Review of test shoot

After editing our first test shoots, we looked back as a group on how we thought it went. I think our idea definitely translated differently in our test shoot to how we envisioned it, however given our circumstances (short amount of time to film, using ourselves as actors, filming on our phones, and no use of mise-en-scene) we still managed to see the potential images and shots that we feel will work really well. For example I thought the hammers dripping blood to the shot of the blood on the floor translated really well, even on iPhone and I can imagine it looking realistic with the props and fake blood. 

I personally struggled to see it being super engaging at this point, (perhaps the water bottles didn't make a fierce enough weapon) although, there were points that I thought build tension. The tracking shots when we follow our protagonist, made him menacing and intimidating. Also, my group and I discussed, after watching it through, certain ways of capturing the audience and making it more engaging. 

Our test shoot was 1 minute long. Our time frame is 2 minutes. We have decided to extend the beginning before introducing the main character, to lengthen the time as well as building tension.

We thought the pace was way too fast at the beginning, slowing it down with girl, and becoming faster with the shots of the man was what our teacher suggested and we totally agreed. We want to avoid it getting boring or slow at any points which may also improve once our editing skills are developed, so we weren't too concerned about the timing of our test shoot because we knew that was fixable.

I believe our narrative came across clearly to a viewer, although it wasn't necessarily realistic, we had a clear storyline from beginning to end.

I do not think we successfully created tension in our test shoot, we actually found a lot of shots funny (mainly due to the lack of actors- that we filled in for) however even our shots without bodys in struggled to scare or shock an audience at this point. Our new idea will hold tension.

We had some good camera angles working effectively with some of the props, blood dripping. Some of the movements didn't translate as well as we'd hoped in our shoot. For example, wide shots, certain close ups of actors. I think we found them awkward and didn't want to step out our comfort zone with trying new ideas and shots and with our time frame we stuck to simple shots just to get them in. However, that will change as we become more familiar with the cameras and how to move them properly and professionally 

For the technicalities within our test shoot, we agreed we wanted to add more of the girl, club, bodies before introducing our main man. it meant prolonging the time frame as well as creating tension as those were the main factors of our shoot that needed developing. The shots of Danny crawling didn't work as well as we preempted. The shots of the club were not effective given we didn't have a club or location that looked like one.

 We thought what worked well was some nice high and low angle shots and the shots of the man sitting alone on the chair, but our imagination is endless to the more ideas and ways of making our opening sequence even better. overall I think we worked well together, especially with short time to do so, and our outcome was better than we thought it would be. I also really enjoyed the process.