Since I have already written about the majority of my audio editing in one of my previous blogs, this blog will most likely be a lot smaller and will just go over anything I neglected to mention in that last audio blog. The audio I will be referring to in this blog is all within one scene, scene 3 or the nightmare sequence, other than in this scene, none of my other audio was edited in any other way that cutting the tracks to fit the length of my short film, but that was it. Whereas in my nightmare sequence there was a lot more involvement into the audio, all of which I either talked about in the other blog or will be talking about in this blog.

The only real ‘technique’ or Final Cut feature I used was ‘reverse audio’, this does exactly what the name states: reverses audio. I decided that in order to make the scene feel as disturbing and uncomfortable as possible that I would add in some harsh and jarring sounds alongside the chanting. So, for this, I took some of my chanting clip and reversed it, which wasn’t too noticeable but definitely added some more depth to the scenes audio, as well as getting some various glass braking/smashing sounds from within the Final Cut audio library and reversed those too. the combination of both of these distorted pieces of audio scattered throughout this scene I feel really helped bring it up a notch and make it a lot more intense than it was without them.

I didn’t really do much else in terms of audio ‘editing’ other than raising and lowering the volume on some clips and adjusting the speed of some of the heartbeat clips in the nightmare sequence to suggest that Ella is getting more scared when her heart rate increases.

I decided that, instead of making each day that I edited into a separate blog, I would just combine all the editing work I did into 3, or maybe 4, blogs, one about the audio, one about the basic visuals (this one) and one about the extra visuals (filters and colour correcting etc) where I can go into detail about what I did, how I did it and what effect it had on the finished film. Although my short film only ended up being a total of around 4 and a half minutes long, it took me over 2 weeks to edit from start to finish. This included putting everything in order and cutting my clips, adding in the audio, and editing that to fit the visuals, as well as all the extra editing like transitions, filters and colour correcting. I only ended up completing all my editing work on Tuesday (21st May) which was way after I originally planned to be done with editing, this meant I didn’t have much time to write my editing blog before uploading my film to YouTube in time to get a decent amount of feedback. In this blog I wanted to go through the different parts of my editing section by section and go into as much detail as possible about what I did and why I did it.

Putting everything in order: This was the first thing I did when I got into the edit suite, I sat down with my shot list and script in front of me for reference and put all the shots in the order they are in on my shot list. I didn’t worry too much about the length of these shots at this point because I knew it would be easier to edit everything once it was in the right place rather than editing individual clips before they were in a cohesive order.

Once everything was in an order that I felt made sense and that matched up with my script and shot list, then I went back and started editing the length and durations of the clips. This took what was initially around 15 minutes of footage down to around 6 or 7 minutes, and then eventually down to 4 and a half minutes by the time all my editing was complete. I think doing my editing in this order really helped me not get overwhelmed or stressed about the individual clips right from the begging and also helped me keep my work true to the initial planning. After editing the length and durations of the clips I could start getting a little more creative with the clips and so started to move some clips around and cut come clips and replace them with a different angle of the same shot etc.

Nightmare sequence: The nightmare sequence was actually one of the first sections of my short film that I edited the style of and added any audio to, I wanted to focus on this part of my film first as I already had a specific vision for how I wanted this took look. I also felt that this was the most important scene to my whole short film and the story and so I felt it deserved the most attention to detail. Since this scene of my film is a dream/nightmare I felt it allowed a lot more room for creativity in terms of editing, I didn’t need to worry about continuity as much as I did for the rest of the film and there was more room for the style to be much more disjointed and jumpy. 

I started editing this scene the same way I started editing everything else, by putting all the clips in an order I felt made some sense and that, again, matched up with my original planning. I then added in the audio of the chanting, an edited version and a no edited version to keep the actually dialog clear, and once I had that audio down I could start editing the more ‘creative’ and disjointed parts of this scene. After re-filming and getting a lot of shots of blood dripping down walls and blood pools on the floor etc I could then start adding them into my nightmare sequence. I added in lots of these shots across this scene, and to make it feel more disturbing I cut each of these shots down to around 1 second(ish) each so that the flashes of blood would make the audience feel uncomfortable and squeamish but would still fit in with the idea of sacrifice and Ella’s back and arm wounds.

