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We leveraged Canva as our primary design tool, enabling us to showcase our concepts in a visually captivating and structured manner. From crafting presentations to storyboards and whiteboards, Canva offered a versatile platform where we could seamlessly bring our ideas to life. Its extensive library of ‘elements’ and extensive customisation options, allowed us to personalise our creations. With the ability to upload custom images, and self created PNGs, access diverse font selections, and even perform photo colour editing, Canva facilitated the creation of presentations that precisely matched our vision. By combining pre-existing elements with our own visuals, we created presentations that not only conveyed our ideas effectively but also captivated our audience visually, reducing the monotony of text-heavy content. From conveying information to sparking creativity, Canva played a pivotal role in our project, serving as our go-to tool for presenting a plethora of ideas, including our storyboard, with both clarity and creativity.

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Pinterest was one of the most important tools throughout our project journey, offering an array of visually captivating resources that significantly enriched our creative process. In contrast to generic images often encountered through conventional search engines, Pinterest curated a selection of aesthetically pleasing visuals that perfectly aligned with our artistic vision. Utilising Pinterest, we curated a collection of images that not only mirrored our vision but also expanded upon it, serving as a catalyst for our creative ideation. These images were instrumental in creating mood boards, both for character development, such as Scarlett's persona, and for defining the visual identity of our film, thus solidifying our collective vision. Leveraging Pinterest's collaborative board feature, Ruby and I seamlessly shared and refined our ideas, fostering effective communication and ultimately contributing to the coherence of our vision. With its extensive array of images covering every facet of filmmaking, from mise-en-scene to cinematography and even editing, Pinterest served as an invaluable resource in enhancing the aesthetic appeal of our project. Moreover, Pinterest played a huge role in our presentation efforts, with all visuals sourced from the platform, giving our presentations a professional and visually engaging edge.

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Spotify served as our primary platform for sourcing and organising our musical score selections. The significance of music in enhancing our film's impact cannot be overstated, as it intricately heightened scenes and emotions, fostering powerful juxtapositions. Particularly, Spotify played a pivotal role in our discovery of the fitting track 'You're My World' by Cilla Black, a song that perfectly encapsulated the essence of our narrative. Beyond mere organisation, Spotify's search functionality proved helpful in our quest for the ideal musical accompaniments. By inputting desired emotional themes into the search bar, we were presented with curated playlists tailored to evoke specific feelings, facilitating Ruby's discovery of 'You're My World' and its seamless integration into our project. Moreover, Spotify's recommendation feature proved lucky, leading to my discovery of 'Mad Ave Perfume Ad,' a track that resonated fit perfectly into the hotel room scenes. This unexpected find not only enriched our soundtrack but also underscored the platform's role in fostering creative exploration. Thanks to Spotify's comprehensive music library and intuitive features, we were able to curate a soundtrack that not only complemented but elevated the emotional resonance of our film, creating a memorable viewing experience.

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​​Throughout our project journey, YouTube was an invaluable resource, offering a plethora of instructional content and inspirational clips that hugely influenced our creative process. During the planning phase, we used YouTube to discover different film lighting techniques and stylistic choices, which served as guiding principles for our visual narrative. As we transitioned to the filming and storyboarding stage, YouTube continued to be a useful source of knowledge, providing us with insights into various camera shots and editing techniques to elevate the quality of our film. Notably, the montage flashback scene featuring Scarlett drugging the man was inspired by a sequence from 'Shaun of the Dead,' discovered through YouTube. While we adapted the concept to suit our narrative tone, YouTube facilitated our exploration of alternative methods and tutorials, enabling us to achieve a similar effect authentically. Moreover, YouTube played a crucial role in our editing process, offering a wealth of tutorial videos that guided our approach to colour grading and scene composition. Through a combination of online resources and hands-on experimentation, we successfully crafted an evocative colour grade for our flashback sequence. In the realm of sound design, YouTube was important in sourcing unique audio elements, such as the text message alert tone. However, we encountered challenges in achieving consistency in sound quality, necessitating adjustments during post-production to ensure coherence with the rest of the soundtrack as we recorded all other sound effects ourselves. Additionally, YouTube served as a convenient platform for sharing our project videos, facilitating accessibility for our audience via our website. Its user-friendly interface and widespread accessibility proved invaluable in sharing our work effectively.

