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•Know: On Thursday I started my FMP officially.  For my FMP I want to do a sort of gothic horror movie, using the story I came up with at the beginning of the year "Can You Help Me Find My Legs?" I've been planning to do this all year, trying to come up with the perfect script. As I don't know the theme yet I have written down ideas just in case it doesn't fit; which for me would be devastating. I asked Oliver Baker read my latest draft and afterwards he said that he liked it and said that it has made him want to step up his own game. As a criticism he thought there was a scene involving milk that he thought was a bit unnecessary and I could have improved it by expanding it and making it have more of a reason to be in the story. But apart from that there wasn't anything else he would improve about it. As a response to this criticism I redrafted the script again so that I could expand on it a bit more, by making certain situations in the story more clear.

•Do: Jack Blaney wanted to be in my group for the FMP last week and I accepted. Over the week I've ben thinking about it more and more and I've come to the conclusion I don't want Jack to work on this project. My reservations started shortly after the screening of the music video project, where I started to realise that Jack has never really liked any of my ideas, because he finds them too strange. A fair criticism, but if we are to work together, we need to be on the same page. So I fired him. I just told him it wasn't going to work out and we mutually agreed to split. It was easier than I thought it would be.

•Show: I presented my ideas and diary logs on two separate padlet walls and decorated them with background images from my favourite films.

•Improve: I have learned that it's not that hard to reject people and how to customise the background of the padlet wall. If I had know how to customise it a year ago I could have had so much fun.

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•Know: This week I wanted to research more about what makes people scared. What people find creepy. One of the main sources I used to get this information was an academic paper called "(On the Nature of) CREEPINESS by Francis T. McAndrew and Sara S. Koehnke. In the paper on page 11 the Professor gives a list of character traits that people find "Creepy"; and without naming all of them I'll just say that The Man With No Legs fits 9/14 of those traits. One of the character traits is 'The person licks his or her lips frequently' which The Man With No Legs doesn't do, but I might do another draft where he does lick his lips, however I don't want to write another draft for such a minor detail, so this is something I might get the actor to do on the day of filming instead, so that I don't have to write another draft. Also we could do it and it looks unnatural (and not the good kind) so I could scrap the licking the lips thing. However the paper was very helpful in determining what I want from this research. At the bottom of page 12 it explains what the majority of people think when they meet someone who is "Creepy" one of the things they think is 'I am sure that the person intends to harm me,' and 'I am uncomfortable because I cannot predict how he or she will behave,' and 'I feel anxious.' This is how I want my audience to feel when they watch the film. One thing that stood out to me from the paper was when it mentioned that when someone encounters a "Creepy" person 'I believe that he or she is intentionally hiding something from me,' which in the film The Man With No Legs is doing. This research is all for the betterment of the script. We also found out the theme of our FMP this week: "Originality." We found this out at Tate Modern in London, where one thing mainly inspired me. The first was this thing called an "African Adventure", it was very weird and creative and although I'm not going to make something exactly like that, it was still an interesting thing to witness. Luckily it fits with my story, so I don't have to change anything there. Overall the Tate Modern met my expectations, there were some moments where I felt the art was a little pretentious, which some art has a tendency to do; but this also confirmed my worries about making my own work pretentious, so it's taught me to be careful of that. In fact I realised that some of the art I found pretentious refleceted the first few drafts of my script for the FMP.

•Do: I wanted to get the audio from the video that I took of Oliver when he gave me feedback last week. Before this week I had never known what to format what export the audio file as. Jack Bowman told me to export it as a WAV file and that I should do that for every bit of audio I create.

•Show: To present my work and inspiration at Tate Modern, I put it all together in a padlet wall. I also added the audo from the feedback onto my FMP padlet wall and Showbie.

•Improve: I feel my mind map is a little uncreative, so maybe I could have improved it in that sense. I'll make up for that in my storyboard. It was just a bit basic, which I wanted to avoid for the FMP and all my future work.

