I conducted my first test shoot in the bedroom of my brother’s house. The idea being that his room encompasses him, and his belongings show off himself and his passions. The room is a way of showing his comfortability and his interaction with the phone is a way of producing boredom. I love the textures of this room and all the things that fill the space, from the rug to the guitars and all the jun on the desk. I’ve blocked the scene, ensuring that Sean (the actor) is on the bed and not moving too much. Throughout the scene i’ve jumped to different phases of him on his phone. I’ve filmed this test shoot during the day which was probably the most annoying part of the entire shoot, as i originally wanted a night shoot. However clashes with timing meant that my actor was only able to film at this time and the RMIT camera was booked out any other times. I believe that I’ll have to do another test shoot of this scene during the night so that I can perfect the lighting. This shoot was for the main purpose of blocking, costuming, framing each shoot and experimenting with editing.

When organising this scene and understanding what kind of shots I wanted I consulted a few clips from films that use similar situations. One I’ve mentioned in my earlier blog posts is from HOWL and I’ve been inspired by other films that I will mention below, for the construction of this scene.

(Frances Ha 2012)

(High Maintenance 2012/13)

(Imaginary Friend 2015)

I then created a new story board of images that I tried to keep to when filming the test shoot.

This is the first edit of my test shoot. Lighting was obviously something that I didn’t focus on too highly as the lighting in the final shoot will be darken (i.e. at night). The framing of the shoots seemed to be more difficult to master and I found it difficult to get birds eye view type shots. However I still like the way they have turned out. I didn’t direct my actor very much to be honest, and I think I would have liked to focus more on his performance when I do then next shoot, as I was so consumed with the framing of the shoots I barely gave him anything to go by. His performance though is still very natural and I find his interaction quite interesting. I also colour graded slighting, more so because of the lighting and how it varied so much in each shot.

Overall I quite like how this test shoot looked. I’ve got a few more things to focus on for next time, but it didn’t enable me to create a better understanding of what I want to show in the scene. To me this scene feels flat and doesn’t create intrigue into the character or the character situation. The use of the phone isn’t really explored very creatively, I might have to sit on this and think about it for a while.