Focus issues: As I mentioned in my filming blogs and my re-filming blog, I had quite a few issues with getting my camera to focus and so a lot of my footage has a lot of unintentional ‘focus pulls’. Now some of these I wanted to purposely keep in because, in my opinion, I think some of them really do look quite good, however, there were a few shots that, once I had almost finished editing and was looking back at my work, I was really not happy with because of these focusing issues. This meant having to cut out quite a lot of footage from my first two scenes, this took my film from being around 4 minutes 45 seconds to around 4 minutes 25 seconds. To many people 20 seconds probably doesn’t sound like a lot of time but in terms of film and 20 seconds of footage, it really is quite a large chunk of footage I had to remove.

Overall I do think this was for the best and did result in my short film looking better in the end but it was very frustrating as this then left me with random cuts that I had to try and hide. So, again, I was back to getting different angles of these shots and placing them in ways that it would cover the cuts but wouldn’t look like that was their only purpose. There were a lot of card shuffling shots that this was the case in and although I prefer the way it all looks now, it was definitely frustrating to say the least.

Title and credits: Although this seems like the easiest and least concerning part of the editing process, I actually went back and forth for quite some time when I was deciding how I wanted these two elements to look. Since my title is placed a few shots in, you can’t ignore it or miss it and so there is more pressure for it to fit the horror aesthetic and to look like it fits there rather than look like it was just thrown in. I tried a lot of different fonts, some more traditional and gothic and some more modern and bold, I ended up going for a ‘stencil’, ‘spray paint’ looking font which I personally think fits quite well after all this is a more modern day horror film rather than an older style traditionally gothic horror.

I also mirrored the use of this font in my credits, I think credits are commonly such an afterthought and kind of get thrown at the end with no consideration of how they look so I wanted to make sure they seemed as important to the short film as everything else did. I over-layed the credits text, in the same font as the title, over the shots of blood dripping down the walls etc. I felt this worked quite nicely as these shots had already been seen in the film, even though it was just for a few seconds in the nightmare sequence, and so didn’t seem as random as a black background would seem, in my opinion.

All in all I think the basic editing of putting the clips in their places, editing their lengths and durations, and editing the title and credits all contributes as much to the overall atmosphere, and therefor success, of the film as any other aspect of the pre-production does, and I am very happy I took the time to focus on this.

As I have already mentioned in my audio planning blog, I recorded some of my own audio for the nightmare sequence of my short film. I recorded my ‘cult member’ chanting their script, “the ritual has begun, Satan’s work is done, the sacrifice is being made tonight”, on a loop so I could use it in the nightmare sequence as the main audio. Since this was going to be my main piece of audio for that scene, I didn’t want it to just sound like 3 people chanting in an echoey room, I wanted this piece of audio to sound a lot more sinister and distorted than that. In this blog I will be discussing the editing I did to this clip and any other audio editing I did throughout the post production stages of my work, I will also look at a questionnaire I sent out and what the responses to this were and how/if this affected my decisions in terms of my audio.

Editing: I decided to edit this clip of the chanting in Adobe Audition as this software is specifically for audio editing and I can edit the audio in much more detail here than I can just in Final Cut Pro. I do not have too much experience with this software, other than a few lessons on it at the very beginning of this course, and so made use of the softwares features and audio filters it has to offer. I created 3 different audio files, each with different filters and sounds, I did this because I wanted to give myself, and my audience, options on which sounded the best in the context.

Although each clip sounds different, the editing process for each was ver similar, for all 3 clips I initially went into the ‘effects’ tab at the top and chose ‘special’ then ‘distortion’. Once in the ‘distortion’ tab I clicked on the ‘presets’ down-bar and tried out these different features, I wish I could say I knew what I was doing and what each feature did, but I don’t and I didn’t so I was just going off of how each effect sounded and which ones I personally thought sounded the scariest or most uncomfortable to listen to.