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•Know: This week I created an account on StarNow and sent out a casting call for someone to play The Man With No Legs. I got 19 applications and I've looked at all of them. I'm judging them by looking at their face, their voice and hair. I've narrowed them down to one, his name is Tony Richardson. His face looks perfect and I never imagined a voice for the character, but I can hear his voice working with it. I watched some of his work, he's been in a couple of short films and music videos, but nothing too big which is good. Over the week we talked about specifics like what he can do acting wise and travel etc. Then I sent him the script and he said it was fantastic and creative and would love to be in it. I also scouted a location I've had in mind all year. It's located behind the Henry Moore Foundation in an abandoned Nissen hut. These are buildings that were designed during WW1, but were used heavily during WW2. I was walking past it around a year and a half ago on a long walk and the location always stuck in my mind. Upon visiting again recently I came across a local who was walking past and he gave me the name and address of the man who owns the land Robert Prior. I went to their house and explained the situation and he gave me his email so that I could email him the details; he explained that he doesn't mind at all if I use the location, he just wants to know in more detail what I'll be doing there. When I got home I sent him an email and he sent one back officially giving me permission to film there. While I was at the location I took some test shots both in colour and in black and white. I also created another padlet wall so that I could put all my pre-production evidence and documents in there.

•Do: I had never spoken to any actors before today, at first it was daunting, but after a while you get used to it. I think he will be right for the part. The pictures he has on his account aren't very attractive which is what I want and those were taken professionally with lighting and makeup; I can only imagine what he'll look like without all of those things (obviously I won't mention these things to him). Speaking to the land owner was kind of awkward as well, Prior is a wealthy man who lives in a bungalow. He has well kept dark grey hair and has pets running around everywhere, very polite. I felt slightly uncomfortable being in someone's house that I don't know at first, but my mum and his wife was there too, so it's not like danger was around the corner.

•Show: I presented my work on a separate padlet wall so that I can show evidence of my work. I haven't used padlet to do that before, normally I would use Showbie, but the FMP section on Showbie hasn't opened up yet, so when it does I'll upload all of it on there too. A thing to note about the drafts is that I changed the title to Playdead, because I thought "Can You Help Me Find My Legs" was too funny. I wanted something that was ambiguous, but intriguing enough so that people will want to watch it.

•Improve: During my time at Robert Prior's residence I didn't really explain why I wanted to use the location; I mean I explained why, but I just didn't give a very good case for it. My Mum being the lovely mother that she is butted in and tried to explain it for me, after she realised I was struggling. In the end we got permission, but I wish I was the one who explained it to him as it's my project, so I need to improve my talking skills when I want something from someone else; something that my Mum is great at but I'm not.

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•Know: This week I finished my Task 1 research and developed my skills in writing. I did an essay on my favourite director Stanley Kubrick and a film called Eraserhead. These two essays helped with developing my writing skills. When I finished Task 1 I started Task 2 and Lorraine gave me a very useful document about the "seven types of people", which helped to determine who my target audience is.

•Do: For the Stanley Kubrick essay, I wanted to write it like less of a personal experience and just write about what his films could make other people experience and how he does that. For the Eraserhead essay, I felt like I had to write it like a personal experience, because it was relevant to understanding why I wanted to make something like this. For the research summary I added snippets of information from both essays and included them in the summary. When compiling two or more images together to form one big picture, I put them all together in a separate word document and then took a screenshot of all the images together, then put that screenshot into the essay document. I wanted to achieve something like that in my essay to make it more visual, so I came up with that solution. Last term I learned that you can insert captions into images on Word, so I used this to my advantage this term by using captions to explain what the images were.

•Show: I presented my work in the form of Microsoft Word, then converted into a PDF.

•Improve: To improve I almost left my Task 1a Summary to the last minute, so next time I would like to have it all prepared in time for the deadline. I also forgot to write targets for myself on some of the days this week, so I need to remember to do them in the mornings.

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•Know: After I got my feedback for Task 1 back I found out I got a merit, however I want a distinction. I sat down with Lorraine and she told me everything I need to do to improve and get a distinction. I went through it all again using the suggestions she gave me and I handed it back in again. After that I started on Task 2, this time I edited some footage I took of my actor and got some feedback on it from Joe Jones, Kate and Mark. Their feedback wasn't negative, it more just affirmed what I wanted to achieve with the footage, in terms of if the clip created the specific response that I wanted. I also took some test footage of some factories and I liked them so much that I think I will use it in the finished film.

