ENTITY

 Production diary for the: 02/06/2022

Here is the link to my Final film Entity: Entity

On the 2nd of June 2022 I started shooting my film, at the start of the day I made sure the actors knew where they were going in terms of location which was ( Ropner Park Stockton-on-Tees TS18 4EF) this was not the original location, the original location was the cafe in SRC, (Stockton Riverside College)  we were unable to film at the location due to filming days being in the half term, this meant the cafe'  would not be open and so that is why I had to change the location. Because I had to change location this also meant that I had to change the script in a way that it could still work in a different location, while changing the script I realised that in order for this part of the script to work I had to make it work with the rest of the script, for example I completely changed the first part of the script so that it would make the second scene connect. While editing this part of the script I eventually changed the ending too. I did this so that it fit with the rest of the film that I changed so that the plot will make sense. 

 We started filming the first scene with Trinity Brown and La Toya Borg (Jane & Izzy) this scene consists of characters Jane and Izzy talking in the park on a tree until Jane is met with an unbearable and piercing headache. She puts her hands on her head in pain but Izzy doesn't notice this and carries on talking, Jane looks ahead of her and there she saw a woman in all black staring at her, the longer Jane stares her headache worsens, Jane kept staring because she couldn't keep her eyes off the mysterious looking woman until the woman walks of and out of shot. Filming this scene went well and turned out how I imagined it, after getting the master shot of the conversation with Jane and Izzy we decided to get a few other shots so that in the edit there was a few options to cut in and out too, to make this shot a bit more interesting visually.

 The next shot is of Magen James (The woman) stood staring at Jane in the distance, for this shot we decided it would be done from behind Jane and zoomed in to Magen to give it a more intense feeling even though she's at such a distance she still manages to be intense and scary. 

 After we got that shot we packed up the equipment and left to film the next shot with La Toya Borg and Magen James ( Jane & The woman) in this shot Jane is walking out of the park putting her earphones in and suddenly the woman appears in front of Jane, as soon as Jane lays her eyes on the woman she faints. This shot is the shot that I had to think about how I was going to connect both the park scene and shot and the woods scene. 

Next we moved locations to (Oxbridge Ave, Stockton-on-Tees TS18 4LE) when we arrived at the location we unpacked our gear and started to film, but we quickly realised that what we wanted to film was proving to be difficult as we had costume issues which meant we could not correctly portray the demon i wanted to be portrayed. After a conversation with my crew we came to the conclusion that we would adapt to the current situation and make it work, this was because we were racing against the clock with actors who had to leave set because people were waiting on them. Also if we didn't film this day and chose to film another day the actors were unable to until the week after which wasn't ideal because that would go over our editing week, so instead we came up with some ideas and the one that stuck was the one we filmed which was that Martin Cunningham who plays a man that would wait in the woods for people who the the woman brought there,  his job is to keep them in the woods for the demon to eventually get them. 

We started filming and the first shot is of La Toya Borg, who plays Jane, wakes up against a tree with her phone and earphones on the ground next to her which still had the same song she was listening too before she was took by the woman. Jane looks around the woods aimlessly trying to figure out where she is, Jane gets up and walks of still looking around, while Martin watches her and begins to follow her. The next shot is Jane walking through the woods and she hears a branch snap behind her, she sees the man and begins to sprint, the man chases after Jane until the edge of the treeline where he stops because he cannot leave that part of the woods. Jane carries on running through the woods not turning around to see that the man is no longer chasing her anymore. This then cuts to a shot of Jane running and barging into a stranger walking through the woods, the stranger asks if she's okay this makes Jane realise that the man is no longer chasing after her anymore, but she  carries on running out of the woods anyway to make sure she was definitely safe an away from the man.

The last and final shot is of the stranger who Jane bumped into on the way out of the woods going into the woods. The stranger had no idea what Jane was running from or to, but he didn't take any notice and wandered into the woods where the man would come behind the stranger and jump on him, claiming him as his substitute victim.

