We tested the lighting for some of the interview/PTC scenes and I worked out how we could block the scenes. I also worked with Katie (DoP) to work out the camera settings and framing. We tried to replicate the 'Come Fly With Me' style of shooting, using quite bright lighting (except for the surgery scene) and in an observational documentary style.
I blocked how I wanted the interviews to be shot, and tried shooting with Coco in frame, but found that this was not very practical as she moved a lot and could not stay still for very long. It would not be fair on her to force her to stay still so I decided it was best to leave her out of this shot and make it up with non-sync GVs of her where she was more comfortable. I knew that working with animals would be a challenge, and even shooting static shots of her sitting down proved difficult, but with some patience and determination I feel that it was a good experience to learn how animals deal with shooting.
After the script was complete and after Simon's feedback, we knew that we needed to spend a good amount of effort in the practical effects of the film, in particular, the blood that would be involved in the surgery scene. I still had a lot of fake blood left over from my directions unit shoot last year, so we were able to test different methods of spraying blood into Dr Stewart's face when he cuts into the dog. We dressed Aidan in a hospital gown I also had spare from my directions shoot and began the first test, which involved putting blood an empty Lucozade Sport bottle - the bottle top works well for spraying liquid. We got some good shots from this, but overall we don't think we got enough blood spraying onto Aidan's face. Note: the blood itself is non-toxic and we made sure not to get it in his eyes with tissues on hand in case we did. The second test involved using a water gun to spray the blood into Aidan's face. This got a lot more blood on his face but did not look as natural as spraying the bottle. This was not necessarily a bad thing, I felt that having more blood than looked natural would add a level of absurdity that works well with the tone, in my opinion. Therefore we decided that the water gun was the best choice.
We also tested how we would shoot the idyllic dog walking scenes with Sheila. I stood in for Sheila as I had the best relationship with Coco and for the sake of testing how the camera deals with these shots, it did not matter on the content of the shots, just that Katie was able to capture them. This went fairly well, although Katie and I agreed that the colour looked off - a little under-saturated and under-exposed, as well as softly focused. We were using my shoulder mount which has a focus puller which should make focusing a little easier on the day. Katie will also experiment with the colouring of the shots so that the picture looks better. Katie was also shooting the exterior handheld shots on my Sony EOS 60D camera, which does not have image stabilisation. This made the image look very shaky, even with the shoulder rig, so we will make sure that we use Katie's EOS 700D camera, which has image stabilisation.
The final thing we tested was the lighting for the surgery scene. This would be a lot darker than the other scenes and so we were relying almost entirely on artificial light. We were using Katie's softbox lights and my own small led lights and we were able to work out what lighting setup we liked the most.
Overall the shoot day was very useful in showing us how we would shoot some of the scenes, including how we would achieve some of the practical effects and lighting arrangements. Communicating with my crew members has been vital to ensuring we are all on the same page when it comes to shooting the film
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