After playing around with these features for a while and seeing what sounded best and how I could edit the audio and just looking round the Audition software and familiarising myself with its different feature, I found the effects rack. The effects rack, from what I could tell, is where it shows all the different effects that have been added to the track and gives you the choice to delete things from here etc. This section too has a ‘presets’ down-bar that I personally found extremely helpful for my editing, I tested out many of these presets such as “Underwater Speech” and “Wide Spooky Echo”, both of which I ended up using for one or more of my edits.

I, for some unknown reason, ended up forgetting to take screenshots of the specific edits I did to each track which is a bit frustrating, however I do have a screenshot of what I did to the first track I edited.

Feedback: Once I was done editing these and had exported them, I first asked some of my peers that were in the editing suite at the time which track they preferred, but then decided this was a great opportunity to engage with my audience and get some more opinions on my work. I put together a short questionnaire consisting of only 3 questions and a link to my google drive where all the audio clips can be found. I made sure to give the people answering the questionnaire a bit of context to the scene so they had more insight as to where the audio was going and what effect it would have on the scene. The 3 questions I asked were quite basic questions but gathered all the necessary information I needed from this questionnaire; they were, “out of these 3 audio tracks, which do you prefer”, “why did you chose the audio track you did”, and “are there any other audio techniques you think may work with the horror genre”. Here is the link to the questionnaire: https://forms.gle/xPTeqJ5oZmSbY99ZA.

The questionnaire has been live now for about a week and a half and has been sent to all my class mates and other media classes through email, as well as my colleagues at work as many of them fit the demographic I am trying to reach, as well through email. I ended up getting over 25 responses, which I am very happy with for such a small questionnaire. Although I was pretty set on which audio track I personally preferred, track no.3, for this scene, I was still hoping for some other opinions on which was best and, more importantly, why they chose their favourite. Thankfully, the majority chose audio track 3 and so I was very pleased to be able to use the track I felt was the most fitting. The reasons as to why people chose this track varied from “just sounds the best” to “it sounded extremely sinister and I think sounds very identifiable to the genre of your short film”, here is a screenshot of some of the responses to this question as well as a few individual responses:

In my last question, I asked if there were any other audio techniques or sounds I could add to this sequence to make it sound more sinister and that would work within the horror genre. I was expecting the majority of responses to be suggestions like screams, or laughs etc, and although I did get a lot of responses like this, I also got a surprising amount of responses saying not too add anything else to it. Below is a screenshot of a few of these responses:

I am personally very glad I sent out this questionnaire as I feel it really helped me when finalising the audio for my work not to over do it, I did end up adding some distortions such as reversed audio of  glass shattering and a few reversed clips from the chanting, which I will talk about more in my final editing blog, but other than that I tried to take the responses into consideration and not over do the audio for this clip.

Instead of planning my whole audio and soundtrack before editing I decided, other than the audio of my cult members chanting, that because I didn’t know what my audio would consist of until I start editing, I would do my audio panning while editing. I decided to do this so that I could get a feel for how my visuals would look and then decide on the audio from there, this is giving me a better idea of the atmosphere I want to portray through the audio. Although I did not pre-plan any of my audio this doesn’t mean I hadn’t had some great ideas about it beforehand; I have had many ideas about my audio, as I have written about many of them in other blogs, such as “when we all fall asleep…” and Iron Maiden lyrics. I think the music and sounds in a horror films are almost as important to telling the story as the visuals are or as any dialog is, and so I feel I have put a lot of thought into my audio while editing and have managed to intertwine the audio with the visuals in a way to really aid the story. I have filled out an audio planning sheet, shown at the bottom of this blog, however I wanted to talk through my choices of audio in a little more detail throughout this blog.

My own audio: I decided for this short film to use a lot of the natural audio and sounds from my footage such as, the bed creaking, footsteps, the sound the lighter makes etc. This was a conscious decision on my part as I wanted the reality scenes, so every scene other than the nightmare sequence, to feel very realistic and lifelike and I feel that by keeping in much of the natural audio I managed to portray that in my final film. Though there are some shots where the background noise or static is a little much, I still think, overall, the absence of these sounds would be a lot more noticeable than the presence of the sounds.