In conclusion I think that filming went well, except from a few ups and downs which caused a few issues which were eventually resolved within the same day. The actors were amazing and patient while we worked through certain issues and did an all round good job!, i'd also like to thank Casey Weedall for coming down to help with the crew side of things and giving constructive criticism throughout the day and also for co-editing the film itself.

Research 

For research I looked at other horror movies and projects which gave me inspiration for my final film a few examples of this are; colour grading, shot types and angles these individual techniques give horror films especially that scare factor when edited right. Films such as The Conjuring, A Quite Place and Hereditary all were my inspirations for my film and so many more!

A few examples of what I wanted my film to look like are linked here:

A Quiet Place clip

Conjuring 2 clip

I researched famous paranormal cases like Ed and Lorraine Warren's case of Arne Johnson, the case of Arne Johnson is about a man who murdered his landlord Alan Bono, but  because there was proof of demonic possession of Arne when the murder occurred he got a reduced sentence of 5 years. This case shook the entirety of The United States on November 24th 1981, and throughout the years even to this day, it's known as one of the most famous paranormal case ever recorded. The Conjuring "The devil made me do it" made a massive $202 million USD at the box office, the film cost 39 million USD to make, meaning this film made a staggering profit. On rotten tomatoes, the audience scored the film 83%, this is a pretty good score for a film which means the audience who watched this film the majority enjoyed.

Pre Production Paperwork

(ALL SIGNED ON ACTUAL SHEET)

Context

The context of the film is that it's about a girl called Jane who is sat with her friend Izzy on a tree until she is confronted by an intense headache which causes her to hold her head in pain, she then sits up and looks up into the distance and sees a woman in all black stood in front of a tree, Jane stares at the woman until eventually the woman walks away and disappears amongst the trees. Jane is left frightened and confused as to what she had just seen and says to her friend that she is leaving and tells Izzy that she has English homework to do which Izzy replied with, "we don't have... English homework" after this happens everything starts to go downhill. The story starts to unfold when a mysterious woman is seen by Jane which ends up with Jane falling backwards and waking up in an unknown eerie woods. Not knowing where she is Jane looks around aimlessly in fear and confusion as to where she is and how she got there.

Problem solving

On set I had problems with time, this is because actors had to leave set because of problems with transport home,  in the end we still filmed what we needed for the day by using the time I had wisely and quickly getting shots filmed in time before the actors left. Another problem that occurred on set was that while filming in the park a few kids came up to the tree and started climbing it, this caused us to have to wait for them to go to carry on, but when we started to film again after they left more kids came and interrupted the shot, so in the end I decided it would be best to change the angle of the shot so that if any kids came again they wouldn't be in frame and we could just carry on filming while they still climbed the tree, this meant that if we had to do retakes then no one would interrupt the shot and that we wouldn't be wasting anymore time waiting for them to leave again.

Practical skills

During my time filming this project I think that I have progressed with my camerawork skills, for example in this project I took in to account all the minor intricacies, such as the head room between the actors and the top of the frame, head room is quite significant and useful in film, as it can leave you space in the edit to put black bars in to make it look more cinematic and visually appealing. 

 Another skill I think that i have got better and look out for while filming is lighting, by making sure the lighting in my film was at a good enough standard it made it look better for the audience and viewers who watch. While editing I also hue/saturated all clips to make the lighting matched up with all the other clips and making it all look that little more cinematic.

I also think that I have got better at directing, this is because with all the issues that I faced shooting this film I was still able to make sure my actors knew what they were supposed to do and how to do it, in the long run this helped massively because if the actors didn't know what they were doing and didn't know exactly how to do it then this would have shown in the finished product, but fortunately it worked out and everything I wanted to film on shooting day was filmed and I was happy with how it all turned out.