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Google Sites is a straightforward yet effective tool for showcasing our research and project work in an organised and visually appealing manner. Despite its simplicity, it offers sufficient tools and features to create a customised website that neatly arranges our content

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In sourcing multimedia content for our project, online platforms such as YouTube to MP3/4 converters were helpful. These websites allowed the downloading of audio and video files from YouTube, enabling us to integrate music tracks into our film and preserve film clips for reference and inspiration without losing them in a sea of youtube videos.

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Dafont was a valuable resource for font selection, offering a vast variety of fonts categorised under specific themes such as 'horror,' 'retro,' 'decorative,' and 'western', to name a few. This online platform allowed us to download and test numerous fonts, ensuring that our chosen typeface aligned with both the genre conventions of a thriller film and the mood of our storyline. By experimenting with different fonts, we achieved a visually striking title for our film that resonated with the narrative's aesthetic.

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Photoshop played a pivotal role in crafting visually compelling presentations, allowing me to create custom PNG images that seamlessly integrated into my slides. Dissatisfied with the available online options, I utilised Photoshop to tailor images to match the desired aesthetic and colour scheme, ensuring coherence and visual harmony throughout the presentations I created. Additionally, Photoshop proved crucial in fine-tuning the colour and lighting of specific images, such as those intended for our pitch. For instance, when integrating images into the pitch that complemented our storyline, but lacked consistency in colour, I employed Photoshop to unify them, maintaining a cohesive visual narrative. Furthermore, when exploring potential marketing and distribution avenues for our film, including platforms like Netflix, Photoshop allowed us to visualise our concepts effectively. By leveraging a template of a Netflix film display page, we customised it to create a mock-up of our own streaming service, featuring "Accro" as a highlighted film option. This visual representation not only articulated our vision for marketing and distribution but also brought it to life.

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Premiere Pro was the cornerstone of our post-production workflow, serving as the central hub for all editing tasks. This powerful software facilitated every aspect of our editing process, from sorting through footage to crafting the final cut of our film. With Premiere Pro, we were able to organise and trim our footage, assembling it into a cohesive narrative. The software's transformative features enabled us to manipulate clip scale and position to achieve our desired visual composition. Moreover, the 'Warp Stabiliser' feature proved extremely helpful in refining slightly shaky shots, ensuring a polished and professional finish. In terms of colour grading and correction, the Lumetri Color effect provided the tools necessary to enhance visual aesthetics and fix any lighting issues. We used keyframes to create smooth transitions between clips and audio segments along with using default transitions. The text tool facilitated the creation of our film's title, while a matte layer allowed for the integration of our logo, seamlessly fading it in and out. In managing sound elements, Premiere Pro allowed us to import and arrange a multitude of audio recordings, offering precise control over placement and synchronisation. The audio clip mixer and audio tracker mixer features further refined our sound design, allowing us to create realistic sound effects. However, navigating Premiere Pro's extensive array of tools posed initial challenges, but our familiarity grew over time, allowing us to leverage its capabilities. Ultimately, Premiere Pro allowed us to bring our creative vision to life, resulting in a visually and audibly compelling film opening of a high quality.

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iMovie was used to create our behind-the-scenes footage, providing insight into the filmmaking process and capturing the essence of our collaborative efforts. This footage not only documented the technical aspects of filming and sound recording but also encapsulated the friendship and shared experiences of our team. Creating a short video showcasing the behind-the-scenes of sound recording added a touch of joy and humour to an otherwise demanding process. Additionally, listening to this footage back allowed us to reflect on both successful moments and challenges encountered, offering valuable lessons for future projects.

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Procreate was used for the creation of our company logo. Leveraging the software's creative tools, Kingpai traced over an image of a pomegranate, adding intricate detail and artistic flair. Layering our desired design over the traced image, we achieved a distinctive logo for our production company.

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The Fuji X-S20 was used for capturing our film opening, offering exceptional versatility and performance, particularly in low-light conditions. Understanding the critical importance of aligning ISO with frames per second, we maintained a keen focus on adjusting aperture settings instead. By fine-tuning the f-stop to allow more or less light into the lens, we achieved properly exposed shots of high quality, even despite filming at night time, a decision we made to adhere to the codes and conventions of a thriller film. This camera's focus settings were also important to our production process. While most shots utilised auto-focus, specific scenes requiring focus pulls were shot using the manual focus option. With precision control afforded by manual adjustment, we smoothly transitioned focus from one subject to another, enhancing the cinematic impact. Additionally, the ability to set the focal point while using auto-focus was helpful in directing viewers' attention towards key elements within each scene. Despite the camera's remarkable capabilities, our initial filming encountered setbacks due to oversight and inexperience. Unbeknownst to us, the camera had been set to slow motion by previous users, rendering our footage unusable. However, this setback served as a valuable learning opportunity. Reflecting on our mistakes, we asked our teacher for guidance, thoroughly reviewing camera settings and operational procedures before the next shoot. We covered essential aspects such as the correct ISO settings, techniques for achieving smooth focus pulls, methods to ensure the camera remained in the intended mode and not inadvertently set to slow motion or other unintended settings. Additionally, we went over strategies for ensuring proper exposure in our shots, equipping ourselves with the knowledge and skills necessary to overcome potential technical hurdles and produce high-quality footage consistently. Armed with newfound knowledge and confidence, we approached the next filming session with more preparedness and precision. While minor issues such as the battery dying posed occasional challenges, our proactive approach, including carrying spare batteries and chargers, ensured uninterrupted filming. Overall, the Fuji X S2 not only facilitated the creation of visually compelling footage but also fostered our growth as filmmakers through hands-on learning and adaptation.

