Production journal

When you’re undertaking a media production in VCE Media, your teachers will often ask you to complete a production journal to help authenticate your work and develop your understanding of terminology appropriate to the media form that you’re working in. We want you to be confident and articulate when it comes to discussing your own work. In Units 3&4 Media, these production journals become useful revision material when you’re preparing for the VCE Media exam. If you would like to check out samples of student production journals, take a look a the media production design page. Here are some useful words and phrases that you might find useful when writing about film production.

• Acoustics. Refers to the way a space sounds, e.g. “The acoustics in that room were awful because there were very little soft furnishings which resulted in a terrible reverb.”
• Aspect ratio. Aspect ratio refers to the width of an image relative to its height. Two common aspect ratios that you’ll come across when you’re making films are 16:9 and 4:3, e.g. “I didn’t listen to Mr Lamb and shot my film in 9:16.”
• Assembly cut. A rough cut including all of the shots in your film, e.g. “Today I made progress on my film by completing an assembly cut of the footage and realised that I was missing key shots.”
• Assets. The video, sound and image files required for a video project, e.g. “Today I spent quite a lot of time copying and organising the assets from my shoot on the weekend.”
• Atmos. A background track captured on location, e.g. “The sound editing has been difficult because I didn’t capture an atmos track on location and I’ve had to find a suitable substitute using a sound library.”
• B-camera. An additional camera used to pick up footage for a scene, e.g. “Today I used my GoPro as a b-camera to pick up additional coverage of the scene.”
• Blocking. The placement of actors and props within a shot, e.g. “If I’d spent more time blocking the scene, I would have realised that, in close up, my character was standing with the key light from the window behind him.”
• Blockthrough. A walk through of the location prior to shooting to decide where the camera and actors will be placed, e.g. “I spent some time moving around the location and deciding where to place my actors for the best shot composition.”
• Boom. A pole used to position a shotgun microphone close to an actor, e.g. “Because I was working alone with my actor, I was required to use the camera and use the boom at the same time.”
• Camera operator. The person on a film set who operates the camera, e.g. “Today I took on the role of camera operator.”
• Clipping. A harsh, crunching sound that occurs when the sound levels on a microphone are set too high, “The clipping of the audio meant that the recorded sound is unusable.”
• Colour temperature. The warmth of a light source, e.g. “The colour temperature of the incandescent bulbs mean that the shot was very yellow.”
• Continuity. The consistency of details in, for example, costume and props between shots in a scene, e.g. “There were continuity issues when editing this scene because the lighting changed as we were shooting.”
• Cut. A straight transition from one shot to another, “When refining this scene, I noticed it was most effective to cut directly to the character’s reaction.”
• Cut in. A shot related to the action in a scene, e.g. “The flow of the scene helped when I added a cut in of the character typing at the keyboard.”
• Dailies. The shots captured during a day of shooting, e.g. “When reviewing the dailies, I realised that we had missed several shots.”
• Data wrangler. A person responsible for collecting and organising digital assets on a film set, e.g. “Data wrangling turned out to be a time consuming process.”
• Deadcat. A cover for a microphone to reduce wind noise, “The dead cat on the microphone helped to reduce the wind noise.”
• Dolly. A dolly is any sort of moving platform that a camera is mounted on. Professional camera crews often lay down tracks which the camera can be moved along. Sometimes, the camera is mounted in the back of a car. Skateboards, office chairs and supermarket trolleys are the dollies of choice for low budget camera crews, e.g. “I was able to create a makeshift dolly using an office chair for this scene.”
• EQ. An equalisation filter in an audio editor, e.g. “Because the sound was a bit tinny, I cut the high end of the audio using the EQ filter.”
• Exposure. The amount of light reaching the sensor on a camera, “The shot was too bright because I didn’t set the exposure correctly.”
• Fine cut. A refined edit of your film, usually with all of the footage, sounds, music and titles complete.
• Foley. Sound effects recorded in a studio during the post production of a film, e.g. “I was able to create a great deal of authenticity by recording my own foley sounds.”