As well as using the original audio from my clips I also recorded some of my own audio separately, that being the chanting audio we hear in the nightmare sequence. Now, I had originally recorded this while shooting the nightmare sequence but forgot that once I cut up the clips that the audio would become all disjointed too, so I ended up recording it separately. I didn’t use any fancy recording equipment or this, just my same DSLR that I used for filming but isolated the audio from the video in post-production. I also took this audio clip of the chanting and edited it a lot but that is a whole blog on its own, so I will discuss that in more detail, as well as any other audio editing I did, in the next blog or blog after that.

Final Cut Pro sound library: As well as using my own audio for a lot of the natural noises, I did use quite a few sounds from within Final Cut Pro itself. I did this for a few reasons, first, because there is no copyright issues I have to deal with or consider when adding it to my work and secondly, it is just so damn easy. I used a few different sounds from this library, including some ‘gasp’ noises and the sound of a heartbeat through the nightmare sequence. I am really pleased with the effect these sounds had on my film, especially the heartbeat as, by speeding up and slowing down the speed of the heart beat, I got to convey the terror my character was feeling when just the acting on its own didn’t convey these emotions enough.

Music: In terms of music I used, in total, 3 different tracks, but only two of them made it to my final edit. I really wanted to incorporate Billie Eilish’s song “Bury A Friend” in some way as I had done some research into it and felt the idea and topic of the song is extremely fitting for the subject of my film. Of course I knew that in order to use this song I would have to find some kind of cover or remix that wasn’t covered by any copyright laws and that wouldn’t get my video removed or the audio removed from it once uploaded to YouTube. I searched a lot to find some songs that would work and ended up finding a “Horror Orchestra” version of the song that was under the Creative Commons Attribution license and so was completely ok for me to re-use. I have never been more thrilled about an audio track ever in my life, and even though, because of the absence of the lyrics, some may not understand why this song works so well in the context, it still sounds very effective as background music. Of course those that have read through my blogs or know the song very well are more likely to understand the full reason as to why it fits so well in this film and before the nightmare sequence.

The next song I found was where I became a little disheartened, it was a Billie Eilish, “Bury A Friend” remix which sounded incredible in my film as it had the lyrics but was edited in a very creepy and atmospheric way. I ended up creating a version of my short film with this audio in some places of my film, for example I had the line “when we all fall asleep, where do we go” playing as the camera is zooming in to Ella asleep in bed right before the nightmare sequence takes place. Everyone who I showed this to loved it and we all agreed that it was extremely effective and linked so well to the idea of the dream sequence. However, this music didn’t end up making it into the official short film because getting the right copyright permission was going to be nearly impossible as I would have had to get in touch with the original artists and production team. Although I am sure that, because I only used a small amount of the song, I would have been ok to post it on YouTube, I didn’t want to use this song and have it seem as though I wasn’t aware of the copyright issues so instead just replaced this song with a different one for the official short film.

As I just mentioned, I replaced the Billie Eilish remix with a different song for my final short film, this was a track I had saved when I was looking into music for last years FMP and which is “royalty free” and completely free for me to use in my short film. Although not as edgy as the remix which I fell in love with, it did still have a creepy and, in many ways, more sinister feel to it so overall, I think it almost works better in my final short films than the other song would have.

Orchestra Billie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bIgKHnW4EA&list=PL7fusMGA68RaoKOYUuerloUBwVMJ85EHR&index=16&t=0s

Remixed Billie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydOxbr9nips&list=PL7fusMGA68RaoKOYUuerloUBwVMJ85EHR&index=15&t=0s

Creepy final song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2O4q4zMBbHQ&list=PL7fusMGA68RaoKOYUuerloUBwVMJ85EHR&index=10&t=68s

Editing is probably the area in all of this project that I feel the most comfortable and confident, I really enjoy editing and feel like I have a good understanding of what looks good and how I can achieve that. I’m regards to this project, and in my opinion, for horror in general, the editing can make or break it and is in many ways the most important part of creating a good short horror film. For my editing I used colleges edit suite and edited my work on Final Cut Pro, I have edited all bar one project on this software so feel the most confident with it and so felt it would be the safest bet to use it for this project as it is so important. I want my editing to help build up suspense and bring all my footage together in a coherent and interesting way that helps captivate the audience, and in the nightmare sequence (scene 3) I want the editing to be a little more disjointed and, well, dream-like. I plan on doing all of this with strategic cuts and angle changes as well as using the audio and music, which I will write a different blog about, to help built the atmosphere of terror.