•Do: When Lorraine told me what to improve on, I wrote it all down instead of trying to remember what she told me, which helped a lot as it gave me something to check and tick off when I'd finished which was satisfying.

•Show: I presented my work through a word document and for videos and pictures, I converted them into the necessary files for that format.

•Improve: To improve for weeks to come, I will try to get a distinction first time without going back to improve bits. I think a lot of this comes down to my writing, as I always unintentionally write informally, as if it's just coming out of my mouth. I also sometimes don't proof read my work which I have been doing more of lately, but is probably why it comes out like that. To improve for next time, I should both proof read my work and write more formally to try and get the highest mark possible.

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•Know: This week to expand my research for Task 2, I visited the Stanley Kubrick Archives in Londomn. There I was presented with boxes upon boxes of pre-production/production documents, including storyboards, location scouts, call sheets and hand written notes by Kubrick himself. Over the 4 hours I was there, I gained a greater insight into how Kubrick made his movies and the precedure he endrured throughout production, in which he would use painstaking precision in every step of the way. With his call sheets he would put every bit of necessary information he could onto the sheet, like props, equipment, location, actors needed, travel etc. His storyboards would differ from project to project, sometimes he wouldn't use them, sometimes he would only make them for certain scenes in a movie. When he did use them, he would usse different techniques each time. For example for "2001: a space odyssey" he didn't use any descriptions, he let the images talk for themselves, which works for that movie because there is very little going on but the visuals. For "Barry Lyndon" sometimes he would take photos of the location they planned to use, lay some tracing paper over it and draw the characters in the frame like that. It was also interesting to see the precedure of how he adapted novels too, in his copy of Stephen Kings "The Shining" novel, he would write notes in the margins about how he could adapt certain aspects of a novel; in The Shining's case, it seemed he was concerned with how to make the story better. He would constantly write things like "Ridiculous", or "Silly", and would even write in bold letters complaints about character choices, like someone who is watching a dumb horror movie. It was quite amusing and I also found out that they filmed the last sequence inside a hospital of "A Clockwork Orange" inside The Princess Alexandra Hospital in Harlow, where I was born, which was quite a find. It was facinating to learn about how he made his films and there are things that I will definitely take on board in the future. (Below is a picture of me at the Archives).

•Do: A new skill I used was using the tube map, without my Dad helping me. For my research, I went back and improve some aspects of Task 1 to solicitate a distinction, using the feedback that Lorraine gave me at the start of the week. I'm proud of that work now, especially because one of the days I set myself targets of things to improve or add and I finished all of them in two days, which was satisfying. I finished Task 2 again on time, however I am dissapointed that I wasn't able to use many pictures to make my summary more visual. This is because there wasn't any opportunities to add any, as what I was talking about wasn't very visual, except for the Kubrick stuff, but I wasn't allowed to take pictures there. I used a skill I learned during the music video, where I insert captions onto pictures and group them together, as well as grouping lots of images together to make one big picture, which I learned a couple of weeks ago. That has proved to come in useful recently.

•Show: I presented my work in a word document throughout all of my work, except for the experimental videos and photos, which I presented in the video or photo format and uploaded to Showbie.

•Improve: Before I went to the archives, I was sent an email suggesting that I search the catalog that they had at the Kubrick Archives, but I decided not too do that, mainly because the catalog was hard to read and work out. However when I got there, I was shown how to use it and it was much easier than it looks, so if I was to go back there I will tell them the stuff I want, so that it is ready for when I get there. This would have given me more time to research, because I spent half an hour trying to figure out what I want to look at. When Kate red my Task 2 summary, she suggested that I try and make my work more descriptive, she didn't really give an example, so I changed a few things to make it more decriptive, but I will keep that in mind.

