Diary Logs

Diary Entry 1
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I began to complete research for my short film. At the beginning of the week me and my
other peers where given the option to pick what unit we wanted to take in A2. I chose
the short film topic, I chose this because I had picked up lots of skills from my first year
on filming and editing which I will transfer into my short film. This week I spent most of
my time studying and watching short films. I proceeded to make notes on these short
films and picked out my 4 favourites for further analysis.
This week I re-watched the 4 short films that I have chosen to further study. I made
notes on the short films using the R.A.I.L.I.N.G media terms. The first film I chose to
analyse was PROXIMITY a short film written by Ryan Connelly. This film had the genre
action so I made sure that my other short films were not of this genre to not make all the
analysis the same. By analysis these shorts I picked up on ideas for my own short, I
recorded these ideas down for future reference when I begin my planning stage.

Diary entry 2
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This week I completed 2 more short film analysis. The short films I used were Signs
and Sight I used my known knowledge and the use of R.A.I.L.I.N.G to analyse these
two short films. These two shorts films where a different genres to give me a wide
variety when I am analysing. I took into full account of every aspect of the short films
and created extra notes if needed. At the end of the week I began to write my research
into a major film company, I selected warner bros to be the company of choice.
This week I had added more depth to my research for the major film company by looking
through the history of warner bros and researching how it became the company it is
today. Once I had finished my research on warner I began to start my research on an
independent film company. The company I chose for this was Film London: Londons
calling. I began research on this by finding out what the companys main directive was
and which films/shorts they have released. I also began researching into different
camera angles and what effect they created for a viewer. I provided examples form films
for each camera angle. These will help me for when I created my storyboard for my film.

Diary Entry 3
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I continued my research into the independent film company, Film London. I studied the
company by gathering information from the website and interviews with important
figures in the company on YouTube. This company was a lot harder to find information on
due to it being a smaller independent company. Once I had a sufficient amount of
information on some media institutes I directed my focus towards how the film industry
has developed. I created a time line which explained all of the key events that happened
during the film industries timeline, this including events like the first coloured movie.
I felt confident that I had gained enough information from secondary sources to begin to
create my own. I created a questionnaire using survey monkey which I sent out to a
large quantity of participants. These questions where focused on gaining information for
my short film. The questions asked about genre and other conventions. Whilst I was
waiting for my information from the survey to be returned I focused on creating VOX
POX. This provided me with primary source answers to more questions I had created.

Once I asked a respectable amount of participants all with different genders and ages I
turned the footage into a short video containing the questions and all of my participants
answers so I could view them all as one solid piece of footage. Once I had completed this
I analysed the answers provided during the VOX POX. By the time I completed this I
gained enough participants for my survey. I turned the answers provided into graphs to
use as comparisons against my VOX POX. The researched I gained from this tasked help
shape how I will plan my short film.

Diary Entry 4
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Keeping my research on audience I documented how pearl and dean organise their
audiences. Peal and dean is one of the UKs most known advertising contactor within
cinema. Peal and Dean backs a huge amount of cinemas across the UK and represent
throughout the UK including Showcases, Movie houses and AMC theatres. Since Pearl
and invest in a wide range of films from kids films to gritty action. The pearl and dean
site also provided graphs for their 15+, Family and art house films. This really helped
with my audience research I noticed I had to tailor my film to a specific audience as it
would be almost impossible to create a film for every type of audience member.
When researching into audiences I found a large amount of websites kept referencing
certain media theories. So I thought it would be beneficial to create a fact files for these
theorists so I could implement them into my product and use their theories to help me
tell the story how I am planning. This included me documenting how Vladimir Propp used
old fairy tales to break the main charters within a story into different sections.

Diary Entry 5
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To give my film the correct genre and appeal I needed to research into different
conventions to help me during planning of my short. I first created a montage explaining
all of the conventions to do with science fiction. I created my own voiceover for the
montage and explained how each convention related to sci-fi. By completing this
montage I gained valuable skills in editing as well which will help me when I create the
edit for my short film. As well as creating a montage I also created an interactive
presentation for the conventions of action which also helped as the sub-genre for my
short film will be action. I will revert back to these two tasks during my production stage
as I will need to choose either to follow or ignore these conventions. For my final piece of
audience research I crated my ideal target audience member. I created this character
using a free online generator.

Diary Entry 6
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Now that I have completed all of the research for my short film I have started my
planning for my short film. The first stage of planning was to create 3 initial ideas. I
created 3 as I didnt want to limit my imagination to just one idea. I explained the plot
line for all 3 of my ideas including the characters bios and props. I then though about
which would I liked the most and which one I could realistically create in the time frame I
was given. I chose to continue with The Last Drop as my final idea. This is an
action/thriller.

