As we were coming toward our extensive period of pre-production within Echoes of Silence, we began making arrangements to kickstart the practical side of our production. One way I have figured that I like to work is by getting test shoots in as early as possible. In the past this has greatly benefitted every area of the film and more importantly every crew member. For myself it gives me a fantastic overview and allows me to see what went wrong and what went right well in advance of the actual shoot. I then have time to rectify these issues with the crew. It's also very good for the crew as academic evidence of their learning experience, something that we all have to provide evidence of as students. Unfortunately test shooting seems to be an uncommon practice amongst students, whether that comes down to lack of commitment or motivation, all I know from experience is that they're essential if you want to make the best film you can.
We didn't have long between the test shoot and the actual shoot, maybe a week or so, and I knew this which is why I started to hurry things up. We grabbed the equipment and with the help of a few of our course mates we headed to location. As we go through this discussion, I will bring up retrospective mistakes. Our first being, we didn't take enough equipment. We took the cameras and grip equipment such as tripods and sliders, but neglected the red heads. This wasn't too much of a problem because the result I wanted was a skeleton edit which we still managed, but the lighting is non-existent. The images are very flat without any sort of lighting technique behind them, but on the plus side myself and the cinematographer had a week to look over each shot in depth and create floor plans for the lights. Another mistake I made as a director was that although I got the blocking of the scene right by communicating the markers to the subject within this test shoot, I didn't get real movement or a real performance. It's hard to gage what you're envisioning when you separate the two. I would not have asked the subject to give an oscar worthy performance, only in the future if I conduct such a test again I will require a real sense of authenticity, not only for technical reasons such as where to place the camera but for allowing me to see what freedom the actor may have to break those boundaries.
To conclude despite the nit-picking of the flaws, the test shoot went very well. I will use this as a platform for improvement in every way by communicating the flaws to the crew and working on positive solutions like we always do.
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