Major Production - Test shoot two and three

So these two test shoots fell on the Friday before our shoot week and on Tuesday of the shoot week, which we used to our advantage and made the most out of by running through lots of the hallucinations and other scenes later on within the production. I felt that it was vital to do as many test shoots as we could to better prepare ourselves for the real thing. I'm a big believer in the failure to prepare is to prepare to fail. I wanted Will to block out the scenes, and I'd watch from a distance with the camera and record from spaces at where I thought would be best to position myself. I also thought it'd be a good idea to watch some youtube videos of how to get the best lighting set up for relatively small spaces, heres a video that I watched. I learnt a significant amount from it and i'll definitely be applying it to our own production come to shoot week.




Test Shoot Two 

(Shot of rig set up)

Today myself, Will, Callum and Andrew ran through Monday's scenes, to get to grips with them so when it eventually came to Monday, it would run efficiently. So these were all of the starter scenes, running from 1 to 7, and we were going to dabble with some of the other seemingly tricky scenes that need significant blocking, but we thought we see how far we get with these scenes first. Even though we did block out the bedroom scene in our first test shoot, we all felt we should block it out again just to nail it before the big day came.

We started in the bedroom, for that's where the first 4 scenes are held, and we had two of us pretend to be the characters, and I set up the lighting and camera for the scene. Andrew was getting to grips with the tascam as he'd never used it before, and as this would be our main sound recording tool, we thought it'd be best if he got to grips with it as quick as possible. I rigged up the lights and camera, and we shot again how we did in the first test shoot. It was after about an hour or so of that we felt pretty comfortable with that scene and decided to move our attention to the dining room scenes, so from scene 8 onwards. The set up of these scenes were going to be key, so we thought of the best way to set up the table in the dining room where we could get a nice depth of field between the characters and the background. So with that in mind we moved the table as close to the wall as possible, bearing in mind the camera is in front of it, with two LEDs placed either side, it was a tight squeeze for me. But it really helped with the aesthetic of our piece, making that distance between the actors and background created more depth to the image. We needed to figure out where the best place for the lights would be, and after long deliberation with Will, we thought it'd be right to have the in front of the table along side the camera, so that the camera and light's were pointing in the same direction.

(Test shoot footage day two)

Test Shoot Three
This test shoot after fell in between our shoot days one and two. This was an ideal day to block out some of the more sophisticated scenes like the hallucinations and the penguin scene. Myself, Will and Callum did so for a few hours, before mapping out where I should stage myself for the optimal spot for each of these specific scenes.  We didn't get any footage from this test shoot, as it was mainly for blocking out the scenes and I just took notes for each of them. I feel like the notes will help me a lot come to the penguin scene, as it's the most complex one out of the lot of them. We've blocked out that scene now several times, the camera is going to be handheld for most of it, to really add to the mad experience/trip that the boys are living through. I hope that we'll be able to capture the essence of it and through the edit really bring it to life. As this test shoot fell in between the shoot days, I made sure all the camera batteries and light batteries were on charge, so that they were ready to go the next day. We also stuck down tape to map out where each character would walk for the penguin scene, as some got up and needed markets, so this was quite useful to do and i'm sure later on in the shoot week we'll appreciate doing this for ourselves. 
We also did some extra sound tests for the dining room, as we were trying to decrease the echoey noise being produced by the location, in the end Andrew found a solution which was great.

 (Shot of test shoot)

HOW DID IT HELP MY APPROACH TO THE SHOOT WEEK -
- The second test shoot really helped, as we mapped out the majority of our first few scenes in the dining room, and put to ease all of the anxiety I had for those first scenes.
- The dining room I was struggling with most to light it effectively without making it look too artificial, so I was able to master it before we got the cast in.
- We did have concerns about the sound in the dining room as it was quite echoey but Andrew figured out a way to nullify these sounds, by holding it at a certain angle and playing around with the sound levels within the tascam.
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(Self-vlog of before major production commences filming)

This is my first vlog that I did before shoot day one, I tried to do one after every shoot day as I felt it'd be easier to put into words how each day went, and what the pros/cons were to each day. I found it immensely cringe to do but I did feel like I was able to articulate certain issues more appropriately like this.