HG/TW/GT- Production Log- Wilderness Woods

 Production Log - Wilderness Woods

On the 19th of November 2014 our group visited Wilderness Woods in East Sussex in order to capture footage to give us practice on how to do a recce and to actually physically expand ideas and methods of film making. We began with a group brief, in order to outline rules of the location and understand different areas which could be effective. We then completed a risk assessment of the area as well as noting down shots we could include in our video production and how we would successfully film these shots. We began a recce around the wood, taking photos of areas we believed to be suitable, giving us an idea to what our film production might start to look like, also allowing us to build on the listed shots, noting down areas in which we could film these shots, whether they were complex or simple; these shots included establishing shots, pan and close up shots. This recce took around 40-45 minutes to complete. We then began to gather footage throughout the rest of the day, in the locations we had found.

What did we learn? 

This group trip gave us real insight into how although shots can often be difficult to take initially, there is nearly always a way around a problem. This gave us a broader mindset to what shots we could use, for example we were struggling to take a pan shot at one point, however with development we realized that a POV shot was much more effective, especially due to the horror genre we had to capture. 

Also, it became apparent that our weaknesses (such as finding the suitable shot for certain scenes) were resolved through trial and error of capturing varieties of shots to see if the fitted in with previous sequences. This enabled us to be consciously aware of what the final result would show, and despite various lapses in this field of filming, the fluidity of our film proved to emphasise our visions of the film's outcome to a large extent. 

We learnt how footage does not need to be taken in a chronological order, that capturing the shots you need in whatever order is less time consuming and will result in a better end product. Furthermore, we also began to understand the importance of getting the right sounds for the project, as we figured we needed to utilize both diegetic and non-diegetic sound as this can determine the mood of the audience. This is vital for our horror clip as making the audience frightened is often down to sound, for example to build tension and to create a rather scary cinematic experience.

As a group, we discovered the importance of the props that we utilized such as the doll and the knife. Without these props it would've been much more challenging to create verisimilitude in the clip. On the topic of importance, we spent a lot of time discussing the best possible location for the scenes inside the clip as we realized that a poor location would effect the quality of our work.

We also discovered that time management is key in the production of a clip, we made a mistake as a group by spending a lot of time on the first few shots. We learnt that we should spend similar time on each shot. We ended up having less time to spend on the final few shots, but we carried on as normal and didn't panic.