Test ShotsAbi Jackson

What Did We Do? Over the Christmas holidays me and my group got

together and took some test shots for our film trailer. We wanted to make use of our time off college wisely by beginning the creation aspect to our horror film trailer. We all met up at the main location of where our trailer is set – Paige’s house. Firstly, we looked carefully through our storyboard so that we could decide what we needed to test in order to see if lighting etc. was good enough and effective. We didn’t take test shots for every single scene as we were on restricted time so we prioritised the ones that we were most concerned about lighting and cinematography wise.

Our Test ShotsThese are our 3 test shots for the establishing shot of the house at the start of our film trailer. The first shot is the one we believe is the best and most effective. This is because the sky looks bleak and mysterious. Also, we like the fact that the top left window has a bright light coming out of it whereas the other windows are far darker. This looks effective against the dark bricks and sky behind it. Finally, it is a well lit shot however we can see clearly that it is dark and probably evening time. The second shot is clearly too dark and we can not see in detail what we are supposed to be able to see. Even though the bright light in the left hand corner is effective again, it is too contrasting to the rest of the shot. The last shot is far too blurry and unprofessional for us to be able to use in our horror film trailer. The camera is capable of taking a better quality photo than this so we decided this was not appropriate due to this reason.

Our Test ShotsThese are the next two test shots that we took. This is for the scene where Jamie runs out of the house before getting into her car. We have decided that both of these shots are too dark. Therefore, when filming this scene we will add some more lighting such as a torch or lighting from the window on the left hand side. These shots were useful to use though as it made us realise which cinematography we wanted in this scene. We have decided the shot at the bottom is what we prefer because it is a long shot and shows more of the atmosphere. Also, when Jamie comes through the door we will see her whole figure meaning we get to see both her facial expressions and body language.

Our Test ShotsThese are some test shots for the sceneincluding all of the jump cuts. The TV shot is very effective in our opinion due to the contrast of high key and low keylighting. This creates this impression of a horror and can make the audience feelon edge incase something were to jumpout from the darkness. The shot of the bin is a good angle however we believethat it should be slightly darker but not too dark that youcan’t make out what is happening. The reason we took thetest shot of the chair was mainly just to evaluate whetheror not this was the right kind of chair or whether wewanted to use a different type such as one with wheels. Wehave decided we will use this chair because this makes for a more realistic scene as many people in mainstream society have this type of chair in their dining room etc.

Our Test Shots

Our Test Shots