Production - Diary Room Test Shoot

Due to the issues faced in our previous shoot's, we decided from this point onward, we would do a test shoot for every scene, if possible. Some sequences such as actuality interviews would be hard to test, but we had realised that you can mock up something similar which will highlight what we want to achieve from the shoot. Today's test shoot is for one of our most important sequences. The diary room is a sequence that will appear multiple times throughout our documentary. These will delve into my past and highlight why I am a motorsport fan, understanding why this is a passion that I still have to this day. Initially, we had thought about doing this sequence in a plain room, but as we wanted every sequence to be visually interesting, I thought we should look elsewhere. I had recently visited an old friend and he happened to have a large car workshop with 4-5 race cars. When I saw it, I thought it could work really well for our documentary. I took some pictures and showed the team and we agreed that this location would be much better than a plain room. George got in contact with Steven who owns the garage, and we arranged to do this test shoot. As shown on the map below, it is relatively close to the Studios. The crew today was, myself, George, Cailan and Connor Winfield who was on another camera. A camera plan and all the details I had noted can be seen in my previous post, as well as my intended shot list. The idea of a test shoot is to understand if my plans work, so I am looking forward to learning an understanding of what could be improved. 

The first part of our day was the interview test itself. We all arrived on time and proceeded to understand the best place to film this sequence. We thought the lower floor, in the top left corner, was ideal as it would give us space for the track and dolly. At first, we did not use a light, but George did bring a small LED which we ended up using. For the actual shoot, we will have the universities large LED's.


Cailan was on the Uni Panasonic, Connor was on my Panasonic while the Sony was on a tripod. Full details can be seen in a previous blog post. These three cameras captured close-ups and medium shots. The Uni Panasonic was on the dolly wheels which meant Cailan had a steep learning curve, as he had never used it before. George was able to fully concentrate on his role as producer and asked me the various questions we had planned. It was important to note that we realised that these questions should be slightly adapted, as they were not giving me the opportunity to give good answers. This was noted so it can be changed before we shoot this sequence for real in March.

The shoot itself went well, I was able to immerse myself within my role as a contributor and answer George's questions. The white balance looked good on all of the cameras, but it is clear that Connor's camera (large "close up" above) should be placed on the other side to ensure I am not looking in a different direction to the rest. The Sony (right) is out of focus which I am surprised about it as the crew all know how to focus the camera. When this issue is resolved our three shot types will all be unique and be great to cut around in the edit.

My main issue with this test shoot was an oversight from the whole team. In my notes and reference material, the main lights were turned off to create a more cinematic scene, in which key lights would focus on the subject matter (me). We were running behind schedule due to the camera crew taking much more time to set up, which meant we had less time on these "PTC" sequences than I would have liked. This lack of time also meant we caused this issue with the lighting as we were focused on getting the camera tests done. This mistake means that we will have to adapt quickly when shooting this sequence for real. Ideally we would have tested these scenes in the conditions we would actually be filming the scene in, but an oversight from all of us is something we have learnt from, meaning George needs to follow my shotlist and reference material and it is his job to ensure things like this lighting issue are not something I should be thinking about. I need to be focused on being a contributor, not worrying about lighting, cameras in focus etc.

While we did make a mistake with the main lights, George did a good job to test lighting on my face, seeing if it looked better with/without a key light on it. The key light on my face made a dramatic improvement, meaning that there was a lot less grain in the shot along with my face being more distinct from the cars in the background. My idea to resolve the lighting issue is to get to the venue 1 hour before we had intended and test the lighting for this shoot. This way we can ensure the lighting (with the main lights off) is what I expect as a director before I get in front of the camera myself and record my chat with George. It was a slight oversight, but we realised our mistake and have changed our future plan for the actual shoot day. We are coming up against a lot of new challenges in this project, meaning we are learning a lot. As long as we are picking up on the issues and improving our documentary because of it, that is what is most important. It is a continual learning process.

When reviewing the footage it was apparent that one camera was out of focus which can be easily fixed. The other issue was that the track and dolly operated by Cailan could have been smoother. It was his first time using it so improvements will be made with further experience, but this issue prompted George to suggest to Cailan that he come into University to practice the track and dolly. This will be done before we shoot the Diary Room for real and will enable us all to be confident that we know our roles going into the actual shoot date.

When answering the questions, I felt like George could ask the questions in a more natural way. He typically asked them in a very professional way. This did mean that they were easy to understand, but it didn't give the tone needed for this sequence. The point of the Diary Room is for it to come across like a conversation. This led to me feeling awkward when answering the questions and not giving natural answers. Knowing this, I am working with George to slightly adapt the questions so that they are more natural for George to ask and for me to answer. This was a great bit of information we learnt from the test shoot as, without one, we would have struggled with our current questions. Typically, this test shoot has allowed us to learn so much about how we will face this scene. Going forward, with a few small changes, we will be making a stylistically pleasing scene with meaningful commentary from myself. I am really looking forward to this scene, I think this is where the power of our story will be shown.

While at the workshop I got a seat fitting for a race car that I have been given the opportunity to test for a few laps towards the end of February. This was not planned to be in our documentary, but this opportunity is too good to miss. As we have a lot of footage to include in our documentary already, the test in this race car (A Formula Ford) will be included in a montage style sequence in the build-up to the race/test sequence. We are still slightly undecided as to where this scene will be in the arc of our documentary, but this montage will help show the training and experiences I went through, without dedicating a long sequence to all of them. I am very excited to drive the car and we have been given some great access, meaning we will be able to shoot some very visually pleasing moments of me driving the car. We also got footage of my seat fit so that if needed, we can use that in our documentary. After learning that a lot of other projects had issues in the edit because of coverage, we are determined to get as much as possible. This has already proved important in the sequences filmed so far, so we are going to keep up our productivity going forward. It was a very productive day and we have learned a lot about how we film our Diary Room sequence, as well as a good experience for me personally because I got to prepare for my test in the Formula Ford!