I am, so far, around half way through my editing, I have put all the clips together in an order and format I think will work well, and have started by working on making it look cohesive and professional. As well as this, I have also started working on the more stylistic cuts and edits in the nightmare sequence. I wanted to focus on the nightmare sequence first as it is, in a way, it’s own stand alone scene and so doesn’t need to have any continuity to the scene before it or the scene after it, where as the other scenes do have to focus more on the continuity. The nightmare sequence is going to be a lot more disjointed and artistic in comparison to the other 3 scenes and so I wanted to spend a lot more time figuring out what atmosphere I wanted to create with this and how I would create that through editing.

As this blog is only to discuss the beginning of editing, I of course am not able to talk through everything I will do in terms of editing as the more ‘technical’ editing is yet to come. However, there were a few things I have learnt while editing this and a few issues I came across.

First of all, after putting my clips in order, there was one shot I wanted to focus on first as I had a very specific view of how I wanted this to look, this shot is the 2nd into 3rd shot of my short film. In this shot Ella throws her keys onto the bed which happen to have a Satan key ring attached to it, I had the idea of freezing this scene and having the title come on screen over this lil’ devil. This serves as a great shot for the title to come onto as it makes sense with the name of the film, “Satan’s Game”, but is also used to foreshadow the later events and to give the audience the idea that our main character is somehow involved in Satanism from the very begging. I did not know how on Earth, or in hell, to do this as I had never done an edit like this on earlier projects, however the solution was pretty simple. The short cut for this tool is to select the clip and then press Alt and F and this adds in a freeze frame that I could lengthen or shorten to my desire, this tool is also at the bottom of the ‘edit’ tab at the top of the screen while using Final Cut Pro.

Once I had gotten into the editing I realised I wanted to re-film a few clips, which will be another blog, but needed a way to remember what I wanted to film and where I would put it in editing once I had the footage. This is when my friend Ella showed me the ‘placeholders’, these are still clips you can put in to take the place of a non existing clip. I have put quite a few in my edit so far so that I know where I wanted them and what I wanted them to look like by adding little descriptions to the placeholders. This won’t effect my edit at all once it is complete but felt it was worth writing about as it has become really helpful for me and has helped me be able to order my thoughts and what I need to do next.

I haven’t really used many other techniques so far apart from the ‘blade’ tool and shortening and lengthening clips which isn’t too impressive. I will write another blog going more in depth about my editing once I have delved into the more exciting and technical aspects of it but for now this blog was really just to reflect on my first few editing sessions.

This blog will be a short blog just about my set design, it may be a useless blog to write but I was very pleased with my set design and so thought I could write a little about it. As everyone is well aware by now, I filmed in two locations, at home for scene 1, 2 and 4, and in a barn for scene 3. I didn’t really do much in terms of set design for the first location other than the simple addition of candles, to link through to the nightmare scene, and the writing on the mirror. Everything else in the room for those scenes is always in my room and so setting up for this was just a matter of putting out some candles, making some fake cocaine, and making my bed. For my second location, the barn, I did a lot more with the set design, I brought a few of my own props, for example, mirrors and candles, but did also use some stuff that were laying around the location as props.

From what I have learnt about the horror genre over the past two years, I would say that the iconography and mise-en-scene of a horror film is very important, they help add to the atmosphere of the film which in turn adds to the suspense and chilling factor that ultimately build the whole film. Because of how important I personally view this to be, I really wanted to show this in my work and show an level of commitment to the scene that I really haven’t shown in any other projects.

