Day 1 - This was our first day of meeting together as a group. We have set up a group chat on our phones so we are able to communicate to each other outside of college. Before we met up today, our main goal was to get the foundation of the plot finalised so we knew what we would have to come up with and we would then be able to start brainstorming for other aspects of the film. We had all prepared one idea each before we met up and we would then pitch it to each other during the lesson and see what we preferred. The outcome of this was that everyone in the group liked my idea which was going to be called 'Paper Boy'. The reason why we chose this idea was because it was the most realistic option that we had, especially with the time and equipment we were given, and it suited our lives outside of college best too. Jay's idea required a lot of editing, green screens and special effects which we decided not to chose because we didn't have the equipment, time or skill to complete this before the deadline.

Day 2 - As we had now finalised the idea that we were going to use, we were now able to work on the pre-production of our film. Today's lesson was dedicated to who will be doing which parts of the pre-production so we knew it would be completed on time. We decided that because it was my idea, I would have to make the script because I knew what was going to be said and it would be easier as the entire plot was in my head. We also decided that once I had finished the script, I would give it to Lewis and he would make the storyboard. Once this had happened I would give the script and the storyboard to Jay so he was able to complete the mood board. We wanted to do it like this so it worked like a chain of events, this way we would be able to get everything finished in time for the actual production of the film.

Day 3 - This lesson was used to continue to get through pre-production. I completed the script last night at home so I brought it in to lesson for the group to read through. By this time, Jay had done a rough version of the schedule so we knew what days we were filming certain scenes. It is important that we did a rough version because we had to adapt it many times in order to fit our personal lives. For example, we all have part time jobs so we had to move dates of filming around because we were all working on certain days. Once we had got the final version of the schedule, it was crucial that we copied this three times so each of us had a copy and knew what days we were filming. From this, I took the schedule home and made call sheets for each of the actors which would be starring in the film. I decided who would be needed on which days we were filming and roughly how long for. I also included the scenes we would be filming, at which location and whether or not the certain actor would be needed at that specific time.

Day 4 - This lesson was spent finalising most of the pre-production as we realised we needed to start filming as soon as possible in order to meet the deadline. Once we had figured out who was doing the rest of the pre-production at home, we had to leave the lesson and go and take some photos to use as the main prop in our short film. We wanted to keep the idea of a stalker following a group of friends throughout the entirety of the film so we wanted to have the main prop be a photo of the friend group, taken from a distance. This would be used as a turning point in the film and create a huge amount of suspense.

Day 5 - This was the first day of shooting the film. The aim of this day was to shoot as much of the film as possible in one day, so we didn't have to stress about it nearer the deadline. To achieve this, we all woke up at 5am and met together at my house which was near the desired locations of the shop and the house. There are residential areas near my house so we used this as the paper round route which the characters would walk along. We decided to film the scenes out of sequence because there were scenes which had to be darker than others because it was the morning, but they were not in the correct order in the plot. This would have to be fixed in the editing stage. This day was very successful because we got 80% of the film completed and we included all of the shots which we all wanted. There were angles and shots that Jay and Lewis wanted but i did not, however we filmed everything we wanted to so now we need to make sure the correct files get to the correct person. One of the main focusses today was to complete the house exploration scene to the highest of our ability. For this scene i made sure my camera settings were set to make the shot reasonably dark with the aperture at f/4 and the shutter speed at 1/400. As we were inside, it was necessary to use an additional light in order to highlight the subject of the shot, however we made sure that the light was muted slightly in order to reduce the harshness and make it look more diegetic. The reason why I wanted the shots to be darker than the rest of the film was to foreshadow negative things to happen in the future, and to highlight the fact that the house was a dangerous place to be for the characters.

Day 6 - This was the second day of filming. Today we wanted to aim to get most of the filler shots and b-roll. I faced an issue with one of the shots that I captured today and this was the sunrise shot. As the camera was pointed directly into the sunlight, I had to boost the aperture to f/8 to compensate for the overexposed shot. To counteract this, I had to reduce the shutter speed to 1/150 in order to allow some light into the sensor and try and capture the bright effect that the sun had. When watching the shot back, I really liked how it looked however it was very underexposed so I will have to adapt that in post production. These shots would be used to transition between shots and used as a device to progress through time in the film. For these shots, we needed to be in the college area because an establishing shot of the college was needed and there were some various tracking shots that needed to be shot of Lewis walking to different locations. This took up the entire time we had to shoot on this day because we wanted to 'overshoot' areas so we had more footage to work with, rather than not enough.

