Practice Shoot

We used a practice shoot before our main shoot to be able to see roughly how our opening sequence would play out. Also, this way, we would be more confident in our main shoot as we have already tried using the camera.

For our practice shoot we brought along our storyboard and took stills of the images we had drawn in the storyboard. As it was our first shoot we were unable to get the lighting exactly how we wanted it in our final piece, however we got the angles and framing correct. When we put the stills into the animatic, we were able to see how to time each shot effectively and so that it would last up until the required amount of time.

From the practice shoot to our final shoot we have changed some key aspects. For example, we were originally going to have Violet sleeping and then waking up to a knocking sound but after looking at it practically we decided it would be better to have her reading and hearing the knock. This saved some time. We also saved time by cutting down the kitchen scene as it was too long and would lose the reader's interest. In the end, we changed the phone call in the closet to Violet reaching Dale's voice mail as it would make more sense since he is at night shift.

Our biggest problem that we faced in the practice shoot was lighting. Many of our shots were grainy and it was hard to see. We wanted there to be a blue-ish hue to our shots which we couldn't achieve in our practice shoot. We sorted this out by using a lighting kit for our main shoot. Our footage from the real shoot is of a lot more quality.