My most important props to this shoot were the use of mirrors and candles, as both of these are practical props, so actually have some use to the filming. Both of these items are quite common in horror, especially candles, they have been used throughout the history of horror, from some of the very first horrors, like Dracula, to the recent modern horrors we know and love today, like Hereditary. Mirrors are also something I have seen quite a bit in horror, not as often, but I like the idea of them being some kind of portal for spirits and I have seen them used like that in many different ways, from films such as Oculus, to Halloween. These two props also linked back to my first two scenes where the rules were written on a mirror and where the candles were lit to help Ella’s character do the Tarot reading. Here are some pictures, and a link to a video, of the barn once decorated and ready for filming:

Video: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1VUx_4zg5OG34R2wlr_2GfkypPAQ9v5mD

My second day of filming was up in my other location in Cumbria and although this shoot was only one scene, whereas the other shoot was 3 scenes, this shoot involved a lot more people and a lot more involvement in terms of set design, etc. Because the set design for this scene was a lot more detailed, it involved a lot more time to make the location (linked here) look the way I needed it to, and so myself and Ella went and set up at 6pm, 2 hours before filming started. I will admit, I was definitely feeling the pressure for this shoot, I had more actors I had to rely on as well as using someone else’s location so didn’t have the lenience of taking as much time as we wanted. Another issue with using this location was that, since I was filming at night like my first shoot date, the barn we were filming in got very cold the later it got and considering my main character was wearing PJ shorts and a t-shirt, we, again, did not have the same amount of time as my first shoot and so we had to be much more disciplined to get things done within a certain time-frame.

Like my other blog on filming, day one, I will be talking about the pros and cons of this shoot in sections. This blog will most likely be a little shorter than my last blog as many of my reasons for the success of the shoot, and the possible issues, will be the same as my first shoot.

Equipment: For this shoot I used the same camera as I had for the first shoot, my Canon 750D, I used it completely in the no flash (night scene) mode and instead of using my ring light, as there were no electricity sockets in the location I ended up using the candles I had lit as a practical light. The candles were mainly for props but they did end up supplying the kind of lighting and colour that I really was hoping for, and for any points where the candles weren’t enough light, we all set up out phone flashlights around the room and behind the camera at points.

One issue with the equipment I did have while shooting this scene was the autofocus on my camera. As it was, of course, very dark, my camera did have a very big issue with focusing properly, I did try using manual focus but I found it very hard to see whether the camera was focused or not in this particular circumstance due to the darkness of the location. Although this was extremely frustrating, especially along with some of my lost footage, I think that the shot going in and out of focus will actually be a very interesting stylistic choice I can use to my advantage through the right editing techniques.

Using the lighting I did in conjunction with the camera settings, I feel I got a really great outcome and, although some shots came out a little too dark and the focus was an issue at time, I defiantly feel confident that my editing skills can fix or enhance both of these issues and turn them into pros rather than cons.

Actors & Preparation: As I have already mentioned, I had more people to rely on for this shoot, including 3 extra actors that we made up of my family. This was very frustrating as, because they were family, I feel like they were a bit less serious about it as Ella had been in the previous shoot, although this ended up not really being the case as they had made sure to keep their scripts on them on set. As I did for my previous shoot, I gave all cast members a copy of the script, shot list and call sheets, this was definitely a very crucial decision on my part as, if I hadn’t, the chances of my shoot going wrong would have been a whole lot higher.

One decision I made prior to getting to the location was that I was going to do the main structure of Ella’s SFX, so the material build up and the painting (I used alcohol activated paints which don’t smudge once dried), but did not apply any fake blood until we were actually at the location. I did this for two reasons, 1, to prevent smudging and difficulty getting Ella in position with fake blood getting everywhere, and 2, because I didn’t want the blood to dry or look clotted or old. I was striving for a very fresh wound kind of look, and for that, the blood had to be a brighter red and quite runny, and over time most types of SFX blood tend to get thicker and darker once they begin drying.

The only real issue I had with my actors was that, because we were family and my brother, who was showing off a little in front of Ella, there were moments where I had to cut due to everyone laughing or not taking the shoot as seriously as I would have hoped. Of course, this didn’t last long and we did end up filming the whole scene in around an hour and a half which I was very very pleased with.

