The short films we watched in the first seminar, Doodlebug (1997, Dir. Christopher Nolan) and The Black Hole (2008, Dir. Phil Sampson & Olly Williams) were very interesting and I thought they demonstrated the short film format very well. I think the best thing about both of these films is that they invite the audience to question what is going on within their worlds. This inspired me, and made me want to have a similar questioning moment at the end of our film.

Learning about short films was very useful, as I am not as familiar with them as I am feature length films. Getting a sense of how short films are structured was very useful in setting limitations for our film.

We left the seminar with the intent of brainstorming on our piece before the next seminar.

I already had some experience with screenwriting in the past, but viewing other scripts was helpful in giving me an idea of what to implement and what not to implement when writing our first draft.

I also spoke to my group about my experience with screenwriting, and I said I would develop an opening scene for us to build off.

We all agreed we wanted to do a psychological-thriller-type film, or something similar, as that was a popular genre within our group, which we learnt in our discussions in seminar 1.1.

Originally, we did have ideas about a Girl who was haunted by a ghost. This idea never got past the character stage before we decided to go in a different direction, but the characters I wrote of in seminar 1.2 reflect this premise.

We were tasked with individually creating some character descriptions based on the ideas we had during the week. I enjoyed this task and it helped me get a better idea of where our film was developing. During this part of the seminar, our group moved away from the ghost idea we had, and moved to a more tangible threat.

When learning about the conflict in stories, I think we all resonated with the idea of the conflict coming from 'human vs. human.' As such, we decided to change our story from a woman being haunted by a ghost to a woman stuck in an abusive relationship.

After learning about story beats and creating a beat sheet for our film, we developed the framing device of our protagonist (the woman) having a conversation with a friend, with flashbacks developing the character of her boyfriend, the one abusing her.

We left the seminar aiming to develop our story and create a synopsis and logline for our film.

We had already discussed in our groups what roles we wanted to do. In last trimester's Production Skills, I was my groups camera operator, so I didn't want to repeat that.

Learning about the responsibilities of these roles was interesting and informed my decision on what role to do in our group.

We all discussed having a darker visual tone in our film, which helped to inform not just the director and camera op, but also myself and the sound design of each scene.

We left with the task of creating a treatment package for a film to summarise our thoughts and intentions.

We discussed problems faced on set with audio, such as weather conditions. As our scenes with dialogue are inside, this doesn't present a problem for our group, as the shots outside can have sound effects added to them later.

I made a note in this seminar reminding myself to take ambient tracks of each location we shoot in.

The clips we watched help me get an idea for the sound I wanted for each scene.

The editing section was equally as important for me, and it helped to inform my ideas more, as everything we did on the day would have to be edited.

I went away with the intention to record various household objects for consideration for the opening scene.

These tests yielded some positive results, because upon looking back on them, they gave me the feeling of overstimulation I discussed with the director in seminar 4.1

• The flat scenes - 25th February

• The café scenes - 26th February

These dates were set in stone after a brief change of actor.

I returned to Oppenheimer, which is a film that I enjoy the sound design of very much. I found a video of the Sound Designer of the film, Richard King, describing his process and the way he approached the film.

This informed some thoughts I had about our film, including making a clear contrast between the opening and closing scenes, and the café scenes, which are a lot more subdued in tone.

When I first got on set, I recorded an ambient track of the room. Later on in the shoot, I recorded our actors performing sounds that weren't in any shots, such as Oscar's phone call, or Jessica's heavy breathing.

I also recorded various sounds on set as well, such as chairs being pushed around, as if during a fight.

I made sure to record an ambient track of the location, and when I wasn't needed, I would experiment with walking around the space, finding the best place to record footsteps. In the end, I managed to find a spot in the space that allowed me to record the footsteps in the scene without being in the shot. This meant we could use the on set SFXs.

While the audio was alright, it was quiet. I was disappointed with this, because I thought that I had done the levelling of my equipment correctly.

The footage of the final scenes in the flat were out of focus, however, so it was decided we would reshoot those scenes in week

Finding an actor who could film on such short notice proved very difficult, and as such, I stepped into the role as a last resort. The audio I captured on the first shooting day was fine, therefore, the audio equipment wasn't needed for the reshoots (we still booked it out as a precaution).

It was enjoyable to play a character that me and my group had been developing for the last 9 weeks.

By the end of this seminar, I had a rough cut of the first few sections of the café scene.

I also asked my tutor to review my edit. I was given the suggestion of adding diegetic music to the Café scene to add more of a contrast to the scene. I was also given the suggestion of changing some of the audio in order to make the dialogue clearer.

I left with the intention of finalising the edit on the Thursday of that week.

I also uploaded it to my OneDrive just in case of any issues.