Planning the test shoot

Test shoot is very important for us as it can help us to understand and find out what will work and not work within the final shoot. In addition, it can help to make sure the time is long enough for the opening title sequence – about 2-3 minutes. We can also realise what we need to change in our final shoot. This can greatly help our final shooting to be smoother and more efficient.

Before we started the test shoot, we planned the locations and props we could use in school. We decided to shoot a scene of the school minibuses in the lower car park and the wooden shed on the theatre lawn. Because of the limitations we had, we changed the hot wire car scene to the girl trying to break into one of the minibuses by using a bobby pin. For the props, as we can’t bring the weapon props for our test shoot as it will cause safety issue, so instead of using a battleaxe, we use a long umbrella to simulate the weapon. Also, for the motorcycle we used a mountain bike and we brought a motocross helmet for the biker’s costume.

In our group, I am mainly the actor as we only need one main girl character and a biker who appear in the last scene which is presented by Max. Max is in charge of the shooting during the day, and Gi is doing the editing part after the test shoot.
 

The test shoot went really well. We shoot in the locations as we planned, and we had all the props we need. As the time is really short, we spend most of the time to shoot the scene in shed as it is quite complicated. We tried a few different camera movements, and we shoot the same scene several times from different compositions which we can cut to many angles while editing. We are bit struggle at the start because of the limitations in setting. The wooden shed is quiet small so there wasn’t much space to let us shoot and act. Also, there is also no lights in it which will make the shot quite dark. But in the end, we figured out a way. We just closed the door a little bit, so the scene isn’t completely dark. And as the weak natural light is the only light source, the lighting creates a horror atmosphere.

Furthermore, we decided that instead of having the bike show up, we were going to just show up the rider to make a jump-scare which might creates more impacts.Because we focused on the ending scene a lot more, so our beginning scene is short. I think we can add more shots that tells the girl is surviving that can also build the tension more. For our final shoot, we can spend more time on shooting the beginning part. In addition, we can shoot better next time as we already practiced once.