R+P Post 32: Test Shoot and Rough Edit

Here is a picture of our test shoot schedule. My groups sessions are colour coded in yellow. We didn't have much time so we had to be selective about everything we wanted to test. On Tuesday, Gift and I planned to test out our individual shots, then on Friday, Monica and Angela will film their individual shots and we will also film all of our group shots. We have allocated the Saturday to shoot with the guys as it was the best time when everyone could be there.


Rough Edit:

What we learnt from the test shoot:

Be a lot more prepared - Although we did try and organise things smoothly, things were really chaotic during our test shoot week, especially on Saturday. We were filming with the guys and although we had a vague idea of what we were doing, we weren't confident enough or ready to direct the guys as well, this is something that we have to work on before our real shoot.

Keeping to the schedule is vital - This is also another important lesson that we have learnt from the test shoot. During the week, even though we had some sort of a schedule, we didn't really stick to it at all meaning we couldn't get every single shot that we wanted to and Friday evening and Saturday morning was really manic as we tried to get every shot that we intended to. For the main shoot we have all agreed that we will stick rigidly to the schedule.

Make sure the camera is focused - This is an issue we faced throughout the whole week where we weren't checking if the shots were properly focused and then when it came to the edit and we were reviewing the footage, some of them were out of focus and unusable.

We need someone to film our group shots for us - With all four of us being in the video for the group shots, we had to get one of our fellow classmates, Amber Mota, to help us with filming the group shots that weren't static. I have included an example of our group dance shots below. We filmed everything else where all four of us weren't in the same shot.

      

Communicate better with the actors - Due to unforeseen circumstances, one of our male actors, Aaron, couldn't make the shoot on Saturday. Although we could manage without him for the test shoot we had to talk to him about whether or not he was 100% sure he could make the main shoot. We had to stress to him how important this was and he was very apologetic and said he would be there for the main shoot for sure.

We feel that the test shoot was really beneficial for this project as it helped us discover any problems we had and gave us time to fix these problems before the main shoot. This means that we will not be unprepared for our main shoot and we can ensure that we have corrected everything that we weren't happy with in the test shoot to create a music video that we will all be proud of.