Log of Production

1. Production Log
Madeleine Ross

2. Filming Day 1
• This is the first project where I have worked with all types of media at once, camera work, audio, lighting
etc, and had to think about them all together, so the first day of filming like this was exciting. Although I
had planned extensively, and everything was in order, I did have a lot of issues whilst filming.
• I knew that the areas I was going to film in had the potential for lots of background disruption from things
such as traffic, members of the public, as well as the weather that can affect lighting and ease of filming.
• When looking back on the footage after the day of filming, as well as listening to the recording taken on
the handheld mic, I wasn’t happy with the results. Although the visual aspects came out well, the image
being in focus , and the lighting being good, the audio wasn’t to the standard I wanted, and in some shots
my voice was complete drowned out by wind, or traffic.
• Because of this, I have decided I am going to switch some of my filming elements, doing the presenting in
my house in front of a green screen, making sure that the audio is as good as possible, and go around the
areas I was initially presenting in, taking videos of the landmarks and adding them onto the green screen
in post.
• Although I really wanted to film myself presenting and talking about the landmarks on sight, I think this
new approach will give a much better result, and I can still get my points across in relatively the same
way. It will also cut down the time I will need for filming, as walking around Harrogate town with all the
kit was quite tiring, and I don’t think it was the best way to do it. Also in this way, no matter what the
weather is or the time of day, I can still do half of the presenting from home, and have half as less to
worry about considering when the best time to film is.

3. Filming Day 2
• Today I went out and filmed the filler shots, such as shots of landmarks around Harrogate, the high street
etc. Today was a better shooting, as the weather was nice and bright and I didn’t have the added pressure of
focussing on the audio.
• Looking at the footage, I am relatively happy with how it turned out. Some of the shots look slightly grainy,
and due to the sun, some buildings and areas look a bit over exposed, however I think I can sort that out in
post with some colour grading.
• Although I did a few hours of filming, I still didn’t manage to get all the shots I wanted, and I think this is
simply due to the fact that it took anywhere between 5-10 minutes to get from one location to the other.
Also as it is a Sunday, it was very busy in town, and it was difficult to stop for a long time without bumping
into people ect, so I think I will go back and reshoot some of the shots on the highstreet at a later date, so I
can get them more in focus and looking a little bit to a higher standard.
• Today I did a lot of camera work, and it was the longest I had used a camera out and about for, so I have
learnt a lot from today simply from taking simple and easy shots. I managed to experiment with a few of the
camera settings, and all in all I feel more familiar with the camera.
• Due to the fact I have decided to present at home, I have decided to take a few shots of me walkning around
a few places in Harrogate such as The Cedar Court Hotel, and the Valley Gardens, to show the viewers that
this is my home, and I am being true to my word. It is also in the structure of a participatory documentary, so
showing that I have been to these places is important. To do this, I had my friend come and monitor the
camera as I walked around these areas, and I plan to go back and shoot some more, possibly inside these
landmarks too, at a later shoot date.

4. Filming Day 3
• Today I re-filmed myself presenting at home in front of my green screen.
• Filming over all went really well, and only took an hour to complete, and I made sure to
get multiple takes of me presenting segments, and I also tried a few different shot
varieties such as taking footage from a higher angle, as well as some close up shots.
• Looking back at the footage, it looks slightly grainy, however I think in post production I
can fix that quite easily, and the only thing I am slightly worried about is Premier Pro
being able to pick up the green screen, as due to the lighting I had at hand (ceiling light
and floor lamp) it is not as vibrant as most green screens are.
• The footage I got is definitely better than the stuff I had taken on day 1, with my voice
being heard clearly, no background noise whatsoever, and I managed to get multiple
versions of my segments, so when it comes to the editing part of production, I have a
few versions to choose from.
• The only real issue I had whilst filming, was trying to remember the script and look into
the camera at the same time, as some segments had a lot of long sentences. To combat
this, I stuck the script at the top of the tripod underneath the camera lense, to help
when I forgot the words. This worked well, much better than filming day one, as the
camera didn’t pick up the script and it looked nice and neat and thoughout. Of course I
did look down and away from the camera a few times, however the more takes I did the
less I continued to do so, and in the end a lot of the things I said looked clean.

