Production diary

4th March: Day one of shooting

We began shooting at a house on location at an agreed time. We had difficulties with filming; the first was mise-en-scene. The room was plain white apart from some bright orange curtains which would prove distracting for an audience. The second was our equipment, we didn’t have a charger. Because we had no charger it limited us in terms of time in which to shoot the opening, we didn’t have time to set up shots correctly as we were constantly aware of running out of battery. We also didn’t have the necessary piece of equipment to attach the video camera to the tripod, this made shots extremely shaky. We had difficulty shooting shot number 25; this shot was the camera panning around the three characters with the camera in the centre. The shot was difficult to shoot as it was difficult to keep in focus and keep all characters in the frame, as the actors are different heights. It was difficult to keep the camera steady in shot 24, which involves moving the camera up with the actor as she stands up from the floor. After watching the footage back, we decided to re-shoot because the problems with the camera and mise-on-scene had greatly affected the film. We also agreed to film in a class room, for a more secure and recognisable environment.

10th March: day two of shooting

We positioned the characters around the room in correlation to our story board with slight changes to fit in with the new location of the school class room. We had them all facing down focusing on the unseen dead body in the room, which added to the sense of suspense. We started filming Max first, starting with his ECU's, CU's and then moved onto over the shoulder shots. Then we filmed Lydia, starting with her CU's and MCU's, then over the shoulder shots, then shots with Max and Lydia both in the frame. We then shot Paige shots. Finally, we shot the panning shot, learning from our previous experience we tilted the camera downwards when approaching the shortest actor, to get her roughly in the same position in the frame as the other two actors. The last shot was the exterior shot of Sarah peering in through the window. We positioned the actor at an angle so she wouldn't be seen from inside the classroom.

Editing.

Firstly we captured the footage from the camera onto the editing programme, and then cut the chosen shots from a selection of takes, down to the lengths then we previously arranged. We cut out any unnecessary noises, dialogue or unwanted facial expressions that were possible to get rid of. We then rearranged the order of the shots into the order of the storyboard. Then, using the "title" tool, we wrote out the credits and placed them into the correct order on the timeline.