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.