Salford City CollegeEccles Sixth Form CentreBTec Level 3Extended Diploma in Creative Media ProductionFilm, TV and Radio

HA4 – Objects of DesireProduction Log

Name: Daniel Hopkins

Production: Kit Kat Advert

Date Action Taken28/05/14 On this day, I began my stop motion shooting. An initial setback I had was that the camera was

only taking very darkened photos, so I had to look up the problem on the internet. There was a problem with the lighting settings so I quickly adjusted them to my needs. I used a tripod to film from a high angle the kitchen counter, while also turning on all the lights in the kitchen to ensure a fully-lightened scene. I had to reshoot after a dozen pictures or so as I knocked the tripod out of position, but I carried on and finished the majority of the kitchen shoot.

29/05/14 As it took longer than originally anticipated I had to continue with the kitchen shoot on the second day. I only had to finish a reshoot of the kit kat going along the edge of the counter, as the first one was very uneven. I also began filming the living room stop motion scenes, which I managed to complete. It was faster than the first shoot as I already knew how to do it better and faster due to learning things from the previous day. The problem I managed to stop was uneven movements as after I moved the kit kat it seemed very jerky and wouldn’t move smoothly or straight.

02/06/14 On this day I finished the live action shoots. I had planned to complete the shoot on the 30th but could not due to other commitments that arose on the day. It was relatively easy and les time consuming to film these scenes rather than the stop motion. I did take several takes of each shot but, I completed it all in around an hour.

04/06/14This was my first week back in college after half term and I began editing in this lesson. I used the software program Adobe Premiere Pro. I brought in the pictures using the option ‘numbered stills’. This brought them in as a block rather than as individual pictures. I then removed the unneeded frames and ordered them according to my script and storyboard. I then imported all of the live footage, deleting the failed takes and cutting the correct ones down to size. I also finished off some of the pre-production work during this lesson.

The numbered stills option, which allowed me to bring in all the pictures as one rather than as individuals.

11/06/14 I continued with the editing during this lesson, changing around the music and bringing in Bonnie Tyler’s ‘I Need a Hero’ song. I then changed around the pacing of various elements in the music video, which included deleting some of the footage I had wanted to use. This was because my advert ran for 50 seconds, much more than the allocated 30. By the end of the lesson with editing I had managed to get the advert down to approximately 37 seconds.

18/06/14 I began editing straight away and within an hour I had finished the advert. I had to remove some footage and speed some up to get to exactly 30 seconds. I used the speed/duration tool for this, which allowed me to speed up the clip. This included making the video 120%, 200% (double the speed) etc. I wanted the kit kat logo to remain longer at the end, though I had to sacrifice some of its time to keep the advert short. I made some audio recordings to my video stating the products slogan: Have a break, have a kit kat. This didn’t work for me however as my voice didn’t seem to fit well into it, sounding very monotone. Instead I used music that I had used throughout the advert at the end. The final timeline in Premier Pro: