6th November - 

This day we shot the graveyard scene, this was an important scene as it was on location at an actual graveyard, this meant that all cast and crew needed to be very professional and respectful, our location manager laura got us permission to film here and it turned out being a really good location and looking great on camera.

Unfortunately, the shoot didn't go as smoothly as we wanted it to due to the weather, it started to rain very heavily but we needed to shoot the scene as we had booked to use this location and didn't have time to come back to do it again.

We decided to keep going and power through the rain even though we got very wet, we thought that the rain added to the ominous feel of the scene. We had to use our jackets and jumpers to keep the cameras and actors' makeup dry.

 Overall the scene did go okay and we got it shot despite the weather conditions.

    

Here are some on-set photos from our time shooting the graveyard scene..

Thursday 7th November -
Today we headed back to Preston park, but this time we were filming in the wood area.

We shot two scenes for the Ghost of Christmas Past. One was where we get to see Scrooge as a child, the other was Present Scrooge watching her separation with her fiancé.
These scenes went well, but when we went to film the next scene, we found that we did not have one of the costumes for the scene. 

Ollie and Conrad drove to yarm to find something we could use so that we didn't have to stop filming, and they came back with a replacement ASAP. Despite our problem solving, when they got back to the park it started pouring down with rain. 
Since we were on our last scene, we decided to postpone filming as we had no shelter since the cafe had closed and it would be far too muddy to go back down to the river to film and it would also be too dark to film as it would mess the continuity up as we had filmed part of the scene earlier in the day.

Monday 11th November -

Today was our second time at Preston park museum, today was a big day as we had planned to film 5 scenes at the park, 
the day went well but we did have a few little problems such as locations changing which required us to rethink the set design as we now had to deal with things such as legal signage and wires for electric devices. 

Today we also experimented with special effects on set by using iron wool and spinning it to make sparks fly off, we were going to use this as a transition for the ghost of Christmas present,

 

Tuesday 12th November - 

As a very last minute decision, we decided not to shoot on this day due to complications with the locations and actors, instead, we used this time to work on the production paperwork doing things such as making a draft of the film poster and planning the rest of the week's shoots.

Wednesday 13th November -

Today we returned to Preston Park to film some more scenes, this time we used the bandstand as our location as it looked great on camera.

As this was a public area we had the trouble of people walking past and the noise of surrounding areas such as people walking dogs and cars. We worked through this and shot the scenes that we needed, 

This day was different to others when shooting as we needed scrooge to look old in some scenes and then young and in her 'prime of life' in other scenes, this meant that we had to cross film scenes, we filmed all the parts where she needed her aging makeup on first and then we got the makeup department to quickly take it off so that she looked young for the other half of the scenes. 

Thursday 14th November - 

On this day we went to film various scenes at tom guests house, he is a teacher of the actors at college, we decided to use his house as it was built in the victorian era and still has a very Victorian look.

Me and Eden drove there and brought the equipment, when we arrived we went in and started to set up the kit and dressing the sets, when filming the shoot went well, a few actors forgot a couple of their lines so more than one take was required. 

Monday 18th November - 

Today was our final day at Preston Park, this meant that we had too work hard and make sure that we got every scene shot that we needed too as we were not able to come back after this day. All the cast and crew were here early ready to shoot. This day we had quite a big scene to shoot, this was the ballroom scene where Fezziwig is having a party for all his staff, this scene involved a lot of cast so we had to be quick and efficient to get it done in time, we used special pieces of equipment such as the crane and Steadicam to make the shots look as smooth and as nice as possible. 

Thursday 21st November - 

This was our day to reshoot the graveyard scene. We had to swap camera operators for this shoot as Thomas couldn't make it, so Eden took over. Although it took a while to film, it went fairly smoothly apart from the fact that big LED lights came on towards the end of the shoot which we had to cover up with our coats so that the continuity wasn't ruined.

Monday 2nd December -

Today the team filmed at Eaglescliffe village hall, I wasn't there for this shoot due to having something else booked, so I left the team in charge of the shoot. They reported back to me and told me that everything had gone okay but they were in a little bit of a rush due to getting to the location later than scheduled. 

Once we had completed this shoot day, we were now on our way to nearly completing the production stage of our Christmas carol production!

Post-Production -

Now that we had shot all of our scenes, it was now time to do all the post-production, this included editing all the scenes together, creating marketing and getting ready for the premier.