Overall: In all, I think this date went a lot smoother than I was expecting it to. I was very much expecting this shoot to be chaotic and frustrating, and so I am very happy with the way it went and the footage I came out with.

My first day of filming was in Leyland at my first location, and only involved myself and my main actress, Ella. We filmed scene 1, 2 and 4 at this location and it ran pretty smoothly considering this was my first time filming a full short film completely individually. I will talk about the more technical aspects of this shoot later in this blog and what I felt I, or we, excelled at and what I may have failed or fallen short at, but for now I wanted to briefly discuss my personal feelings and attitude. Although I felt very prepared for this shoot and made sure all my planning was done and prepared, I still feel like I was incredibly nervous and unconfident when I started to film. I am definitely a perfectionist so when my first few shots weren’t coming out the way I wanted them to I got very discouraged very quickly. I of course wasn’t thinking about the fact I was going to edit the way my shots look through shortening the shots and colour grading etc. Other than all of my own personal worries during filming, I feel like this shoot for scene 1, 2 and 4 went very well. I now want to discuss the things that went well and the things tar may not have in terms of equipment and the use of, any changes I made and then an overall reflection of this shoot day.

Equipment: I had planned on using my canon 750D DSLR camera and my ring light with orange filters to make the light a warmer tone rather than a harsh white light, which it would be without the orange filters.

I wasn’t 100% sure at the time of planning my equipment what filming mode I was going to use for filming but ended up switching between the no flash (which is either ‘night portrait’ or ‘night scene’ mode) and the ‘TV’ shooting modes. I understand that there are some much more advanced settings on a Canon 750D but I don’t feel like I understand them enough at this point to have messed around with them during filming. In my mind, the possibility of ruining my filming by messing with the settings and modes I don’t understand was too much of a risk that I didn’t want to take during such an important and crucial project. Although I could have maybe done more with the actual shooting to make the video quality and colour of the video a lot better, I knew that I could go back in with colour grading while editing to fix any of the issues I may have with the actual look of my filming. I overall feel like I made the best use of this camera as I possibly could and am pretty happy with these results.

My only other equipment was my ring light, I actually didn’t end up using my ring light as much as I thought I would. I felt that, even with the orange filter AND my dressing gown draped over it to dull the light a little more, there were still some moments where the light was way too harsh and made quite a few of the scenes way too over exposed. Honestly very little of my final footage involved the ring light, however I did still use it on a few scenes where it seemed beneficial to include, though this wasn’t always the case.

Changes: I did write in my shot list blog that I was completely open to changing and altering some shots and the angles or framing of these shots. Although I did pretty much keep to the shot list and film many of the shots the way I had planned on, a few were slightly altered, for example; scene 2, shot 2 was originally planned as an over-the-shoulder shot of Ella looking into the mirror and rubbing out the rules. I ended up taking multiple shots with different angles and shot sizes so that I could use the multiple different shots and put them together in editing, rather than just sticking to this one shot that I ended up not being too much of a fan of.

A few of my other shots I either completely got rid of or, in some cases, added a few shots. For example, shot 3 of the first scene was supposed to be a pan of the room as Ella entered, I decided during filming that I hated the idea of this shot, and that I felt it had no real place in my film, and once I had filmed it once decided I wasn’t going to use it in my final edit so just ignored it completely. An example of one shot that I added during filming with no real preparation but that I felt fit in well with the surrounding scenes, is an over-the-shoulder shot in scene two of Ella putting the book with the coke lines on it to the side. This is only a small and almost insignificant scene but felt that filming this extra scene was very beneficial to my project.

Overall: Overall, I felt my preparation and the preparation with my Actress, giving her the script, shot list and call sheet, was extremely helpful and lead to the success of this shoot. Although there were some hiccups throughout filming and although I did make quite a few changes last minute and because of that some aspects of my filming had no planning, I am very pleased with the results of my filming. My only issue with my footage is the colour and lighting of my shots, this isn’t that big of an issue though as I can fix all of this during editing and create the lighting and colouring of the scenes that I desire.