Here is footage of test filming in my garden. I made the decision to do test filming in my garden as my first backup-plan location due to problems with my initial location choice (as detailed in my Location Scouting section, to be added soon).

I am testing a few things:

1. The light at this time of day i.e. about 6pm

2. The audio because I am using a home-made boom mic made of a broom pole, a small recorder and my Rode VideoMicro small shotgun mic and I want to see if this works as a boom mic.

3. I am also testing to see how audible background noise is at this time of day since my first rough test filming highlighted problems with birds, lawn mowers, dogs and people walking past on the path.

Some things I concluded:

1. The boom mic arrangement seemed to work well quality wise. It was audible and clear. It would be better with a proper college boom mic and pole, but under the restricted circumstances I am pleased with it and pleased with myself for coming up with the idea.

2. However, there was virtually no wind, so to be sure I will need to do some brief test filming in the wind too.

3. The birds are quieter than at my previous rough test filming times of 6am, 10am and 4:30pm

4. You could still hear a dog barking, and people walking past on the path behind my house, but I think I will just have to work round that and refilm bits as necessary. It was not as bad as my previous test filming at the other times of day, for example the traffic wasn't nearly as bad as at 6am. I was surprised it was so loud at 6am since I thought most people were working from home.

5. I felt the light worked. I had been concerned that because it was early evening the light levels would be too dark. But even though it is cloudy I felt the light is fine. There are not lots of shadows on me and you can see me clearly against the background.

6. I am happy with this background for when I am speaking to camera because there is some interest, not just a white background which would be boring, but it is not distracting from me, which is important since the audience need to be focusing on what I am saying.

7. I feel this background will also work well when I put things on screen that I want to refer to whilst I am still in shot because it is neutral interest-wise and it is a fairly uniform colour.

8. My mother, who was holding the boom mic, is too short, so the boom mic was in shot much of the time. So, I am thinking of getting a taller mother, or maybe more realistically getting her to stand on a chair. I think this will work but I will test it out again to be sure.

9. I had used my Dad's camera because it has a flip out screen so I thought I would be able to see this screen and check that I stayed in shot and the boom mic stayed out of shot, but because I was about 1.5m away from it I couldn’t see it as clearly as I thought I could. To resolve this for the real filming, I will ask my Dad to check the screen, once I have set the shot up, and let me know if the framing stays correct regarding me and the boom mic.

10. I wore clothes similar to those that I intend wearing in the film, ie. my usual college clothes including my usual type trilby hat. I was pleased with how the clothes looked on film. I feel they were the right style for what I am aiming at, which is quite dapper and hopefully a bit stylish. My hat didn’t appear to cast shadows on my face which I am pleased with.

I am pleased with how this test filming went. I learnt a lot of useful things and made helpful conclusions. I need to do some more test filming, but this is a good start.