Reflection of the test shoot.

Our group has done a decent amount of work in pre-production for the test shoot so we were ready and organised on the day. However, we've still faced some barriers and difficulties which we had to overcome in order to finish filming.

Me and Aiden were acting and George and Harriet - filming. 

As the whole thriller is set in the kitchen - we decided to go in our school canteen, cause we needed some sort of a kitchen table due to the plot. However, it was not actually like we wanted it to be, as the way the tables are arranged there has restricted our camera movements, what resulted in us loosing some important shots we wanted to take. 
For example, we could hardly do any close-ups of the woman's face, as there's been a wall in front of the place, where I was standing and imitating cooking. Her facial expressions - is an important part in our idea, which we couldn't replicate in the test shoot. Another shot we didn't do - is when she walks to the cupboards to get something for cooking, and we can accidentally see his unfocused figure on the background, leaning on the table. We failed to film it for the same reason - the location of our school canteen doesn't really fit our expectations and our plan.
However, it gives us something to think about - we should be really careful in choosing the place to film our actual thriller in so that we get all shots 'just right'.

Moreover, it took us two periods to film, as at every break people started to come into the canteen so we had to stop and continue the next day. Apart for that, even before breaks - there were people coming into the kitchen(cleaners, e.t.c), even other media groups, which has been filming their test shoots also. That was so annoying to had to stop in the middle of filming when somebody walked past and was caught in the shot, or started talking after "action" has been said. 

Somehow, we managed to finish filming in two periods.

 

To be honest, during filming we've faced some typical 'team-work' problems about who should be doing what. As me and Aidan were acting and George has brought his own camera to film - Harriet was left with no task to do, which disappointing her. Luckily enough, George's camera has ran out of memory, so Harriet had a chance to film a bit on her phone, which came up really obvious in editing due to the quality of the video.

However, as time goes by we seem to be working quite well as a team. 

We've also created our group chat in Facebook messenger to keep in touch and meet if there is a need to discuss anything, which is very helpful, to be honest. 

During filming the test shot we were not allowed to use any 'dangerous' props, like knives or guns, so we had to improvise:

fruits = vegetables

spoon = knife

box with gloves = kidney

toilet paper = rope

ketchup = blood 

 Afterwards, we've moved on to editing. As most part of the footage was on the George's camera - he took it home to transfer it into his laptop and edit. Harriet has send him other shots from her phone through our messenger group, so that he can finish editing. 

We then altogether started working on our pitch presentation, to have our idea wrapped up nicely so we can have a 'green light' straight away. 

Harriet has finished the presentation during prep(as it was on her laptop) and e-mailed it to all of us.

At the same time I was busy trying to find the song that would best match and juxtapose the situation in the opening sequence. We needed a song that would sound nice and support the bright picture at the start - of the woman peacefully cooking dinner and then completely contrast with the following bloody part, which would shock and attract the audience.

In one of my previous blogs I've reflected the process of finding the song, however it didn't came to success at that point as not everyone in my production group thought that "You make me crazy" by Gnarls Barkley - is the perfect song for such idea...how come, its perfect!

(We've used it in our test footage as at that point we hadn't yet decided upon our song)

Anyway, the solution came unexpectedly. While we've been discussing the song choice in the classroom together, our classmate Andrew has heard us struggling and kindly advised a song; "Who's loving you" by The Temptations...and we all loved it! 

It just sounds so right in my head when I'm thinking about our idea and this song(not as good as "You make me crazy", but...unlikely I'm not the only one deciding;)

Finally, I would say the test shoot looks horribly bad and funny. Like old action movies with bad editing and lots of continuity mistakes. 

However, that's definitely a priceless experience, as we now can look back at it - analyze - in order to identify our mistakes and get rid of them, improve our idea and keep in mind the difficult parts.

P.S. Thanks very much to my production group - they all have been so far very ambitious, supportive and hard working! So, guys, I expect our thriller sequence to be amazing!