• Grade. An overall colour filter applied to footage, e.g. “The desaturated blue tones of the grade gave the film a more suspenseful feel.”
• High end. The high frequency sounds in an audio recording, e.g. “Because the sound was a bit tinny, I cut the high end of the audio using the EQ filter.”
• Insert. A shot of a small detail in a scene, e.g. “Cutting to the insert of the character grimacing gave the scene greater emotional weight.”
• Low end. The low frequency sounds in an audio clip, e.g. “Because the microphone was positioned too close to the actor, the low end of the recording was muddy.”
• Master shot. In filmmaking, a shot that features all the action in a scene, e.g. “Because actors didn’t know their lines, it was difficult to capture the master shot where they had to act continuously—I avoided these difficulties by picking up close ups of the actors saying their lines.”
• Motion graphics.
• Noise removal. The process of removing noise, such as a constant hissing, from an audio recording, e.g. “Because the levels weren’t set correctly, noise removal was required due to the constant, amplified hissing of the microphone.”
• Pacing. The speed and rhythm of a scene, e.g. “Watching the edit back, I realised that we needed to improve the pacing of the scene to make it more humorous.”
• Pick ups. Additional shots captured for a scene, e.g. “I spent the afternoon capturing pickups that would make editing the scene easier.”
• Post production. The final phase of film production which occurs after principal photography and usually involves the editing, scoring and sound design of a film.
• Pre-production. The first phases of film production which usually involves developing an idea, writing a treatment, writing a screenplay, casting and location scouting.
• Principal photography. The second stage of film production which involves shooting the film.
• Reshoots. Capturing a scene that didn’t work again, e.g. “I had to allocate time for reshoots due to poor acting.”
• Reverb. A slight echo, “e.g. Due to the acoustics in that space and the subtle reverb, I had to record ADR for that scene.”
• Rough cut. A rough cut of the footage for a scene. 
• Rushes. The footage captured during a particular period, e.g. “When I reviewed the rushes, I realised that we were missing several key shots.”
• Shock mount. A device for attaching a microphone to a camera or boom to reduce handling noise, e.g. “The shock mount greatly reduced the sound from the boom operator moving the microphone.”
• Shot list. A list of all of the shots in a film, e.g. “Using the shot list meant that we were able to finish shooting the film efficiently.” 
• Shotgun microphone. A directional microphone, e.g. “The use of a shotgun microphone meant that we were able to eliminate most of the background noise.”
• Signal to noise ratio. Signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) is the measurement used to describe how much desired sound is present in an audio recording, as opposed to unwanted sound (noise). This nonessential input could be anything from electronic static from your recording equipment, or external sounds from the noisy world around us, such as the rumble of traffic, or the murmur of voices in the background, e.g. “Because I’d set the recording level incorrectly and misjudged the signal to noise ratio, there was too much background noise in the resulting recording.”
• Slate. A clapperboard is a device used in filmmaking and video production to assist in synchronizing of picture and sound, and to designate and mark the various scenes and takes as they are filmed and audio-recorded, e.g. “Because I slated up shots, it was easy to find the successful takes in my edit.”
• Sound bridge. A sound bridge when the sound between two scenes overlaps. Dialogue from the one scene, for example, might be heard before the characters appear on screen. This helps to create a smooth transition between two scenes, e.g. “A sound bridge helped to smooth the transition between these two scenes.”
• Sound design. Sound design is the art and practice of creating sound tracks for a variety of needs, e.g. “The sound design for our shot horror film involved finding sounds that were unsettling for the audience.”
• Sound mixing. The process of setting the levels for sounds, music and dialogue in a scene, e.g. “The sound mix required a great deal of time.” 
• Spotting. Playing back a film to determine the best place to add music, “The spotting session meant we could identify when the theme for particular characters should play.”
• Storyboard. The visual planning document for a film. Every shot in the film is represented by an illustration or digital photograph.
• White balance. The colour cast of an image, e.g. “The white balance was set incorrectly so the shot appeared unnaturally blue.”
• Wrap. The completion of filming, e.g. “Once we’d finished off that scene, we wrapped for the day.

Photo by Kyle Loftus from Pexels.