Hidden Production Journal
Pre-production
Finding the idea:
To come up with an idea for our film each of us Sam, Aaron and myself all came up with individual ideas. To come up with my ideas I used a mind map, I found it much easier to develop ideas using this method because it meant I could expand on basic ideas.
Our first final idea was called Bedlam. Bedlam was set in an abandoned asylum and was about a group of boys who meant missing inside. This was meant to be our actual film however when it came to filming it we learnt that the location we’d chosen was not a good place to film, the final result reflected that. Since many of the shots were out of focus.
From doing this film we’d gained a lot of experience and knowledge that would equip us for our final film.
Instead of coming up with a completely new idea we decided to adapt our new film to take place in the woods, this was our final idea it was called Hidden.
Research:
To find where we could film in the woods I used Google Maps to find clearings and pathways in the woods, this proved useful because we knew exactly where we were going when it came to the filming.
Treatment and Script development:
As a group we wrote our script on Google Drive, this enabled us to write on the document all at once. It took us three weeks to complete our script in which this included proofreading and correcting it.
Technical Planning
Conceptualisation:
I felt that creating the concept of the film was one of the most important aspects of the planning for me as the Director because I had to visualise how the film was going to look when it was finished.
We decided the genre of the film was a horror when we where coming up with the idea.
I was aiming for the film to have a very intense and mysterious atmosphere that didn't break for entirety of the film. The cinematic style I was aiming for was similar to those in war films such as Band of Brothers with a psychological thriller twist.
Visualisation:
I wanted the film to look similar to war films such as Band of Brothers and Saving Private Ryan in terms of the colour scheme ( Lots of green and blue).
I also planned to use lots of close ups and cinematics to really have to audience become involved in the film I was trying to create.
With regards to the lighting I wanted the film to be dark to emphasize the evil that lurked in the woods. With regards to the characters costumes I wanted the boys to look as if they were attending a conservation group. I knew that my actors would have all the necessary clothing so I gave out a sheet that gave rough outline of what was needed this included Wellies and Waterproofs.
Production:
Director:
As the Director it was partly my job to visualise how I wanted the film to look.
I there are parts of our film that do stick to how I wanted the film to look, I feel Scene 1 and 3 truly represent what I wanted through the lighting, colour scheme, camera shots and acting.
My directing is very ruthless if I don’t like something I’ll do it again, if people mess around I’ll tell them to shut up and hurry up. I feel I have a very straight forward approach with people because I like to get things done. My group actually reacted quite well to my directing because they listened however a few minutes after they’ll go back to messing around.
One the first day I had a real issue with Gareth the actor who played Brad. He was constantly messing around and kept slowing us down. However by the second day he was much quieter when I got rid of his friend Hugo. The group as a whole was actually very demanding to work with especially my two other crew members who were constantly not paying any attention to what was going on.
The only issue we had with costumes was on the second day when Gareth came in with a different shirt, however he had the same jumper with him. We had a couple of issues with the sound, on the first day because Aaron didn’t turn the mic on. When we were filming our last scene the mic broke, however Aaron had luckily left the zoom-box on record which meant that we just overlaid the audio from that over the footage.
No I wasn’t happy with all our footage. Especially those in Scene Two which I thought were really poorly shot, had terrible lighting and were out of focus. I also thought that some of the footage was out of focus in the last scene especially when the camera racked.
On the first day we were slightly late however by lunch we’d overtaken our schedule and we had plenty of time. On the second day of production everyone was listening and everyone was a lot easier to co-operate with. This meant that I could concentrate completely on the Directing. Consequently we got through the film much quicker and it also meant the film quality was much better.
Post-Production:
On the third day we had off for filming we had to abandon the filming because of an injury that one of our actors had sustained the day before. To not just waste our time Sam and myself sat down and began to build the foundations of the film in Premiere Pro. First we renamed the clips filenames into alphabetical order in Finder, we used our script and storyboard to get all the clips into order so we could quickly cut them together in Premiere Pro to create our rough cut. It took us the entire day to finish our rough cut however the finer details took us a couple of weeks, this included the creation of sound effects, music, title screens/credits and do the colour correction. During this time Sam and I worked together this meant we got a more accurate sense of what the film was going to look like.