Editing was going to be tricky as we had so much footage and different scenes to put together. We came up with the idea of giving each person in our class one or two scenes to edit together so that way one person wasn't stuck with the humongous task of editing all the footage together by themselves. 

This worked out well as the edit got completed a lot faster than it would of it someone did it by themselves. 

As the production coordinator, I took charge of keeping a track of who was editing what scene so that scenes didn't get editing twice and that we didn't miss out any scenes.

Next up was the premiere, our time to showcase our finished project to an audience.

We decided to showcase the film at ARC cinema so that an audience, cast, and crew could all come to one place to watch the very first showing of our version of a Christmas carol.

The premiere went well and the audience enjoyed the film, this was great as we had all worked so hard to make it look good and be finished in time for a premiere. 

Overall I believe this whole project went very well, this was our biggest project to-date and It took months of planning + filming to create and we were all pleased with the finished product, one of the most important things that we took away from this project is how much we all learned. Learning about our job roles and what they entail, working as a huge production team, working with lots of actors and keeping to schedule when shooting so many scenes in many different locations. We also learnt a lot about shooting period dramas and how much research it actually takes to get it right and make it accurate for your chosen time period. 

UFILMS: A CHRISTMAS CAROL:

 

DOCUMENTARY - ANNIE & SOCIAL MEDIA

After struggling to find an idea for a documentary, me and another member of my course (Anya Lillie) joined forced and decided to work together on one big documentary. This was SRC's ANNIE: The Documentary. 

We set out to make a documentary on the crazy world of musical theatre as they put on their Christmas production of Annie: The musical here at college. We followed the process of what it takes for students to put on a professional production in a professional theater.
From the initial idea, to auditioning over 140 children to the final show night and everything in between.

Even though Annie was going to be a very large project, we decided to make a second documentary to make sure that we had enough evidence to support our assignment as me and Anya were now working together.

For this me and Anya came up with the idea of making a documentary on social media, we were going to show different generations views on it and how it effects people.
_________________________________________________________________________________

ANNIE: The Documentary

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwFnCuY6puk

We started with a plan of what we wanted to capture throughout the process and what we wanted the finished doc to show, this was going to be the process the students go through to put on a professional show in a professional theater.

For the first week me and Anya spoke with Sara, who is the creative director of performing arts at college. She told us a rough timescale of their production process so that we could work with it and make it work around our other projects but more importantly so that we didn't miss the chance to capture important parts of the process.

This was not going to be a quick project, it takes months to plan and produce a professional show and if we were going to show this process properly then it was going to take months of filming and editing. To help us we then made a production schedule so that we had a plan of what we needed to do in the upcoming months of production. 

We started with coming up with story lines that we could use in the production, we choose to follow the following points:- 

• Finding our Annie
• Auditions
• Student Auditions
• Rehearsals 
• Moving to ARC
• Tour of ARC
• Opening Night
• Closing Night

We thought by following these points it would give our documentary a structure to follow instead of just a bunch of random clips of different parts of the production.

Now that we had done the production paperwork, it was now time to start getting some footage and capturing some important moments. 

We started with getting a team ready and heading out to film the first set of the children's auditions. 
and the process went on we made sure that we had a crew to help us get the footage we needed to create a storyline, this included interviews with staff working on Annie, the students in the show, behind the scenes roles and the Annie's playing the role. 

We captured important events in the process such as the roles being announced and the musical theatre team moving over to ARC, a professional theatre.

Once they had moved over to ARC, their big rehearsals and shows started. We created a filming rota so the crew could take turns filming the shows and performances. Once the shows came to an end so did the story for our documentary. 

Now that the musical theatre team had finished their production, we now had a storyline to start editing our documentary together. As we looked through the footage we saw that we had a good amount of shots and interviews. 

I made a start on the edit while Anya worked on the social media documentary, the edit was going to take a long time as there were hundreds of hours of footage because it was such a big production. 

As I went along with the edit, I tried to create an understandable and entertaining storyline for the audience. I believe I did this well and the finished edit has a stong and entertaining storyline. 

The finished edit ended up being around 40 minutes long, which is longer than we thought it was going to be but we are more than happy for it to be this long as it includes a lot of content. Of which includes, interviews with the cast and crew, a tour of the ARC from students, rehearsals and montages.
_________________________________________________________________________

Social Media Documentary 

Me and Anya wanted to make this documentary as its something both of us are interested in, we wanted to show people the statistics of how dangerous social media can be but also how much people actually use it. 