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We brought a studio light to our set to compensate for the insufficient ambient lighting, particularly since we were filming at night without access to natural light sources. This was extremely helpful, offering customisable brightness and temperature settings that allowed us to light up even the darkest corners of the room effectively. The adjustable height of the lighting stand enabled us to extend the light source to cover a larger area, enhancing overall visibility during filming. The ability to manipulate the lighting angle was useful in controlling shadows. We could easily reposition the light as needed, fine-tuning brightness levels to suit the mood of each shot. However, despite setting the light to its warmest temperature, we initially struggled to achieve the desired amber hue. To address this, we improvised by draping a yellow shirt over the light, successfully achieving the warm tone we envisioned. While effective, we were concerned about fire hazards due to the light's intensity, although thankfully, no incidents occurred. Regrettably, we could only use one studio light due to availability constraints. While manageable, this limitation hindered our ability to eliminate shadows entirely and achieve a more polished look. Additional lights would have allowed for broader coverage and reduced the need for frequent repositioning, contributing to a smoother production process and enhancing the overall quality of our footage.

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We utilised the handheld Zoom H6 track recorder along with a boom pole, microphone, and deadcat mic cover for sound recording, achieving amazing audio quality and versatility. The H6's advanced preamps and interchangeable capsules offered flexibility, allowing us to adapt our input sources as needed for optimal sound capture. With precise gain control knobs, we maintained balanced decibel levels, ensuring clear recording of both quiet and louder sound at the correct sound level, with a big focus on ensuring our sound levels did not surpass 12 decibels. The inclusion of phantom power for all main outputs simplified setup, eliminating the need for bulky external power supplies typically required for tube microphones. Additionally, the Auto-record, Pre-record, and Backup-record functions provided added assurance that we captured the perfect take. Using the headphone jack for real-time monitoring and playback for post-recording analysis, we fine-tuned our recordings and identified areas for improvement. Direct recording onto an SD card streamlined the transfer process to our devices, enhancing workflow efficiency. Opting for a boom pole with a microphone attachment over directly attaching a microphone to the recorder allowed for more flexible positioning and minimised unwanted background noise such as breathing. Considering our approach to sound recording, which involved closely watching footage playback and simultaneously imitating actions seen on screen, this method allowed us to synchronise sound capture with visual cues, ensuring seamless integration of audio and video elements. Furthermore, the boom pole facilitated smooth movement and tracking of Ruby, particularly during scenes where Scarlett was walking or in motion. This allowed us to maintain consistent audio quality and perspective, enhancing the overall coherence of our production. The inclusion of a dead cat mic cover proved crucial for outdoor scenes, mitigating wind interference and preserving sound quality. By prioritising meticulous sound recording techniques and leveraging the capabilities of the Zoom H6, we ensured that our audio complemented the visual elements of our production to create a cohesive and immersive viewing experience.

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The camera stabiliser expansion cage was an extremely useful asset, particularly when capturing dynamic shots that required camera movement. While we did bring a tripod for stationary shots, the flexibility and ease of handheld filming provided by the cage were unmatched. In our initial filming attempts, shaky footage presented a challenge, prompting us to take corrective action during subsequent shoots. With the camera cage, I was able to achieve stable handheld shots, ensuring smooth and steady footage even in motion-intensive scenes. This allowed me to effortlessly track subjects without compromising the integrity of the shot's composition or angle. The resulting improvement in the overall quality of our production was significant. Although some minor adjustments were still necessary in post-production to fine-tune stability, the camera cage played a pivotal role in delivering consistently smooth and stable footage. It played a significant role in contributing towards enhancing the visual appeal and professionalism of our project.