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•Know: This week I finished all of my pre-production documents and to avoid having to get a remark, to get the distinction first time, I tried to ask Lorraine constantly if what I am doing looks okay. She would give me helpful feedback to improve and I uploaded everyything on time, so overall this week has been a succcess. On my storyboards I designed them in the style of a comic book, becuase I feel like the story is strange enough to warrant a version through the style of a horror comic. The inspirations that I was drawn to were the works of Junji Ito, who draws very detailed macarbre drawings of horrific things; but it is the detail and precision and the patience of the artist that stands out to me, so I wanted to apply that to my work. Below is an example of one of the pages from the storyboard. I didn't storyboard the whole thing, only scenes that I had in my mind, that were vital to the plot where drawn up. This was done, not only to save time, but because I probably wouldn't stick to the storyboard during filming. I would feel restricted with a storyboard and it could be possible that I would find a better shot. This week I also found out that I got a distinction first time for my Task 2 work, which was an improvement from task 1 and motivated me to try even harder.

•Do: I have never drawn anything before with pen, which is what I did with the storyboard. I first drew the base of the drawing with pencil and then went over it carefully with a pen; this makes the drawing more clear. I had never drawn buildings before either, I always used to draw people portraits only, but I don't think my exterior shots of the factories were that bad. Some of the drawings were a bit naff, but I usually draw portraits only so I never have to scale them down which is something I find difficult. I don't mind though because I don't consider myself a great drawer and I think the images help get the point across for what I want in those shots. I also hate drawing anything to do with hands or feet, so that was new for me; the hand looked okay, but the foot was kind of bad.

•Show: I presented my work through a series of word documents and for the storyboard I drew on A3 sheets of paper and then took pictures of them and uploaded to Showbie.

•Improve: Apart from getting to the point where I don't need Lorraine's assurance that what I am doing is to the level I want it to be, this week was pretty successful. I have learned how to make a detailed production schedule, contingency plan and storyboard, which are all things that I will consider when I am on a future project.

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•Know: This week I officially began filming on Saturday and Sunday. On Saturday I was with my friend Brandon who plays The Boy experimenting with shots and single shot frames, and on Sunday the actor I hired from StarNow Tony Richardson who came down from London. When we got on set it was quite daunting at first to be working with a professional actor, but he was a cool guy. I guess Tony didn't realise just how physically demanding the role was, because he isn't old, but he's at an age where it's not as easy to lay down on the ground every minute. On set Greg Perez took video footage of me and everyone on set as proof of me directing, but also as a sort of behind the scenes footage.

•Do: One thing that proved difficult was that Brandon couldn’t stay for too long as his parents wanted him back home in no more than two hours, because they wanted him to revise for mocks. I would have love to have done at the minimum seven to 10 takes for each shot, but there just wasn’t enough time. One shot that we did was a dialogue close up shot of Brandon; he wasn’t quite convincing me, so in the end we shot the same shot 27 times (on some takes I didn't stop the camera). The idea being that after a while, the actor will start to lose the idea of acting and instead just being. I wanted him to lose all those little touches that you do as an actor that they think make the performance; I wanted him to just be. In the end Brandon reminded me that we were losing a lot of time and that we should move on, I responded “I think I’ll use the third take anyway.” Brandon laughed, but I was being serious. I figured out that sometimes the first takes sometimes look and sound the most spontaneous, so I learned that sometimes the most spontaneous can be the best ones too. One of the things we didn’t do which was a rookie mistake was we didn’t use a clapperboard on both days, which proved to be a bit of an inconvenience when merging audio clips with the video clips in editing.

•Show: I haven't presented my work on anything yet. I got some feedback from Lorraine who told me that sometimes it is good to show someone something even if it isn't finished, to show the progression of the making of the film. That will be something to do for next week. Below is a screenshot of the film in premiere pro.

•Improve: One of the things we didn’t do which was a rookie mistake was we didn’t use a clapperboard on both days, which proved to be a bit of an inconvenience when merging audio clips with the video clips in editing. Afterwards I asked Greg if there was anything I could improve on as a director and he said that he thought I should have brought more visual representations of what I'm saying.

