Full run through Test Film in the Garden
On Saturday, since I still couldn’t film for any length of time in the woods, due to it being very busy there, I did a full run through in the garden of all the shots for my film.
I started by filming me speaking my script to camera. It was good to practise it, but I really don't like how it looks. I am limited to only really one place in the garden, otherwise all sorts of stuff gets in shot, like our run down garage, a huge pile of cut down stuff, various stuff that needs to be disposed of but can’t be yet because the waste and recycling centres are still shut due to the coronavirus pandemic lockdown.
However, I think it is better than it would be if I had to film inside, which it was looking like at one point. I really hope I am able to film in the woods before the deadline though.
For "filming me filming", my mum sat on a chair and I first filmed 4 shots of her from different positions with camera 1 on a tripod. Then I filmed the same 4 shots in the same positions using a handheld camera. Finally, I filmed the same 4 shots using camera 1 on my slider track. During this, camera 2 was filming me filming. Again, I am not very happy with the footage from a creative point of view, and it was also difficult to get the shot looking horizontal, because our garden is very much not horizontal, it slopes west to east and south to north. So even if the slider is level, the shot doesn’t look it.
I wanted to do a run through for a number of reasons.
Firstly, I am still getting used to how use my slider smoothly, so I wanted to practise with it for the actual shots, and also to put it up and down quickly.
Secondly, I wanted to practise the process so that if I get the chance to film it in the woods then I can do all the filming as quickly as possible. This run through enabled me to work out a few "snags", such as thinking about whether a shot is horizontal.
Results
I am not happy with the footage that I got. If I am unable to film in the woods and I have to either use this footage or film it again in the same way, then it will make my video look very different to how I see it in my mind. This has been quite hard.
I think that with my projects so far on the course I have been fortunate to be able to always end up with pretty much the footage that I wanted. There have been a few hiccups, where I had to ask an actor to say certain lines again the following day, or where filming took longer that I had thought it would, but I pretty much got what I had seen in my mind. So this is a new experience.
I am trying to keep going through Plan A, Plan B etc, and trying to see the good in results that are not how I hoped. I find myself wondering what directors do if shots are just not working out the way they hoped. I have watched a lot of behind the scenes footage over the years and it is not something that I have heard discussed. But I imagine it must happen.
I will keep going though, I'll keep trying to see if it would be possible to film in the woods and do everything that I can to enable that to happen.
So even though I didn't like the footage, it was a very useful day, so that is good.
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