Planning our test shoot

We began preparing for our test shoot on Wednesday. In order to prepare, we had to decide on the location, characters and props. Given that we have to remain on campus, we decided to film in the media classroom. Since Meadow is a Day House Student, she offered to bring in lots of the props that we needed including a pestle and mortar and tweezers. We did not have access to a record player but this wasn't too important as the main purpose of our test shoot is to see if our narrative sequence will come together as we have imagined it too. We planned out one of the most significant shots as a digital sketch which helped us to prepare and set up the shot quickly. 

sketch of one of the shots 

We then assigned roles to each person in our group. We decided that Matthew could play the role of the man and that Meadow could act as the woman being murdered by the man. As well as acting in the sequence, Meadow will take on the role of editor and Matthew will take behind the scenes shots. I will be the director and the camera operator.

                     

The shoot ran relatively smoothly. However, we had to work under time pressure as we were given just less than an hour to film our sequence which meant that our test shoot is not quite as polished as it could've been. For example, one difficulty that we encountered was filming enough footage to fill the minimum length of two minutes. When it came to editing, we also noticed some continuity issues. This is because we didn't follow all the on-set protocol. For example, we didn't leave the camera rolling and instead we filmed individual clips and put them all together. In addition, we also moved the props a few times, which is what caused issues with continuity and we will be keeping in mind when we do our final shoot.