REVIEW OF TEST SHOOT

Overall, the experience and the test shoot in general was an extremely paramount aspect in the development of our concept idea and has offered many confirmatives‘ surrounding the themes and logistics but equally posed some concerns.

My main concern for the sequence is that of translating the key details, especially including the deluding factor as to why they are there and what is actually going on; it was clear from the beginning of our process that the sporting element of this opening had to be clearly translated. However, after watching back our edited test shoot, without the costume, acting skills, and other areas of mise-en-scene, I felt as though the scene lacked a clear controlled narrative through the lack of the others areas by which they are meant to merely emulate the story and not be its defining characteristic.

I feel as though the engagement of the piece is defined through the camera compositions, angles and movement; this was an area whereby as a group we lacked on knowledge and skill at this early stage in our development and therefore struggled on obtaining the tension of this scene which is supposedly being created through its narrative. Bearing this in mind, I do also think that as a group we need to focus specifically on the other areas: costume and props. The costume of the characters represent a huge amount of detail in their defining roles, with the hunters clearly suggesting the sporting element and the ‘hunted’ suggesting the victim and ‘slavery’ element to depict the cruelty of this game and the hierarchy of the characters in power; I think as a whole, the costumes need to be further developed in order to achieve this. 

For example, here is some photos from my mood board which depicts the inspiration for the 'hunted'

 

The location of the test shoot, however, worked extremely well in developing the sense of nature and the eeriness of the secluded woods, which further confirmed the location choices of our original concept and I feel as though we can emulate this factor through more establishing shots to highlight the notion of the separation from any civilization.

This brings me onto another key detail that I noticed when watching back our test shoot: the length. The opening sequence needs to be at least 2 minutes long, which our test shoot lacked; I feel as though we could have established the location in more detail through the establishing shot and elongated the end scene as the titles roll in through adding an additional soundtrack over the top to finalize the opening scene as all of the ‘action’ has happened. This will make sure we have covered the timings set for our opening sequence.

Here is some inspiration for the sound track:

I also felt after watching back the test shoot, that we had to find a balance between moments of action and moments of ‘tension’. I say this because there were obvious moments within our test shoot whereby the tension was lost due to the infrequency of the action; one way in which we could improve this would be through increasing the shots of action and creating juxtaposition through the two opposing energies. Tension was present throughout our test shoot, however, we felt as though it could have been emulated through the use of sound or even lack off; as a group, we have decided to look into making sound scrapes which would follow our openings narrative and hopefully highlight the tension of the scene through the ‘abstract’ elements.  

Researching and planning out our exact camera angles, movement and composition I feel is the main attribution from the test shoot as I felt the opening lacked the visual engagement of the plot and a lot of the tension was lost due to the amateur filming, which of course is understandable but development within our production group regarding the practical element is needed.  

for example, this shot lacks engagement but perhaps filming from a high angle could emulate the 'power' that these characters hold.

Looking on the positive side of the test shoot; the effectively represented the strong female protagonist that we desired, and her ‘fight’ of survival. I personally feel as though the ending would however benefit an outro with the sound track as it would further emulate the bad ass energy from the protagonist. The sound was difficult to achieve at this stage in our development as we are unsure on the copyright requirements and music was not applicable to the editing software that we used for our test shoot.  

Overall, collectively myself and my production group are pleased with the overall construct of our opening titles sequence with areas of development that need further research; the cinematography, costume choices, balancing between tension and action and sound.  

TEST SHOOT

 here is our uploaded test shoot:

PLANNING OUT OUR TEST SHOOT

 Today, we decided to plan and shoot a test shoot of our opening concept idea. The purpose of this shoot was to essentially decipher what works well, what doesn’t, what we need to change and develop and overall, how we can engage audiences through the camera work as that’s specifically what we were looking into; composition, camera angles and camera movements. It also forced us as a production group to begin to develop a rough idea of the characters we will cast in the future, especially as our opening scene involves the demand of a skilled protagonist.  

Our pre planning beforehand involved an array of questions in which we needed to answer, which involved; the location of our shoot, how many characters are needed and who will play them within our production group, the props needed to ‘represent’ the actual props, roles for the shoot (involving: director/ camera operator/ editor)  

Firstly, we needed to shoot our test shoot in a wooded area, so I suggested filming on a path within a wooded area on the way to textiles. This location worked well as we were able to successfully film our shoot with our original idea of a filming in the woods. 

The actors within our test shoot were slightly difficult as one of our production group members, Cole, had covid whilst planning and filming the test shoot and therefore we were missing one of the actors to play a male hunter. To ‘fix’ this problem, we were able to find another actor to play a hunter instead which actually worked well when we were filming by having an outside input on how we were to film. As our opening sequence involves a maximum of 4 characters, we were able to act ourselves in the place of the actors; this essentially meant that we all had a role as the camera operator which was interesting when exploring the continuity of the shoots and we had to make sure our filming was fluid with how our different styles merged in the final shot.  

The props were slightly difficult to represent as in our opening sequence we have involved two guns, for the hunters, and a ‘handmade’ murder weapon of some sort (we are thinking of either a sharpened stick or sock filled with rocks). However, in this instance we used a twig that we found in the woods, acting as the handmade weapon that the protagonist uses and for the hunters we used an umbrella to represent the rifle. 

Here you can see Will holding the umbrella

The process of this test shoot was extremely helpful as it posed many questions on the overall logistical side of filming, especially focusing on the exact camera angles, movements and compositions of the filming. I personally found this certain aspect of the test shoot the most challenging as without planning the exact types of shots beforehand meant that we had to think on the spot upon which shots would look the most effective and which wouldn’t. One of the main contributions I have taken from the test shoot was the attention to detail needed to understand the ‘story’ and to make clear what is happening and essentially the overall intention of the piece as I felt when filming, we struggled to get across the main intentions. As a group, I feel we successfully established the tension within this opening through the way In which we filmed moments of stillness specifically that established the eerie and suspecting tone.  

In order to improve for our actual filming, I feel the main priority is planning exactly what happens and sticking to it; planning camera angles, movement and composition, where the actors move etc and how we can successfully film in the time period given.