Establishing shots help show the audience the whole scene and explain what is going on 

The 180-degree rule involves shooting all your shots on an imaginary line, especially when filming a conversation, if you cross the line, it could not fit and make the character look as though they are changing direction 

Diegetic sound must be continuous from shot to shot or the editing will seem unfinished and obvious 

What sparked my interest 

Using non diegetic sound seems perfect for suspense sequences and settings where the raw footage of a film may not set the atmosphere for the film.

I have always liked the idea of being behind the camera, the film and tv industry is one that I believe anyone can be entertained by no matter who you are or what you enjoy there is something out there that you will enjoy and that is one of things that inspired me to pursue a career in it. The idea of something that I created with my own thoughts and ideas entertaining people is what drives me to succeed in the industry. I think that with enough practice and dedication, anyone can use their own mind to create a story or a world of their own.

Techniques I would like to use 

I would like to use silence in my own production, I think that dead silence is one of the best ways to create suspense and mystery in a scene, and it's also one of the easiest to achieve, need almost nothing to carry out. 

Although hard to pull off, I would like to use a POV shot in one of my productions because I think it is one of the best ways to put the audience in the shoes of the character and really show the experience that they are going through, whether that be exciting, daring, scary or peaceful. 

I would also like to ensure that I use a range of techniques when it comes to my camera angles and movement when filming otherwise my production may look unfinished or lazy 

What I watched 

I recently watch an American horror/thriller film called I See You, directed by Adam Randall and sourced from a screenplay by Devon Graye. The film is about a family that experience two phroggers (when someone secretly lives in another person's home without their knowledge.) living inside of their home. As phroggers, teenagers Mindy and Alec infiltrate the suburban home of police detective Greg Harper, his counsellor wife Jackie, and their teenage son Connor. Although Mindy insists on drawing no attention to themselves while hiding inside the house, Alec begins mentally messing with the Harpers by removing photographs from their frames, turning on televisions, and urinating on Greg while he sleeps. He also hides Jackie's favourite mug which has sunflowers painted on it. The family vaguely wonders if there may be a paranormal presence haunting their home. 

I enjoyed watching the film because I am a big horror/thriller fan, the plotline and overall atmosphere within the film ties in perfectly with my suspense short film production. The use of music along with silence was commonly used which is something I will definitely be applying to my own work. The film taught me that suspense and horror can be created in pretty much any situation, light or dark, day or night. 

Along with this the lighting fits perfectly, the scene is filmed at the dead of night with only lights from streetlamps and nearby houses coming through the background of the scene. It only allowed the viewer to see certain aspects of the scene, causing the build up of more suspense and provoking questions to arise in the audiences mind.

Although not commonly used for suspense scenes, the confused and muffled dialogue coming from Andre in this scene adds to the suspense and mystery of the whole scene.

The introduction of the music "Run Rabbit Run" coming from the car that pulls up is a brilliant addition to the suspense, the lyrics even reflect the scene, Andre is going to be kidnapped and he should run but he knows nothing of it and is completely clueless. This audio also increases in volume throughout the scene as the kidnapper gets closer to achieving their goal.

There are many types of lighting, mainly artificial and natural. Artificial coming from lights indoors, lighting rigs, anything made by man. Natural being illumination from sunlight, moonlight and fire. There is also ambient light, these can come from a light up "open" sign of a bar, a cars headlight or a lamppost.

The term "gaffer" refers to someone who is head of the lighting team on a film production crew. He or she help the director of photography achieve the desired lighting for each shot.

Sound and lighting must be consistent throughout all shots within film making, without consistency the production can easily look choppy and unpleasing to the audience.

The use of placing when it comes to lighting is important as it can be effectively used, for example using lighting to foreshadow something or put lighting on someone's face to emphasise emotion within a scene.

What sparked my creativity

I like the idea of using ambient lighting, I think its a great way of adding to the atmosphere of a scene with ease. I also like the idea of using lighting to put emphasis on a certain aspect of a scene for example the emotion in someone's face.