5. Post Production Day 1
• Today I began the process of post production, using the adobe program
Premier Pro.
• I began by importing all of my footage into the application, which was
simple as I had collected it all and stored it on one memory stick, and I
began putting some sections together.
• I began with the opening montage, which was quite easy to complete, as I
had lots of footage to choose from, and I also had my music collected
already, all I had to do was pick what I wanted and edit it how I felt it
would work best.
• Looking more closely at the footage I had taken over multiple days of
shooting, although I got quite a lot, the footage looks grainy in areas and
blotchy. Although I don’t have time to go back and re- film the footage, I
still plan on doing some color grading and adding some filters over my
footage, which might reduce the graininess and distract from it.
• I also experimented with green screen today, using the Ultra Key. When
filming, I knew that my green screen wasn’t the best, and I was worried
how it would look in post. By experimenting and using the footage I
collected, the green screen has worked somewhat, however lack of
proper lighting and the creasing and shadows on the screen have meant
that quite a lot of aspects look blotchy and don’t work as well as I though
they would. I am interested too see how other clips work with the green
screen, as I moved around slightly when filming, and this will have
affected the look.

6. Post Production Day 2
• Today I made a lot of progress. To begin with, I continued on from
day one by piecing all my footage together so it was all in the correct
order. This was simple to do, as I followed my timeline from my
planning PowerPoint, as well as using my script.
• Once I was happy with the way everything was ordered, I began to
tidy areas up, and began working on my green screen segments.
• I had already practiced this on Day 1, so I roughly knew what I was
doing. What I realised however, as it wasn’t my orginal plan, was that
I hadnt thought much about what I was going to put in place of the
green screen, so today I also spent a lot of time figuring out what
filler footage was going where.
• To help me fill the spaces in a clean way, I decided to go into
Photoshop, and select images I had taken, as well as images online,
and turn them into a background. To do this I added a Gaussian blur
over all my images, so that they were clear to see, however were not
too distracting from the presenter speaking. This was very enjoyable,
as it gave me a bit of a break from working in premier. It was also
nice to search up some new images, that I had perhaps missed in the
planning. So far, it seems to be working well.

7. Post Production Day 3
• Today I did a lot of work adding backgrounds to my green screen, as well as
making a few things outside of premier and in Photoshop.
• Today I began by continuing with my Georgian Theatre and Granby Hotel
segment, and spent most of my time working on it. I found that I had a lack of
my own footage for this segment, so similar to yesterday, I spent a lot of time
creating background images within Photoshop and adding them to my green
screen using Ultra Keying. This was time consuming, as I hadn't really collected
any images in my planning that could be placed on a green screen image, so I
had to spend a lot of time searching for the images as well as editing them.
• As well as simple still images, today I created a parallax image to go into the
Georgian Theatre segment. This was a nice task, as it meant I could take a break
from editing and Ultra Keying, however I haven't made a parallax since my
experiments stage, so it took a bit longer than expected. However in the end I
liked the way it came out and it fits well with the segment.
• As I mentioned, I also did some more work on my green screen, using the Ultra
Key tool, and I now feel a lot more confident using this feature than I did on day
1 of post.
• Another large task I did today, was working on some key framing, and adding
some movement to what would be still images, just to make it more exciting.
Although it is quite a simple task, it took me a while to understand what exactly I
was doing, and how to get my footage to move in the way I wanted. This took up
quite a lot of the morning, as I spent a while figuring out how to work it,
however in the end it did make the segment a little more interesting, and I have
learnt a new skill.
Key Framing Segment:

