A Production Case Study: Threshold

In this section of the website, Martin John Harris from the Northern Film School based at Leeds Metropolitan University takes you through a production exercise in which students produce a short film.

Will you cross the threshold? Photo by Kathryn A Wilson

The material here is covered over the following pages:

• Adaptation – the basis for the exercise is adapting a news story
• Production process – what does the exercise involve
• Production techniques – thinking through the decisions students take during production
• The film – view the completed film
• Reflections by all those involved
• A critical reading of the film
• NFS – some background on the Northern Film School

Elsewhere in this section you can download pdfs of the production chapters from the Media Student’s Book, 4th edition on Production Organisation and Production Techniques

Martin John Harris is Senior Lecturer in Editing and Documentaries at the Northern Film School. He is also a freelance editor whose most recent work was as on Muslim Driving School (tx BBC2, 2010) and the award-winning Bombay Railway (shown several times on BBC4/BBC2 2007-2010) (You can see a YouTube clip from the film.)

Dan Weldon is Joint Course Leader of the Filmmakers' MA and he devised the Adaptation exercise.