We started by doing research on social media usage, its dangers but also what people like about it and why they use it.

We filmed interviews with people of various ages to see how their age changed their view on social media and how they use it. This was made up of interviews from James,Laura, Dannellia, Ethan and anyas grandad.

Year 1 reflection and moving forward...

What did you enjoy the most last year?
Last year I enjoyed all the projects that we did throughout the year but the one I enjoyed the most was short film production, this was because we got to create our own film on an idea that we thought of ourselves. This meant that I got to create a film that was all my idea, this made it really fun to create as I got to choose what i wanted to do and not do it from a brief.

 What are you most proud of from last year?
The thing that I am most proud of has got to be my final major project, my short film "UNFOLLOWED". I know it could of been better but I am really happy with how it turned out overall. It showed how much i had learnt in my first year of film production. I tried to make something that had never been done before and give it a unique style through the shots and editing style, I think this turned out well.

What was your biggest lesson of the year?
My biggest lesson of the year from year 1 was that planning is the most important part of the production, as when everything is planned well everything runs much smoother on set.
A production would be impossible to do if things such as actors and crew weren't planned beforehand.

What would you change about your 1st year of learning?
I don't think I would change anything about my first year of learning as I think I learnt a lot about film & TV in one year. I had fun working on all the different units that we did.


What would be your dream project this year?
This year my dream project would be to do another short film but make it longer and a bigger production. 

What would be your dream role in a crew this year?
This year my dream role would be to be a 1st assistant director or an editor as these are the roles that I enjoy the most.

What are your initial thoughts on your final independent idea for this year?
My initial thoughts are either to do another short film or do something do like make a music video.

Short Film Production - Assignment Tasks

Task 1: Research

As I will be making a short film, I first need to research the codes and conventions of short film and also analyse an existing short film to learn what makes a short film, a short film.

Before I make my short film I must make sure that I understand and include the codes and conventions of short films in my short film so that an audience can recognize the final product as a short film. One of the main codes and conventions of short film is obviously the length, a short film is short, usually being around 10 minutes long they cant be longer than around 50 minutes because they will then be classed as a 'feature' length film. I have took this into consideration for my film as it is going to be around 8 minutes in length. Another code and convention of a short film is the characters, in short films they usually stick to around 2-3 characters, in mine there will be 3 main characters, Chloe, Amy and Eve. Because of the lack of time, short films don't have enough time to create deep background stories or history for the characters so short films keep the amount of characters low in order for the audience to be able to relate to the characters in a small amount of time. 
Short films also nearly always include a twist in the story line, the reason for this is to make the film interesting as it is so short because without a twist the film would be boring as it would be to short and have no action in it. This relates to my film as the big twist is that the stalker has been watching Chloe the whole time while she has been posting online and then he suddenly strikes at the very last minute bringing a big sense of shock to the audience. 

https://www.shortoftheweek.com/2019/05/09/two-sisters-2/

To see the codes and conventions in action I decided to watch the short film 'Two Sisters' by Keola Racela, this is a short film about two sisters who plan to escape from their home country of North Korea. In the end, they don't make it across the river and the older sister forces the younger sister to drink the 'magic water' which is actually poison as she would rather her be dead than be taken by the soldiers. I think this is a great short film as it has such a deep storyline shown in just 16 minutes, which is a code and convention of short film. The film has some beautiful shots in it which make the audience feel like they are really part of the story. The deep, dramatic and all too real storyline of the film really engages the audience into the film. The code and convention of characters in shot film are also used, there is only too main characters who are the main two girls who are trying to escape. I believe the writer of this film has chosen to do this as it would be too confusing to have more than two main characters in a 16 minute film. By watching this short film you can see that the codes and conventions of short film were taken into consideration when creating it.
I hope for my short film to have the same effect. 

Another thing that I needed to research in order to create my short film was social media and its effects. To do this I watched videos on what it's like to be a social media influencer.
I learned that there is this underlying huge pressure to constantly be interacting with fans and showing what you're doing. I am going to portray this in my short film by having my main girl character Chloe be constantly obsessed with updating her social media and posting online. I also learnt when researching how easy it is for people to see what your up to online, this is the underlying message throughout my short film which is 'you never really know who's watching'. 