I was now ready to start my script work, I began creating my first draft which I kept
showing my teacher until it was to a professional level. I then uploaded the script onto
my blogger and started on my story board. I printed out a template to use for my story
board and following the direction is set myself in the script I drew each shot for my film
with a small amount of information explaining what is going on in the scene and what
camera shot I was using. I also added the dialogue to this template.
As well as the storyboard I crated a story arc to show a simple outline of the direction of
the plot, this helped me explain the theory of Todorov story arc.

Diary Entry 7
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Sound is a very important aspect of my short film so I pre planned what sound I was
going to sue before filming. I created an interactive presentation using Prezi to explain
the difference between diegetic and non-diegetic sound. I then uploaded this
presentation onto my blogger to show my thought process for the sound of my short
film.
During this same week I created my shot list. I needed this to help me on set to plan out
each shot and what equipment, actors and props I needed for each shoot. Without this
structure I would be confused when filming for what I need. With this I also created a
shooting schedule which has all the dates I will film each scene in.
I also created an interactive presentation which explained the costumes and props I had
chosen for my short film. I went into detail about how each costume represents each
character. I picked the correct costume so the audience could have an understanding of
who the character was just by his clothing.

Diary Entry 8
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The next task I completed was the creation of the location report and the risk
assessment. The location report was needed as it showed a flat plan of the area and how
each shot will fit within this location. The location report also provided information such
as if it had access to electricity sockets and how far it was from a medical centre. The
risk assessment was a necessity as I needed to be prepared for any situation which
involves injury to the crew or damage to the equipment. Once I completed this task I
had finished all of my planning and was ready to start filming for my short film.

Diary Entry 9
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I completed filming all of my footage for my short

Diary Entry 10
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I then returned all of the footage and placed it into premiere. The first step was to create
a rough cut of my film which was only placing the footage in the correct order with minor
cuts to the actual film. Once I was happy with the layout of my footage I began to
complete my final edit which focused more on transition between clips and the control of
the audio.
When the final edit was completed I turned attention towards my opening titles. These
opening titles were created through after effects and I used a tutorial to help me create
them as I was previously very inexperienced with after effects. The tutorial showed me
how to make an ink in water opening which is styled in a homage to old bond films. I

added my own production company and actors/ directors names to the opening and
then exported the clip and added it to the opening of my short film final edit.
Once I completed this fully I uploaded it to YouTube and then embedded it onto blogger.
My short film research, planning and final production is now complete.

Diary entry 11
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Now that I have completed my short film I turned focus onto the research for my
ancillary tasks. The first research task was to analysis 3 products and explain what
conventions they follow. I picked 3 posters and 3 magazine reviews and broke then down
and picked out every detail. I also used this analysis as inspiration for my own ideas,
which I will be creating at a later date through the research stage.
I then created a collage for both ancillary tasks using posters and magazine which I want
to base my own ideas on. For the poster I picked posters which has their main
protagonists face as the main image. For my magazine I picked ideas which had one
large main image and then columns on texts to the side.

Diary Entry 12
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Before creating my final idea I created 3 initial ideas which I created a basic outline for. I
described the key features and conventions for these products. I did this for both poster
and magazine. This gave me 3 options to pick from when creating my final design. I
already have an idea which one I want to continue with but I will re-look over the ones I
have before making a choice.
After creating my initial ideas I picked which one I wanted to continue with and found a
professional inspiration which I annotated and created a design around.

Diary Entry 13
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I needed to get some more audience research before I could create my final poster and
magazine so I created another questionnaire for both my poster and magazine. I sent
this to the same people that I used for my short film questionnaire. The answers I got
back I turned into graphs and analysed the results. The answers I got back influenced
my final poster and short film.
I needed further audience research so I created VOX POX again for both my poster and
my magazine. I asked different questions form my questionnaire. The answers I gained
form the VOX POX were more in-depth than the ones I got from my questionnaire.
I then created a Poster convention checklist, this was used to list all of the conventions
for my poster so I could chose to either follow these conventions or break them. I chose
to follow most of them as I wanted my poster to be apparent that it was for a thriller.

Diary Entry 14
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Now that I had all of the research I needed I could begin to describe my Final poster idea
and my final magazine idea.
Once I had what plan I wanted to create for both my poster and my magazine I started
the production process by creating a flat plan. The use of a flat plan is to layout all of the
areas within my posters and magazines to make sure that all my information will fit. This
is only a very basic structure and will be improved upon in the actual production
process. Without this provided structure my final design would be messy and lack in the
detail, I would also miss out conventions.

Diary Entry 15

Now that Ive finished all of my research and planning I created both of my final poster
and magazines using Photoshop. Once completed I uploaded these to blogger.

Diary Entry 16
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With all of my productions finished I turned to start my evaluations. I was given 4

questions to answer. These questions would focus on my final products and included
such topics as audience and technologies. I made sure I answered all 4 questions in a
different style other than written text. I did this to add some uniqueness to my portfolio.
1) In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and
conventions of real media products?
2) How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
3) What have you learned from your audience feedback?
4) How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and
evaluation stages?