Day 7 - This was our final day of shooting. The aim of todays shoot was to finish the film and get the end scene completed. This was an external scene so I had to make sure the camera settings were accurate and didn't make the shot overexposed due to the sunlight. I decided to use an aperture of f/2.8 because this allowed me to have a deep depth of field and get everything in focus. To counteract this, I had to put the shutter speed quite high at 1/600 as it would reduce the harshness of the light as the aperture is so wide. Also, as we were shooting outside we did not feel it was necessary to use an additional light as we were happy with the natural lighting of the shot. We needed the serial killer and Lewis to star in this scene however we had other people behind the camera in order to help with props and to help me walk backwards with the camera. The end scene is where Lewis' character gets killed off by the psycho and we shot this in a park near the college, this meant that all of the characters were able to get to the location. This shoot went reasonably well because we got all of the shots which we wanted to get and when we watched the footage back, it created the exact mood which we wanted to create.

Day 8 - Today we decided to meet up as a group and watch all of the footage back. I imported all of the footage onto my laptop so we could watch it and get a rough idea of what we were working with. By doing this we were able to delete all of the clips that were wrong or that we didn't like and ultimately organise our workspace in order to be efficient when it came down to editing. I then organised all of the footage into folders on my laptop so I knew what shots were being used for each individual scene and it would then make it easier for me when it comes to editing. Once I had done this, I made sure all of the footage was on the SD card and shared it around the group so each group member could download the footage.

Day 9 - This was the first day of editing. First what I wanted to do was insert all of the footage in a chronological order first, so I didn't need to mess about and import separate files when I am further into the editing process. By doing this, I could then edit the film in an orderly fashion from start to finish. This made more sense than do import it all at separate times because then it would take me a very long time to go through each file and select what I wanted when I needed each clip.

Day 10 and 11 - As I had previously prepared for editing the day before, I was now able to dive right into the actual editing process. First of all I wanted to go through and crop the unnecessary parts of each clip (e.g. waiting for the actors to get ready, me saying 'go') as this would then give me an accurate time of how long the film is going to be. This was an extremely long process so it took me two days to do this to that standard that I wanted.

Day 12 - Now I had gathered all of the parts of the film that I wanted to use, I decided to go through and colour correct the shots that needed to be corrected. I wanted to manipulate the brightness of some clips because, as mentioned earlier, the camera settings were slightly off which caused the shot to be overexposed/underexposed. One shot I really wanted to colour correct was a transition shot of a tree. This is because when I watched it back it just looked really grey and neutral, so I wanted to add some colour to it to make it more interesting for the audience to watch. Also, the characters moods have not depleted in the film yet so adding colour resembles their mood. I went into the colour correction settings and messed about with the settings, to see what I preferred. As you can see from the screenshot below, I boosted the colour saturation quite a bit (middle slider), in order to make the sky much more blue and to add accents to the branches on the tree, ultimately to make it much nicer to look at. I also reduced the shadows a lot (left slider) in order to take out the darkness of the shot and eliminate the grey areas.

Day 12 - As I had now colour corrected everything that I wanted to, I decided to watch all of the clips back and manipulate the light levels, in order to make them exactly what I wanted them to look like. I found that the shots that mainly needed changing were the external shots that we took on the first day e.g. paper round, Zach meeting Ben, walking to the house. I think this was because on the day it was very dark so I couldn't see the screen on the camera properly, meaning everything I thought looked fine was actually slightly overexposed. This was okay because I kept the settings the same throughout the day, I only needed to adapt the shots slightly, all in their own way. Below is an example of where I manipulated the light levels;

Day 13 - Everything had now started to come along nicely and the editing stage was coming to an end. I have colour corrected and manipulated every shot that needed to be changed and all of the clips were cropped to their desired length. I decided to watch the film back and realised there were some audio issues that could be fixed so I decided to change them. The first one that I noticed was in the shop, you were able to hear the public speaking in the background which was really loud. In this specific shot the audience did not need to hear anything that the characters were saying, however ambient noise was needed, to resemble an actual shop. To fix this, all I did was reduce the audio levels to 40% which fixed the issue.

 The next issue was the scene where the characters are walking down the street, discussing about why Zach is sad and how they are going to find Matt. As we were filming using Single Camera Production, there had to be cuts made in order to change the angle and break up the cinematography. Because of this, there were noticeable jumps in the audio where cars were driving past, then in the next shot you cant hear any cars at all. In order to fix this I had to detach the audio from the clips and fade them in and out of each other, in order to make it sound like the cars were driving past rather than just disappearing. This made the jump much less noticeable for the audience.
The final main audio correction was when Zach opens the gate to Matts house, the gate makes a horrifying screeching noise. I really liked this noise as it resembles the vibe of the house which they are about to walk in to, however the mic did not pick up the noise as much as I wanted it to. To fix this, all I did was boost the audio levels, but I needed to make sure it did not distort.

Day 14 - This was the final day of editing the first version of the film. I watched it back and realised there were things I could do in order to make it more enjoyable to watch. The first obvious thing that i needed to do was add title screens in, one for the name of the film, one to show the next location and the other was the credits at the end. The next thing that I wanted to adapt was the opening scene. I found that it was reasonably boring to watch so I added a blinking effect which would be in sync with the beat of the song in the background. This breaks up the shots making it more enjoyable to watch.