This chosen media product has inspired me to make sure to use the codes and conventions of short film in my own short film so that I can create the dramatic effect that I want the film to give the audience.

I will need to use and develop my skills when making this film as it is so different to anything I have ever made before, I will need to make sure that I follow the codes and conventions in order for my film to recognized as a short film. 


Task 6: Evaluation
Now with the main stages of the production of my film done, I can now look back and evaluate what went well and what I would improve about the whole project.

The aim of this assignment was to create a short film. I have done this in the form of my short film 'UNFOLLOWED', 

Overall, I am very happy with the final product and how it turned out. I am also happy with how I performed my role as director and how my crew worked with me. From starting out as just an idea in my head, I have planned out and produced this 8-minute short film. 

One of the first things I had to do was pitch my idea to an audience to see if my idea would be picked, this went better than I thought it was going too and I believe that I clearly spoke about my idea and what I wanted to do with it. I had a detailed powerpoint that I went through for the audience so that they could find out what it was going to take to make my idea a reality, for example; makeup requirements, locations, and actors.

It was now time for the production of the film. Everything went quite smoothly throughout the production, from pre-production planning to shooting on location. This was something that I wasn't expecting as things that you can just never predict can go wrong when filming. We shot everything that we planned to on all scheduled shooting days and never missed scenes. We stuck to the plan of 4 filming days too. We didn't have to deal with any major issues while filming this time around compared to previous projects. I think that my planning was a factor in this. I liked to have everything fully planned out before we did it. This was done by doing things like research to find out what places looked the best on camera, how we would get there and how long it would take to film. I also checked with actors their availability and transport means before I casted them in the film. This was a better decision than in previous projects as I knew what days actors would be free to film and how they would get to set before creating my shooting schedule, this created a much easier schedule to follow as we knew people would be free. Another example of my planning is shown in our location shoot in Newcastle, I made sure to plan everything from travel to what type of shots I wanted to get while we were there. This made for a much easier shoot every time as me and the crew knew where, when and how we were going to film the shots we needed for each scene. 

My experience from working on previous projects such as Christmas ad and sit-com production before my final major project has really helped me when creating my short film. It has made me a lot more confident with the whole production of creating a film. From filling in paperwork to being on set with actors making them reshoot scene after scene to get the perfect take. 

I have learnt lots of new skills while working on this project and have developed my existing skills such as directing. I have learned many things from the master and coverage filming technique, using unique shot styles such as screen recordings, to new editing techniques which I had never used before. Because of this I now feel much more confident at making films compared to what I did at the start of the project. This was one of the most fun productions to work on with my crew yet because of all of the new things we did, things like flying the drone to get a nice high shot to going to a location a lot further away than we had ever been before to make the feel of the film more realistic to the audience. All of these things give us more experience for our next project.

There is areas of this project that I would improve on for next time, this would be things like having a finished script ready for the auditions so that they could read more than just one of the scenes. 

UNFOLLOWED - SHORT FILM PRODUCTION DIARY 

5th March - 

For our final major project (FMP) we have been given the task of creating a short film, as a class we all individually had to think of an idea for a short film. We had to plan this idea and create a pitch for it to be able to sell it to an audience for it to be picked to be made. We all had to present these pitches in front of the other members of the course and Kelly. Kelly decided who's short films were going to go ahead and be made.

I spent time thinking of an idea, this took longer than expected as I couldn't think of an idea. Knowing that I wanted my idea to involve an aspect of social media, I eventually came up with the idea of 'UNFOLLOWED' this was going to be a short film about a young girl in college who is an Instagram star on the rise, she balances the everyday life of being a teenager in college, studying, work, friendships and posting to her thousands of followers.  Every day she is gaining more and more followers and is obsessed with showing what she is doing with her day live online. She is constantly going live to her followers showing them what she is up too and more importantly where she is. Little does she know that in that list of thousands of followers there is a stalker that has been watching her every move and is about to strike. 

I then went ahead and made a PowerPoint to pitch to the audience, it explained key points to the audience so that they understood what the storyline was and what it would take to make the short film. 

I pitched my idea to the audience and Kelly and they liked it, they thought it was a very unique idea and something that hadn't been done much before. I believe I pitched the idea well and spoke through the points clearly so that the audience could picture my idea in their heads. 