8. Post Production Day 4
• Today I managed to complete my first draft of my factual project, with improvements and
feedback given.
• To begin with, this morning I refined and finished editing my clips together. This process
included adding backgrounds to my green screens, ultra keying the clips that I had not
completed already and made sure that the editing was clear and to the standard I wanted. I
looked through the whole thing once or twice to double check that everything was how I
wanted, and that the structure was completed.
• An issue that I faced this morning, among others, was difficulty with my green screen specifically in the
segment regarding Harrogate Theatre. When I came to add the background into the clip, I found that in
the process of keying, that it had picked up my eyes as background as well, leaving them glowing with
the background behind coming through them. In effects controls, I tried to edit the settings to fix this
issue, however it just wasn’t working. So instead, I decided to use mostly found footage and my own,
and used my voice from presenting as a voice over rather than my face be in it. I think this worked well
and the problem was solved as best it could, however if I had had more footage of the theatre, maybe
some images inside, I think there would have been more variations in the images on screen.
• This afternoon I really focused on trying to get it finished, and I focused a lot in the first half,
concentrating on adding music. In my initial planning, I had decided to use old fashioned music,
and collected songs from the time such as Piano Rag and songs from popular artists at the time
such as Ada Jones. However, when putting the song over some of the footage, I realized that it
didn't’t work well, the song in the background dampening my voice over, and the sound was
quite imposing. As it is catered towards a teenage audience, I decided to gather on YouTube
some lofi beat remixed with songs from the 20th century, as this genre of music is very popular
with teens today. These sounds worked really when, and using the YouTube to MP3 converter, I
imported them into my project.
• The final section I completed today, was the segment about the Ghost Hauntings of Harrogate
theatre, which I wanted to be a spooky segment, so I spent the last part of the day on it.
Online, I found an image of a green screen TV, and in premier pro I added the clip of me
speaking in the TV. To add some atmosphere, I also added an overlay of a static TV over the top,
and added some thunder and lighting crashes too. To keep in the theme of using a lofi remix, I
added a slowed down version of Singing In The Rain remix, adding some distorted effects to
give a spooky ambience. I don’t know that it worked to really spook the audience out, however
it was fun to experiment with creating tension.
Without
background
With
Background –
producing glow
I reduced the speed of
the song by 60%

9. Post Production Day 5 (Amendments)
• After receiving feedback on my final piece, I decided to try and improve on my work and take on the improvements set
for me, to see if I can and make my final product any better.
• In my feedback, some notable things to improve on was the length of the piece as it was too long, and to rework some
of the visuals, removing myself presenting and using my voice as a voice over instead.
• To do this, me and my tutor discussed separating some of the segments, to create separate one minute episodes with
and intro and an outro, acting as a web show instead of the long form I had originally created.
• To begin with, I spent a little bit of time creating an intro theme that would feature at the start of each episode. To do
this, using found footage I had collected during my planning, I clipped together old videos of Harrogate from the time
period of 1950’s-1970’s. I liked creating this intro as I finally got to use the old footage I had collected and use it in a
substantial way, and because there was lots of it, I could pick and choose and experiment a bit with what clips worked
together and what bits didn’t. To make it a real finished introduction piece, using the legacy title tool in premier pro, I
added the title of the show onto the final clip. I liked the way it came out, and I think it works in a cohesive way to keep
everything linked together.
• For my first amendment, I decided to use the segment focusing on Harrogate Theatre, as due to the green screen issue I
mentioned earlier, I had already turned my presenting into something of a voice over, and as time was running out for
production I thought it would be quicker to use a version that needed less change to it. Using the already exported
segment, I kept most of the sequence the same when talking about the main history of Harrogate Theatre, and using
found clips of Victorian seances, and images of “ghost photography” online, I added the images over the top of the tale
about the ghost of Alice. To add a little bit of interest to the screen, I added some movement to the images, with the
camera scanning across the image to help the viewer focussing on parts of the photograph I wanted. With my images I
tried to use as many photograph and art pieces created in the 18th and 19th century to give it a more authentic feel.
• Overall I think the idea to separate segments into a smaller one minute episodes was a good idea, as it cut down the
run time dramatically, and the voice over without me presenting in front of the green screen worked much better
overall.