Shoot and Re Shoot

I was reallly happy with how our shooting went We worked really well as a team all sharing all the roles equally. I did some of the shooting, some of the sound monitoring, and some of the paper work. When we looked at the footage back at school most of it was good but our sequence didn't completely make sense and it wsa quite jumpy. We got some teacher feedback, and they came up witht the idea to have Adam delivering the tape to create establishing shots and make it flow better.
On the re-shoot we worked in the same way as always; sharing all the roles equally. This made the day fun as although this was our third shooting weekend in a row, my job was changing around constantly to keep variety. When looking at these shots back at scholl i was very pleased. The bit with Adam walking up to the house, cut in with shots of Bekah making tea looks really affective. However we've noticed some problems with lighting. Because we changed our lighting slightly for all three shoots, some of our cuts look weird because the lighting will go from being normal to being grainy with a yellow tint. For this reason, and the fact that some of the lines could benefit from being shot again, i definitely think we need another shoot. We've agreed as a group that our ligthing was best at the test shoot so we will try to re-create this as best we can again, and hopefully it will all turn out great!

What Did I Learn From The Test Shoot?

The test shoot was really useful to do as it helped to give us an idea of how our sequence is goingto look, as well high-lighting any key issues we need to consider and enabling us to have the time to learn from any mistakes made, and i learnt a lot;
* Plan plan plan - if you know exactley what you are doing then it is SOO much more time efficient, and its gives you extra time at the end to experiment
* Things always take longer than you think they will
* Getting the lighting perfect is hard and can be very time consuming- but it's worth it!
* I learnt the art of fake blood making, and bruising people with eye shadow
* Juat because you're indoors, doesn't mean you don't have to worry about sound (ie-builders next door)
* ...and i learnt never to believe Danni when she says its only a "short walk" :P

TEST SHOOT

Yesturday we had the test shoot, and i was really happy with how it went. We went to Danni's house to shoot and did 8 hours in total, from 10am - 6pm. The first 4 hours it was just me, Danni and Tom. We set up our location (which took longer than expected, because in order to block out all the light coming into the shed we had to tape black towels to the outside of the windows), we played around with different fake blood recipes, we completed our storyboard and shooting script, filmed the first scene that we didn't need actors for and just about had time left for lunch.
Once the actors had arrived they got into costume, and we did their make up. Throughout the shoot we all had a go at doing everything; directing, sound technition, and production assistant, as we felt this was the fairest way to do it, and it was the most fun because it meant we weren't doing the same thing all day.
I was so impressed with the actors we used, and think that they were a really good choice. I am really looking forward to seeing the footage, and finding out what we need to change to make our sequence even more amazing!