What I would like to use

I definitely like the idea of showing importance and focus on something through lighting. I think lighting can make an extremely big difference to a scene and playing around with it on set could be an interesting part of film making and each change to the lighting of a shot can really portray different feelings/atmospheres.

I didn't encounter many issues while editing, although finding appropriate sound effects online was a fair challenge while also fun, I eventually decided on them.

Most of the editing part of my project went well, I enjoyed cutting and editing the video and audio, experimenting with different types of sound effects on different shots was fun.

The editing process taught me that there are an infinite ways editing clips to create different atmospheres and moods in films. It also taught me the importance of experimenting and trying out new editing styles. You may discover something you may not have tried before or discover a new tool you haven't used or taken full advantage of.

Overall I am pleased with how this project went, it was my first time being fully involved in the entire creative process of filmmaking, it gave an insight to how the industry works and how much work goes into the making of cinema. Throughout the project I have learnt how important time management is within filmmaking and how to improve my own time management skills.

This project has definitely taught me how to effectively identify well made suspense scenes and even create my own. It as also helped me realise that you do not need the most expensive of equipment and production team to create your own film.

Although we ran into issues while producing our project, I am very happy with the outcome, as a whole I think we did quite well to overcome issues and find ways around inconveniences that occurred. With this being our first ever time producing a film, I was expecting to run into issues in all aspects. When we showed others our production after finalizing the edits, we had mainly positive feedback and any constructive criticism was helpful as we can apply it to our work in future projects.

We decided on using the house of one of our group members

Casting

We needed two cast members for our production, a member of our group was used for one character and a friend outside of college was the other cast member.

Props & make up, costumes

We used a toothbrush, a laptop, a kitchen knife and a mobile phone in our project.

Cinematography and Visual Style

We used a varied amount of shot types (POV, close up, panning shot etc.)

Sound Design & Music

The sound and music was mainly added in editing.

The Effectiveness of my Research

Location scouting for our production became an issue once we were denied access to our chosen filming spot days before we planned to start filming. We tried a few other spots that weren't quite right and finalized our chosen filming location as one of our group members house. Location scouting is important for all projects in order to ensure your shot list and storyboard ideas are actually achievable. If I were to look for a location for a project again I would ensure to secure a few places to make sure we have other options where we can film, its important to have multiple locations at your disposal when filmmaking.

When casting for our production I am happy that we used a group member, it ensure that we wouldn't have any dropouts or delays on filming days, so we could get straight to filming.

Our research for props, make and costume could have been better, although I am happy with how our choices turned out, I didn't want to overload the project in any way, if I were to redo this project, we could have improved our research and maybe found a way to add some unique features to our film through props.

When it came to cinematography and Visual style, watching professional suspense films was a brilliant way of expanding our knowledge on suspense. The movie Get Out was a big help, it sparked ideas for shots we would later use in our own production. Our research could have been more extensive, in some of the shots we unfortunately forgot to account for continuity, resulting in slight confusion for the viewer if they looked hard enough. Although not a major issue and our film still flowed quite well, we could have improved the shots. I learnt from this that once you have your shots in your editing software, that is all you have to work with so it is important that you get every shot you need just in case issues like these arise and you need to tweak anything.

Our research for sound design and music was done well, mostly consisting of watching horror and suspense films to see how they are used professionally. I am very pleased with how I incorporated music and sound effects into the final exported edit of the short film.

Creating our own short 25 second suspense film was also a good way of researching, it gave an insight as to how suspense can be achieved even in small time frames and sparked ideas for shots we could use in our actual production.

I really enjoyed watching other suspense scenes from successful filmmakers as it was a good way of sparking my own ideas, camera angles, shot types, audio effects and music etc. all aspects of professional films helped a lot.

Overall, I have come to learn the importance of research when it comes to filmmaking. My primary research was more useful because it helped narrow down what my idea for my production would end up being, although my secondary research was still a contributor as every part of research helped expand my knowledge and ability when it came to suspense productions. I definitely will improve my research in many ways in future and I would if I were to do this project again, using different types of research may help improve my projects. I have also learned that the main creative process of filmmaking is the research and planning, its that aspect off filmmaking that gives you the most room for freedom and change.