After we had all pitched our ideas and powerpoints to the audience which included Kelly, we were then told that instead of just a couple of the ideas being picked, we should all go away and make our ideas into short films. This was good news as everyone gets to make their own idea a reality but also getting the chance to work on other peoples ideas too if they want. This meant that all 8 ideas were going to be made into short films. 

Because all short film ideas were going to be made, we all had to pick our crew of who we wanted working on our short films, for 'UNFOLLOWED' I decided on the following people for the following roles. 

Matthew Hooton (me) - Director
Anya Lillie - 1st Assistant Director
Eden Hall & Laura Hailes - Camera Ops and Lighting Team
Production Managers - Anya Lillie & Matthew Hooton
Editor - Matthew Hooton
Location Manager - Laura Hailes
Art Director - Laura Hailes 
Casting Director - Anya Lillie & Matthew Hooton
Sound Manager - Laura Hailes 

8th March - 

As my crew now knew their roles on my production it was now time to get actors to play the parts of the characters, I had scripted three characters into my film so I needed three actors to play them.

I put out a casting call on our production planning facebook group so that the actors could comment if they were interested and I could let them know details about auditioning for the parts. 

The post got a much better response than I was expecting, as 7 people said that they would be interested in auditioning for the parts. I contacted them all and told them the details of the auditions that me and my casting director Anya Lillie were holding in the green room.

I told them all the times of when they should come and audition.

18th March - 

This was the day that me and Anya held our auditions for our short films, we both decided to have a joint casting session as were both casting directors for each other's films which meant we got to see the actors audition for not only our own films but also each other's films so that we could decide together who would be good for each role of each film. 

We had a time slot in the green room of 2pm - 3pm, in this time we had to get all of our actors in one by one and make them run through an audition which consisted of a performance of a page from our scripts and also acting out a fake live stream on their phones. 

Me and Anya both took notes of what we thought of the actor's auditions while they performed so that we could look back later and make our decisions. We also noted down important details about each actor such as their availability and travel arrangements to set.

 

19th March - 

Today was the first day of starting the pre-production paper work for my production folder.

Before I did that me and Anya sat and had a meeting about the cast for each others films, we reviewed the footage from the auditions and put it together in premiere pro. We then decided on who we wanted to play the roles for our films. For unfollowed this was:-

Jade Todd - Chloe

Bethany Wynne - Amy

Shanie Mcclune - Eve

I picked these actors as they performed the best in the auditions and I believe they fit the roles the best. They also had good availability and transport plans. This turned out to be a great choice as the actors were great and worked extremely well with me and the team. They came to every planned shoot and location, were always on time and always made sure to learn their lines the night before the shoot. This was great as it made production much easier.

Now that I had a cast and crew ready I could get on with the pre-production paperwork and start to schedule shooting days.

20th March - 
Today was another day of production planning and scheduling, on this day I also decided to hold a production meeting with my team and the makeup artists that were going to be working on 'unfollowed'. We went through important topics like what makeup I wanted doing on the characters for each scene and what days we were thinking about filming on. 

We made a list of things that we wanted to talk about as a team in the meeting, all of these topics got talked about and we made notes about them. 

We started with talking about the work we had done so far, this was things like casting and production paperwork. We then moved onto different topics such as the script and when it was going to be ready to give to the cast and crew so they can go through it and learn which scenes they are involved in and what makeup needed doing for them.

While the makeup artists were there I discussed what I wanted the main character, Chloe, to look like when she gets attacked. I described how I wanted her to have blood on her head and bruising around it. They said that this would be possible which was great. I also told them how I wanted the other girls to have 'Instagram' glam makeup with bright colours on their eyes. 


This meeting went well and we discussed many things in order to get ready for filming.


21st March - 
On this day I started to schedule shooting times for the cast and crew of unfollowed. This was difficult as I had to try and fit filming times in with peoples schedules and the times that actors and crew were free, I used my skills from previous projects such as sit-com production when I had to schedule shooting times for a much larger crew. This helped me on this project as I knew I had to watch out for things such as lessons that crew may have to go too such as maths and english. And I also took into consideration times of traveling to the locations. 
This was important because on this project we were going to locations that were further than we had even taken a cast too before. For example, I had to plan to set off for the bus at 9:20AM on the day we were going to Newcastle as I knew it would take about 45 minutes to get there which took time out of the amount of time we had free to film while we were there.

