Test shots featuring cinematographer

 Test Shots feat cinematographer

As we are nearing the end of our foundation portfolio, getting greenlit and starting production, I encouraged my cinematographer to request a few days from our producer to borrow camera equipment for test footage runs. It is extremely effective to get comfortable with the camera and its many settings before production. Learning different camera movements and techniques are all the job of the cinematographer, but if it is one thing I have learned, as a director I should follow along in that journey, hence why I asked to receive all the test footage she attempted.

In this case, I will only use this footage 

Test footage received from cinematographer

What I have assessed from this test footage is that we would have to play around with lighting a lot in this film. For scene 1 & 3, we are filming exterior shots, therefore timing and weather are two major confounding variables in shooting. If it is too close to the afternoon, we can accidentally shoot during sunset, which in this time of the month is during 6-7pm, extremely early. Therefore, it is smarter to film earlier in the day, but weather can also play a role in altering this. Cloudy skies can affect lighting terribly and  random flashes of exposure can disturb mise en scene. A quick solution is to bring a white poster board and manipulate that to use it as a makeshift reflector. This helps bounce sunlight onto the actor, effectively filling in shadows and creating more even out lighting. I feel like natural light may be harsh at noon, so using the board to act as a large, portable light diffuser to brighten up shaded areas improves mise en scene. Other than that, the quality is quite nice and my cinematographer has continued informing me of her accomplishments in getting familiar with the camera.