We had to set up the room in which we were filming to make sure the mise-en-scene was appropriate for the timer period our film is set in, the 1920s. Filming the whole scene took about two and a half hours and other hour or so for setting up the room and putting it back as it was after filming.
From the test shoot we discovered that some of the storyboarding was slightly inaccurate in terms of the camera angles used and the logistics of them- especially when panning as the camera had to be at the right height and position in order to frame everything in the sequence. The panning therefore took a few goes to get the angle and position correct, but once that was sorted out the panning went very smoothly and I feel is very effective in the opening of our film.
A few camera angles were changed during filming as we felt they worked more effectively than the ones planned. Two examples of this is the lipstick shot and the mirror shot. The lipstick shot was planned as a birds eye, however whilst filming we felt there was something about it that didn't quite work and so we changed it to more of an eye level shot.
For the mirror shot after the protagonist gets dressed, we swapped the camera from the left of the protagonist to the right and a lot closer than planned too. The reason for this swap from medium shot to close up was to enable the protagonists face and expression to be seen more clearly by the audience and we felt that switching the side from which the camera was filming helped with this.
A shot we thought worked very effectively was the one where the protagonist picks the ring up from her bedside table. We love the framing of this shot and feel the small photo frames with old fashioned photographs in behind the ring are a small touch which really add to the mise-en-scene of the shot and the scene as a whole.
Pip and I had some trouble with the lighting due to the fading of natural light as filming progressed. Therefore we turned on the light in the bedroom and also used a phone torch from a distant to give more directed light. Whilst filming with the torch light we felt it looked quite artificial, however after post-production, which included putting the scene in black and white, we thought the lighting looked a lot better than we expected. Despite this we would still like to improve it for the real thing as we did have to lighten most of the footage in post production.
Overall, the test shoot was great for us to see what needed to be improved for the real thing and what problems we were unprepared for- such as lighting. I feel that changing some of the shots as planned on the storyboard is normal as sometimes you only really know how that shot will look when you're actually filming on set with all the props etc. This is possibly something that we didn't consider, however it was very easy to adapt and I think it was definitely the right decision as the shots are effective in aiding the telling and development of the narrative.
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