Below is the first draft of the schedule for unfollowed (grey cards).

27th March - 
Today was the first day of filming for my short film 'unfollowed'. 

On this day we had scheduled to shoot scene 1, this is the scene where the main character Chloe wakes up in her bed and starts to get ready to go to college. While doing her makeup Chloe goes on twitter on her laptop and tweets about what she is going to do with her day.

I decided that I was going to film this scene at my house as I needed a bedroom that looked like it belonged to a teenager, for this I used my sister's bedroom. I brought the crew to my house and they set up to film in the room. 

We did a few takes of the scene to make sure that it was right and how I wanted it to look like, so every take we moved the camera a little and made Jade do it differently so that it was perfect. 

We managed to film this scene quite quickly and got finished in around an hour and a half. 
Once we packed up all the equipment it was a wrap on the first day of filming for my film.

28th March - 
Today I filmed for the first time with Laura for Anya's short film called 'Names to Numbers',
her film is about getting stuck in a system where you feel like you can't do the job you want because all your life you've been told its too 'hard' or you'll never make it. Her film shows that you can break free from the system and do whatever you want to do in life and that you don't have to be stuck with a job that you hate.

My role is 1st assistant director and camera op on 'Names to Numbers'.

Anya asked me and Laura to get one of the first shots from the bridge above the LRC in college, We used a tripod to get the camera to face down to capture the two actors reading in the LRC, we very slowly zoomed into the actors to create a nice zooming shot. We also got some shots of the actors sat at the table reading by sitting opposite them on the table and using a mid-shot. 

Me and Laura then got approached by a member of staff from the LRC who asked us if we could stop filming because we hadn't given the LRC any notice of us filming days before. They said that people in the LRC may not want to be seen in the film even though that the shot we had only included our actors. They said it was okay this time but if we ever want to film there again a notice would be required a few days before so they can put signs up saying that filming would be in progress throughout the LRC. So we quickly got the last shots that we needed and moved out the LRC. 

We had now got the shots that Anya's wanted for the beginning of her film, so we decided to move on to filming my short film. I had planned to shoot 3 scenes on this day, making it our longest shooting day yet.

We then headed outside of college near the river so that we could film scene 2 of 'unfollowed', Eden was supposed to be on camera to film this scene but didn't come as she had a driving lesson, because of this I asked Laura if she could help out by being on camera for this scene. This turned out really well as Laura's shots turned out looking really nice and not shakey. 
As Laura was now on camera I didn't have anyone to do the boom mic, I had to go back into college and ask if anyone was free to help me out, Tom and Ollie kindly offered to help for a bit. As I now had people to film the scene we got on with shooting it, shooting went smoothly and we only had to do a few takes. We got two different angles using multi-camera to make the scene more interesting. The scene only took around 30 minutes to film, once we finished we headed inside college to shoot the next scene. 

The next scene was scene 3, this is when the three girls are in class and are having a lesson on the dangers of social media. I had Josh from the second year be the teacher for this scene. For this scene, I needed an empty classroom for the actors to sit and be in their 'lesson', I needed a room big enough for the equipment and the crew to fit in. This was a struggle and took a while as all the rooms we tried to use were either in use by other people or were locked. We eventually found a room that was free and big enough for us to film in.
Next time I need to pick a room and make sure it's free before we go out to film. Eden was still not back yet so I had Laura be on camera again. I had my other crew member Anya be an extra in the scene so that it wasn't just the three actors sat around the table. This was the first scene where I had planned to use a screen recording of Jade's phone in the scene to show that she's on her phone in class. I did this and it turned out looking good in the edit. 


We did around 5-6 takes of this scene to make sure the actors were saying the right lines and leaving enough time between them for the camera angles to change. The shoot went well and we completed the scene in around an hour. 

After this scene, we all had a break and went to get some food as we had been filming all day. We had one last scheduled scene to film which was scene 4, this scene is in the cafeteria at college where Eve is asking why Chloe is doing what she is doing on Instagram. 

