Production Diary

Video production diary



Week one

Our group began to brainstorm ideas for a new and exciting piece of video art. To start off we thought of ideas of what we would all like to achieve within the film. We then came to the conclusion of basing our short film on the themes of sadness and isolation. We wanted to make a piece of video which the audience could empathize with which would be moving and engaging. Then from looking and researching on the internet we came across High Royds mental lunatic asylum which is currently derelict. Therefore it gave connotations of emptiness, abandonment and neglect which were concepts that would perfectly match our desired approach.


Week two

In week two we began to think about visiting this derelict building to find out whether it was safe, suitable and stable to film within the premises. A few days later we returned with filming equipment, props and a good outlook on filming. Whilst filming we had limited time so setting up would be difficult because we didn’t really have permission to be there. After filming all we could in that particular building we set off to explore the main building. However unfortunately we got chased by contractors and we were forced to leave the premises due to it being private property, but luckily we had plenty of footage to work with.


Week three

Week three consisted of editing our film. We first started off by choosing as a group, clips that we liked and started to assemble these clips into a roughly ordered sequence. This made the process of editing a lot easier. We made a mental-paper-edit which aided us in choosing the appropriate and best footage. We needed to fulfill every team members visual ideas. We did this by discussing each clip carefully and abandoning the unwanted footage. Once we had chosen the footage we began to experiment with the order, effects and sound of the short film before layering our sound track and voice over.