Group Test Shoot

So we had our test shoot on Sunday - very very early in the morning! We arranged to meet at the car park of Cineworld, Enfield, at half past 7; Mary got there half an hour early, then I arrived, then Bhavika, then Bisma, quite a lot later, but that's ok - it was just a test shoot and it is of course a learning process. So it took us quite a while to get started because after that we went to see if we could get permission to use the car park, because it would be awful if we got our footage deleted. So after being told again and again that it would probably be fine but we would have to wait for the manager, and, no, the manager's not here yet, but should be here soon, we decided to just go ahead with it anyway because it was just a waste of time. And it was rather embarassing to keep approaching cleaning staff and other random employees wearing suits and ask them if they were the manager. Sigh.
So yeah, we got started, and it was freezing, but hey, anything for media! We tried out a lot that we'd intended to and got all the car park scenes done - which was fab, and gave us more of an idea about how it will look. However, there were a lot of obstacles to overcome and interruptions which made shooting pretty complicated... after all, it's a car park, there are gonna be people parking and going up to the cinema... Then there's lighting, background noise, permissions...
After watching back our footage, we decided it would probably be a better idea to go back to the alleyway idea, because we have a good location. We found from our footage that it was quite blurry as well, which I think is down to lighting rather than camerawork (I hope!). Also, the actions and what's happening in the shot don't really have to change and we've already gone through them - it's just a change of location.
I think I worked quite well in the test shoot, and did a lot of the filming - probably more than I've ever done, so that was good experience. I also did a bit of sound and a bit of lighting, and we learnt a lot about how important both these things are - I think the whole group is a bit more knowledgable about the whole process now, so it was a great shoot in that sense.
So, we've decided that we need to check out our new locations properly, with the camcorders, and positions, and all of that, and avoid what happened at the car park - this means we're doing another test shoot, hopefully a more successful one in terms of getting the shots we're going to have in our final production, on Friday, before we then have a proper shoot on Saturday. Should be good!