After we had all got food, Anya & Laura had to leave. This left just me and Eden to film the last scene over in SRC 2. We decided that we would just use a camera each and shoot the scene together with Jade and Shanie. We then realized that we needed someone to do the boom mic so Hashim kindly offered to help us as he wasn't busy. After we framed the camera to how we wanted them and the actors went through their lines we noticed that Laura had the SD cards on her from the last scene. Laura was on her way to the bus stop when I called her and asked if she had the SD cards, she said she did and was sorry for taking them without realizing, me and Eden then had to quickly run all the way to near the bus stop to get the cards. Laura had put them on the side of the street where no one could find them and so she could get to her bus stop in time to catch her bus. Me and Eden eventually found the SD cards in the grass and took them back to college to get on with filming the last scene of the day.

The last scene took a lot longer than we thought it was going to as Shanie kept forgetting her lines, the area in SRC 2 where we were filming was also quite busy so we had to wait until it got a little more quiet to film so that we didn't have people talking and walking around in the background. 

We eventually got all the shots that we needed for this scene, that meant it was finally a wrap on this long day of filming. 

1st April - 
Today me and the crew shot the final scene of 'unfollowed'. This is the scene where Chloe's stalker finally strikes and attacks her, she is left alone dead as the camera pans further and further away. 

We had to shoot this scene in two parts, the first part was up until the part in the scene where Chloe lifts her phone back up from looking around after hearing footsteps behind her, and then the second part where she is laid on the floor dead after being attacked by the stalker. The reason for splitting the scene up into different shooting times was because of the makeup requirements for this scene. For the second part we needed the SFX makeup on Chloe, so we had to film the first part of the scene first and then go back to college for Jade to get the SFX makeup put on as it wouldn't of looked right if she already had a wound on her head before she gets attacked. 

One thing that was different in this scene was the use of the drone, when first planning this scene back when writing the script I had the idea of using the drone to create a shot of Chloe layed on the ground while the drone slowly goes further and further up into the sky.

As I haven't been taught how to use the drone yet I asked Olivia from the second year if she would help me out and fly the drone for me to get the shot, Olivia was great and said, of course she would. She did a few takes to make sure I liked what she shot and to make sure the footage wasn't too shaky from the slight wind.

This shot ended up looking amazing and is one of my favorite shots in the short film.

4th April - 
Today was the day we shot in Newcastle for 'Unfollowed', this was the furthest place we had ever gone to film something yet. Because of this, we had to plan it properly as it wouldn't be easy to go all the way back to get shots. I started by planning dates that all the cast and crew would be free to go up there to film, I then had to think about transport for the crew to get there. I originally planned on getting the train there as it would only take about half an hour and only cost around £13 for tickets there and back, I was about to tell everyone to order their tickets until Laura suggested that we should get the X10 bus there as she had done it before and it was much cheaper at only £2 a ticket. I asked if she could check out times of when it came to our bus stop and how long it takes. She kindly did this for me and found out that the bus came every hour and takes around 50 minutes to get to Newcastle, as the price was much better we decided as a team that we would just get the bus there. 

I then had to plan what places in Newcastle we wanted to film in, Kelly gave me a list of places that she thought would look great on camera so we checked a few of them out while we were there. One of these places was the stacks in Newcastle which is where we ended up filming the scene where Chloe goes live before arriving late to meeting her friends.

On this day Me, Laura, Anya & Eden and my actors arrived at college early so that we could get the equipment packed and ready to take on the bus. We then waited outside college at the bus stop for the bus to arrive. We caught the bus and were now on our way to Newcastle, the bus only took about an hour to get there which wasn't bad at all. 

We arrived at Eldon Square shopping centre and we thought that the outside of the building was a good place to shoot as it looked like a really nice background on camera. Unfortunately, it started to rain quite heavily so we were getting wet and we didn't want the camera equipment to get damaged. So we made the decision to get a bus to the metrocentre where we would be able to film inside the stores and get the montage shots of the girls shopping. 
We went back to the bus station and found a bus that went there, we ended up getting there in about 20 mins. As soon as we got there we started to get shots inside the stores to use for the montage. We thought that the security in the stores may not be happy if we went around filming on a big camera so we decided that we would only use the proper camera for shots outside the stores and instead use an iPhone to record in the stores as it is not noticeable. These shots turned out looking great! When shooting in the stores I got Jade to pretend she was vlogging her shopping day with her friends on her phone, I got her to use my phone while it was screen recording on snapchat so that I could use the footage to make it look like she is going 'live' to her followers. This made for a great effect in the edit. 