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•Know: When it comes to directing actors, I've found that there are lots of things you can do to help them get into the role. I love the idea of the three faces technique. The first face: the one you show the world. The second face: the one you show your friends and family. And the third face: the face don’t show anyone, the soul, the person who you really are; and if an actor knows what he is doing, the third face is always the one that everyone remembers. For example Jack Torrance in The Shining, or Alex DeLarge from A Clockwork Orange, Norman Bates in Psycho, or Hannibal Lector in Silence of The Lambs. It’s that third face that makes them iconic, and that is one of the things I wish to achieve with my film (not to make an iconic face, that’s impossible), but to present a character that some people might remember. I didn't come up with that, I heard it in a YouTube video, but I've tried to apply that to my actors on set. I also made a poster and DVD cover for my movie this week. For my movie poster, I wanted to make it something that stands out, something unique and mysterious like the old movie posters you would find in the early days of movies. I find movie posters nowadays to be the most uncreative aspects of movies, as they all follow specific rules, like having the heads of actors float over some kind of landscape relevant to the movie, which to me comes off as lazy as so many studios have used this style to death. Or posters that show an eye with the movie title in the corneas. I like posters that are worth hanging over your wall and are pleasing for the eye to look at. For example The Exorcist is a great movie poster, it’s ambiguous, but also is relevant to the story, because it takes a pivotal moment from the movie and puts it out of context, making the people who see the poster want to know what happens. Or take Jaws, probably the most iconic movie poster of all time, it’s been mimicked and parodied since the poster was first seen. This is because it’s eye catching and kind of scary, which sets up the mood for what audiences could have expected when it first came out. So for my movie poster I wanted to incorporate those styles into my poster. It is in black and white like the film is; it takes a pivotal moment from the end of the movie and puts it out of context, leaving a sense of mystery and it’s boxed in like all those other movie posters from the 70s.

•Do: When I look at a take with some dialogue, I want to listen carefully to each and every word that is spoken, to make sure that each word is exactly as I want it. That’s why in the car on the way to the location, I went through the lines with Brandon and we deconstructed each word carefully with the goal to make his delivery sound organic. I’m constantly thinking and to some degree worrying, about how I’m going to make this interesting visually. I usually resort to symmetrical shots with my characters on either side of the screen with something else in the middle of them. If it’s just one character I’ll always have them in the centre of frame, if the characters are the only thing that is important in the shot, then I won’t have them to one side to make it look different. It seems unnecessary to me. I also want shots to ride out for a while, with single takes; this being because I think it forces the audience to pay more attention to what’s going on and makes the viewer feel like they’re watching a real conversation. Also it makes scenes and characters seem more realistic; whether I have achieved this or not will be up to the audience.

•Show: I presented my poster as a JPEG and put it on Showbie. As for the other bits on premiere pro, I haven't had the opportunity to present that yet.

•Improve: I think it is damaging to assume that every person who watches your film is your Mum, instead of someone who is probably busy, or has other things on their mind. How can you make this stimulating enough and worth it for the viewer to watch your stuff? I keep needing to remind myself that it’s not good just because I made it and that not everybody is going to be automatically interested in what I’m interested in and so in that case how can you make this interesting? As a discipline I think it’s very helpful. My biggest fear is that at the end, people will hate it, or worse I’ll sound pretentious talking about it when they ask me questions, so in terms of preparations for the show-time, that discipline I have will hopefully keep me in line and I won’t sound like an idiot. I think the worst thing an artist can do (not that I have done anything to earn that status), is to talk about their own work, because no matter what it is (painting, sculpture, book, film etc.) it should be up to the audience to formulate their own opinion. For me, the films that I find more stimulating are the ones that don’t answer questions and instead asks me to figure it out for myself. It’s a sort of mutual respect between you and the filmmaker. And sometimes whenever I hear the director talk about their own work, it kind of kills the experience I had with the film in some way, because I probably thought of something completely different to what they think such and such means. Plus I could just not like them as a person for whatever reason, tainting their films a bit and I don't want that to happen to me. Unfortunately if you talk too much about this you start to sound pretentious, so I'll stop.

