Risk Assessment 2:
Test shoot 2
Test shoot 2 was primarily about working out the practicality of the owl punch. Previously, to the test shoot I ordered a fake owl kit and Alex combined the wool together creating a small, but weirdly accurate fake barn owl. The fake owl was smaller than the barn owl we used to fly, Dusk, but he was the closest, in terms of colour, to our tester. The punch will happen so quickly that hopefully we won't notice the size of the owl change, but we would notice a colour change if the fake and real owl weren't similar in colour.
We started by flying Dusk to get the shots with the real owl, which will then be cut into the punch with the fake owl in post-production. Alex directed the shoot while being the one the owl flew to. He decided we needed shots from the front, side and back to cover all the angles. Once Katie had all the footage with the real owl, I stepped in with the fake owl to throw to Alex in order for him to punch it out the way. The real owl was behind the camera at this point, in order to keep him safe and away from the punch.
The fake owl was hard to throw as it was very light. It was also slightly top-heavy with the head being the heaviest part. As a result of this, when I threw it towards Alex it always flipped and he ended up punching the back of the owl, whereas a real owl would land with its feet down on the gauntlet and his head upright. At this point we were thinking that using this fake owl wasn't going to work. We tried using the fake owl from the same angles as the real owl, but the fake owl didn't become any easier to use, and I wasn't able to throw it straight because of the weight of the head.
After the test shoot we went back to the Studios and we edited the footage to see what it looked like once it was together. Alex had the idea of masking the owl to make the two different takes fit together better, but in the end it surprisingly worked well without any masking. It happens so quick that you can't see that the fake owl isn't traveling in the same position that the real owl was, and it turning round just looks like the wings are flapping before it gets punched. We are surprisingly happy with the edit, and will most likely use the fake owl for the real shoot.
The only problem is that in the script, Alex has written that we see the owl on the floor and it twitches. I didn't think of this before when I read the script, but I doubt we will be able to film the fake owl on the floor as it'll look different to the real owl, and the audience may be able to see that it's fake. As the owl punch went better than we expected and we'll be keeping it in the story, Alex may have to change the script so we don't look at the owl once it's hit the ground.
Like I predicted we didn't get time to go inside the enclosures but we had one of the owls out of the enclosure while we filmed it so the risk assessment still applies.
Below is the edit of the owl punch:
Test shoot 2 was primarily about working out the practicality of the owl punch. Previously, to the test shoot I ordered a fake owl kit and Alex combined the wool together creating a small, but weirdly accurate fake barn owl. The fake owl was smaller than the barn owl we used to fly, Dusk, but he was the closest, in terms of colour, to our tester. The punch will happen so quickly that hopefully we won't notice the size of the owl change, but we would notice a colour change if the fake and real owl weren't similar in colour.
 |
| Fake owl tester |
We started by flying Dusk to get the shots with the real owl, which will then be cut into the punch with the fake owl in post-production. Alex directed the shoot while being the one the owl flew to. He decided we needed shots from the front, side and back to cover all the angles. Once Katie had all the footage with the real owl, I stepped in with the fake owl to throw to Alex in order for him to punch it out the way. The real owl was behind the camera at this point, in order to keep him safe and away from the punch.
 |
| Photo from test shoot 2 |
The fake owl was hard to throw as it was very light. It was also slightly top-heavy with the head being the heaviest part. As a result of this, when I threw it towards Alex it always flipped and he ended up punching the back of the owl, whereas a real owl would land with its feet down on the gauntlet and his head upright. At this point we were thinking that using this fake owl wasn't going to work. We tried using the fake owl from the same angles as the real owl, but the fake owl didn't become any easier to use, and I wasn't able to throw it straight because of the weight of the head.
 |
| Photo from test shoot 2 |
After the test shoot we went back to the Studios and we edited the footage to see what it looked like once it was together. Alex had the idea of masking the owl to make the two different takes fit together better, but in the end it surprisingly worked well without any masking. It happens so quick that you can't see that the fake owl isn't traveling in the same position that the real owl was, and it turning round just looks like the wings are flapping before it gets punched. We are surprisingly happy with the edit, and will most likely use the fake owl for the real shoot.
The only problem is that in the script, Alex has written that we see the owl on the floor and it twitches. I didn't think of this before when I read the script, but I doubt we will be able to film the fake owl on the floor as it'll look different to the real owl, and the audience may be able to see that it's fake. As the owl punch went better than we expected and we'll be keeping it in the story, Alex may have to change the script so we don't look at the owl once it's hit the ground.
Like I predicted we didn't get time to go inside the enclosures but we had one of the owls out of the enclosure while we filmed it so the risk assessment still applies.
Below is the edit of the owl punch:
There is a slight continuity issue, but apart from this the test shoot went better than what we thought. I believe that without knowing we had a fake owl, it does genuinely look as if we have just punched an owl. I have asked a couple of people to watch it to see what they think and without knowing what we've done they were all shocked and confused by the video. This proves that the owl punch does look real from their reactions. I will ensure that we state that no animals were harmed in the making of this film.
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