It took around two hours to get the montage shots done and after that, we went for some food as we were all hungry. After this, we got on with filming the scenes with dialogue. 

We then headed outside of the metrocentre to shoot the scene where Amy & Eve are waiting for Chloe, this scene was tricky to shoot as people kept walking past the camera when we were filming and a lot of people were outside talking which meant that the audio wasn't great as you couldn't hear what the actors were saying. After a few attemps, we eventually got the shot without anyone walking past the camera or talking near the mic. 

We got the last few shots filmed around the streets of Newcastle and then we headed back to college to take the equipment back, it was now around 5pm and we could finally call it a day. 

I would say this was a very productive and fun day filming for unfollowed. We got all the scenes filmed that we wanted and filming went overall smoothly.

I could now say it was officially a wrap on the set of 'Unfollowed'.

24th April -

On this day I started the post production editing of 'Unfollowed', I imported all the footage from all our shoots into one folder and then imported it all into adobe premiere pro.

I started by editing scene one with the footage I had, each scene I went through the footage and cut it together with audio and music and also colour graded it so that it looked nicer.

I tired using techniques that I had never used before in order to challenge myself, these were things such as a montage sequence which went with the beat of the music and also using the masters and coverage technique to get a multi cam style in my film. This is where you film the whole scene three times and then cut in and out of the different angles in the edit. 

29th April -

Today I finished editing all the footage together and exported a 1st draft of my film. I was very happy with how the first draft turned out as it looked how I wanted it to look and the shots and music went well together. 

I did notice some things that I did want to change and improve in the next draft which I noted down and changed. These were things like shots being on screen for just a tad too long or audio not syncing up with the mouths of actors.

I showed the first draft to my tutors Kelly and Danniella and they both loved it but made a list of a few little things that I should change to make it better. 

8th May - 

I looked over these notes and made the changes to my edit to improve. 

Kelly told me that one of the scenes in my short film wasn't as good quality as all the others. She said that the best option would be to reshoot the scene with the actors and use the new footage in place of the scene, only if I was happy with that and wanted to do it. I agreed with this and noticed when watching it back that the footage isn't in focus and the audio is out of sync a little bit. I didn't like that the quality of this scene wasn't as good as the others and I thought it stood out and let the film down. I have contacted my actors Jade and Shanie who were in this scene and asked them if they would be free to reshoot this scene, they were fine with this and said that Thursday 16th May would be best to redo it. 

AUDIENCE FEEDBACK - 

This day was also the day that we did our first screening of our films to the group, we all took turns to show a first draft of our films on the big screen. While screening each film two people per film were asked to fill out audience viewing report and feedback sheets which have feedback questions that they can answer and then give back to the person who made the film so they can see what the audience like and don't like and see where to improve for their next edit or film. I screened my finished film to the class and had two people fill out the feedback sheets. This was Eden & Ollie.

As you can see from the image above, I got some great feedback from my audience. They commented on many different parts of the short film from cinematography to the directing. 

General evaluation of production:

My viewers responded to this question with responses such as, 'Great tempo and direction of characters' and 'Music suits the film really well', this is nice to hear as I know that they think that the film runs well and has a clear story line.

Cinematography:

The audience said that some 'great and creative shots' were used, which is good to hear as I know that they like how the film looks to the audience. Ollie also mentioned that some shots were a little bit over exposed at times in the film. I agree with this comment and hope to fix and improve this when I re shoot one of my scenes on the 16th.

Directing:

As this was my role on set of 'Unfollowed' I was interested in seeing what the audience thought of the directing through the film as they were not there with me on set. The audience said that the directing of the film was 'well done' and that you could tell that the actors were being told how to to act when saying certain lines of the script.

Editing:

As I made some very unique editing styles in my film It was nice to see that the audience liked the edit. Ollie's feedback reports say that the edit was 'Amazing' while Eden's says that edit was also great but small things could be done to make it even better. 

Both feedback reports said that films pace moved 'just right' which is good as I thought that it maybe moved to quickly bit i'm happy to see that the audience think that it moves at just the right pace to make it dramatic without it being rushed.

I will take all this feedback into consideration when doing the next edit of my short film in order to improve it and make it better.

9th May -

As a very last minute request, Tom Rymer has asked me to be on his crew for his short film as he has been asked to make one with only around 2 weeks to complete it. I said I would be happy to be apart of the crew as I knew Tom needed people to help him out.