TRANSITION: Test Shoots

We decided to carry out a few test shoots as we have a lot of tricky camera shots, lighting changes and props to practice with, this way we will know if it'll work for the real shoot. As the editor of this mockumentary I was unable to do my role during the test shoots - my role will come in after the filming and when I am ready to edit it together. Today I was mainly a helping hand for the sound and lighting etc. 

Firstly, we tested setting up an interview corner for the animal owner, Sheila, and working with Alex's dog, Coco, as we knew working with animals will be difficult. We used a corner in Alex's front room, which we will probably use for the real shoot, and Alex stood in for Sheila, and Aidan was there as the Vet-Man as he will be the real Vet-Man on the day. Aidan's interview will be somewhere else but we thought we should get him to run through his lines with us. We used standard lighting for the interview - key and fill lights to brighten the face.

Using Coco wasn't the easiest thing. We wanted her close to Alex so she could be seen in the interview shot with Sheila, however, we struggled to get her to sit close and still.

In the end we decided to just have a photo of Coco on the side table to the right of Alex, so she's still in the shot while were talking about her.

We next thought it would be best to try filming Coco running around with Alex at a park. We want these shots as covering shots for Sheila's interview. These shots worked really well, apart from Katie unable to see the camera screen sometimes because of the sun. We got a range of shots of Coco running around catching a tennis ball.

Next, we decided to test the splatter of blood. In the script, while Dr Stewart is operating on Coco we see blood squirting out of the dog and onto Dr Stewart, although gruesome we aim to make this scene funny. We needed the blood to really splatter onto Dr Stewart, on his face and overalls. The fake blood we used was non-toxic, and to make sure it didn't spill on anything and stain it we filmed this test outside. We first started with a Lucozade bottle because if you squeeze them they spit the liquid out at the top. This worked ok, but the splatter wasn't enough. We would also need a full bottle of fake blood otherwise the bottle spits out air which would ruin the shot. 

We thought a water pistol may be easier to use as a splatter. We brought one and tried it out. This worked a lot better and covered Aidan with the fake blood. We think this will be funnier and it makes more sense to see more blood as he is operating on the animal. 

The last thing we tested was the lighting for the surgery scene. We want a dramatic light above Aidan as if its the surgical lamp, with a soft fill light underneath to even out the shadows on Aidan's face. We created this with a small LED lamp, on it's highest setting, facing down onto Aidan, and we used another LED lamp for underneath Aidan to fill out the shadows, this one was set at a lower setting. For the lighting to have a dramatic effect on the camera, Katie changed the ISO and aperture until she got what we wanted. In the end she went with an ISO of 800, 1/60 shutter speed, and the aperture at f/ 4.0. 

Reflection:
- The test shoot was really helpful as we were able to find a good way to splatter the blood after trying a few different methods. If we didn't do the test shoot we would have been stuck on the filming day.

- It was very helpful to work with Coco, we realised that it's not very easy to work with animals, especially trying to get them to sit still in a certain place.

- The lighting test worked really well. The light looked very dramatic over Aidan's face. This lighting will be perfect for a tense surgery scene, before having the blood splattering over his face and clothes for the comedy. 

- We only shot bits and pieces for what we wanted to practice, not a full run through of the mockumentary, but I will be able to edit a couple of sequences together to see how the real shoot will hopefully look.