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•Know: I finished a rough cut of the finished film and the finished cut. The rough cut was very loose; there were some bits where I needed to add or get rid of certain audio clips and refine certain scenes to make them flow nicer. The feedback I got from my rough cut was very helpful and I implemented it over the weekend when I went back to the location to film. Almost everyone said that some of the shots went on for too long, for example a scene where The Boy is sitting by himself waiting for the man to give him his soup, which lasted 30 seconds. I did this because I wanted to keep the slow, dreary atmosphere that I tried to build up at the start. In this instance I agreed it might have been too long and there wasn't much else going on in the shot, so I cut it by 10 seconds and added some water droplet sound effects. People still said it was too long, but I liked it, so I kept it. The same goes for the other shos that some said went on for too long. I like long takes, because the idea is to keep the audience guessing for what's to come and it makes scenes more organic; a natural progression. My primary influences on style and substance, were the directors Stanely Kubrick, Michael Haneke, David Lynch and Andrei Tarkovsky. I think these influences are clear as some people have mentioned both Lynch and Tarkovsky and Cliff even mentioned Ben Wheatley, another director who's work I am familiar with. From the feedback I was also told mainly by Jack Bowman, that some audio clips were a bit sharp at the end of them and that I should add a fade onto the end of the audio clip. I was aware of this already, but it was a good reminder and I fixed this pretty quickly. I also added classical music to the ending, because I felt it worked and addded to the weight of the ending I was trying to achieve. I didn't even  need to edit the clips to fit the song, for some reason the piece fitted perfectly with the film.

•Do: I learned how to upload a custom thumbnail on a YouTube video, to make the film from the outset look more appealing.

•Show: I uploaded the feedback by taking screenshots of the feedback from the email and uploading the image to Showbie, or if it was an audio file I uploaded that to Showbie too. For the rough cut and final edit, I uploaded them onto YouTube and uploaded the YouTube link to Showbie.

•Improve: When it comes to the YouTube thumbnail, it didn't look quite as clear as I hoped and becuase the image itself is quite small. I don't have the original image anymore either for some reason, so I can't make a new one to stretch out the image to fill out the entire thumbnail.

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•Know: In the middle of the day I went home to do another poster with the intention of adding the tagline "Hello little boy... can you help me find my legs?", so that the audience might understand the story a bit more. But it also gave me an opportunity to clear my head and I figured out what I can do to make the movie better; so once college has finished I will go back and improve on it until it's as perfect as it can be in my eyes. The feedback that I got was very kind, everyone who watched it and spoke to me about it all said that they liked it. People found comparisons to Stanley Kubrick and David Lynch, many people saying it was weird and quirky and that they never got bored (which was fantastic). Some people said that they weren't quite sure what happened and that they didn't get it, which is fine. I don''t mind that because you don't necessarily have to understand a movie for you to like it and not everything in movies necessarily has to be understood; that's why most people go back to watch a movie, so that they can see if they understand it again. Kate Malden's mum said that she liked it so much that she wants to screen it to some people at Cambridge TV which is where she works.

•Do: I was very nervous going in because I wasn't sure how people would react to it. My anti-social behaviour got in the way of talking to people for a while, as I get anxious around crowds, but after a while I got used to them. That's always what happens though with these things, I'm nervous at first but it gets better after a while, which I don't think willl ever change and I don't want it to.

•Show: The presentation of my work was kind of bland. All I had was a poster and two headphones, which is kind of boring, but it done the job. My film was also shown on the big tv for people to see. You couldn't really get the full experience of the film from it though, as you couldn't really hear it, but I don't mind.

•Improve: For showtime, a better display with more things to look at would be nice. Over this course I have learned many new skills like cameras and lenses, which are better, what they do. I have learned teamworking skills, camera techniques, directing and working with professional actors. I learned some social skills, how to operate sound and light, asking people for permissions to locations, how to convey a certain emotion on screen. Overall I would my two years here have been very efficient. I will continue to work on the film even after I have left college to make it as perfect as it can be and I hope to continue on in this line of work, even if it's something I do on the side.