Evaluation

At the start of planning for this project I had a completely different idea and concept, but due to a lot of unsolvable issues I had to scrap most of it and start again from scratch, because of my poor time management after finding out I was unable to use the locations I had scheduled to film at and after actors dropped out of the project giving me less and less time to plan and reschedule, I had the day before shooting day to rethink the project through and change everything that needed to be changed in order for me to still film and carry on working on this project. After figuring everything out I was ready to film, on the 2nd of June 2022, shoot day! the day started of good everyone met at filming location one which was Ropner Park in Stockton-on-Tees, firstly I talked to my cast and crew about what was going to happen on the day filming wise. We then walked to our first filming spot in the park, we saw a tree which we thought would be a great place to film, i'm glad that we chose to film the first shot here because in the edit the shot looked amazing. But while filming this shot we ran into a few issues with members of the public interrupting the shot, to fix this we decided to move the angle of the shot a little to the right so that the shot wouldn't get interrupted again, we then proceeded film and got the shot filmed, the actors La Toya and Trinity Brown were great and I was happy with how it looked.We then packed up the camera equipment and moved on to the next spot in the park still and got a quick shot of Jane (La Toya Borg) putting her earphones in and seeing the eerie looking woman played by Magen James who was a delight to work with, she played this character very well. She had seen in the last shot, Jane is then knocked unconscious and falls backwards into a cut, ater we got this shot we we packed up the camera equipment again and walked straight to the next location were we started to film the woods scene. When we arrived at the last location of the day we were already on a tight time frame to get the shots we needed, we moved quickly but not to much to the point were we were rushing, but we spent the time we had wisely, we started of with a shot of Jane (La Toya Borg) waking up on the floor up against a tree, she looks around aimlessly in fear and confusion, getting this shot was split into two days because I didn't get the shot of La Toya's pov shot of her looking around the woods before she gets up, but we did get the shots of when she gets up of the ground and wanders of into the woods, I thought that these shots were very cinematic once put together with the pov shots which I got a couple days later, we also filmed the scene with Martin Cunningham and La Toya Borg, this scene is where Jane is chased by a man who waits for his victims in the woods to arrive before chasing them and attacking them to then take to the demon, this scene was very spontaneous as this was because the original idea of Sam Luke to play the demon didn't go to plan as the costume didn't resemble a demon, so instead I had the idea of Sam Luke playing a stranger who is bumped into by La Toya Borg (Jane) while running from the man chasing her, Jane has now made the stranger the new victim to the man in the woods, these shots were fun to film as they are some of the most significant shots in the film relating to the story. 

Presentation

Here are some screenshots of my presentation/pitch and proposal for my film, we all took it in turns to read and show our presentations in front of the class. This was to show our ideas for our films and to get feedback which we can then take into consideration and use it to make our films better.

My proposal

Feedback

I took feedback from my teachers and peers and used that feedback to improve my film and to make it look as good as it can before finally editing it. For example my time management wasn't great and Kane made me aware of this when he looked at my footage noticing how little I had filmed, this showed me that if I had more time and planned out my filming day more I would of been able to get more shots done and this issue would of been solved. I think time management was a big issue amongst this film, and I hope to get better at it. Other than time management I also got feedback from my peers about some issues with the script, for example in the first scene with La Toya Borg and Trinity Brown where they are both sitting on a tree talking right before the audio starts to muffle, Trinity who plays Izzy is just talking quite litrally nonsense, I didn't think at the time of shooting that this would be as a big problem because I was thinking the audio was going to be muffled, but while editing I realised that I should of gave Trinity a little dialogue just so it made it look like Izzy and Jane were having a real conversation and it made sense to the situation, I have acknowledegd this issue and I will take it and make sure in future projects that this doesn't happen again.

Reflection

 Looking back on this project I have understood that not everything went to plan, but even though this happened I now know what to improve on next time. I think that most of the shots I got were visually pleasing and when edited and saturated it looked way better, coming of this project I have definitely took everything that went bad and what went well and acknowledged the fact that it could of been a lot better if my time management was better and my overall planning for this film was at a higher standard.