Review of test shoot

 My group and I shot a test shoot in order to give a taste to the audience of our idea and camera angles. 

After watching back the test shoot I will evaluate how we can improve our idea or composition for Friday the 8th when we shoot the sequence. By doing this test shoot, it allowed us to note what works and doesn't work.

I think we managed to briefly give off an idea of dialog and setting, for instance the location of a large majority of the shots is all inside and also using imagery of props such as a tie and gun highlight the significant characters and their status or role in the sequence. 

This 50 second test shoot contains a wide, mid and close up shot when we were filming each scene based off our storyboard outline. Our main opening title sequence will last under 2-3 minuets as it will include more detail and time put into each shot. Each clip we shot was short and quick, with little sound it was quite dull to watch as the acting was not great and nothing particularly interesting caught my eye. As this was just a test shoot to get a brief outline of the storyline, we had to film this in a classroom using anything around us to also convey an idea of actor positioning.

We showed an idea of a business man getting into the back of a car, this was shown from the use of a tie and brief cases. The driver was already sat on a chair opposite to the backseat, we used a mirror to show he was a suspicious character. Once the gun was pulled out, we used a spray bottle to represent the gun action, we saw the boss clearly die and then the phone call to his boss who was drinking whiskey in a large chair, we did not reveal the face iof the mafia boss in order to show his superiority and power.

We created a build of tension by the frequent gazing in the mirror from the driving, as if he was watching and waiting to pull out the gun. 

When it comes to filming the sequence, I hope that we can use some more interesting camera angles and movement. I think trying out a hand held angle or pan/tracking would be effective and keeps the audience more interested rather than only using a wide, mid and close up based off our shot list outline as I think that it would get repetitive for the audience and also restricts us from experimenting with other shots to make the sequence flow better.

I think that to improve, the transitions between the shots and scenes could be smoother as it is quite cut/ jumpy, however our test shoot was filmed on iMovie, while when it comes to editing the opening title sequence we will be editing it on Adobe Premiere which is more accurate and precise.