Test Shoot Before Filming

Before we began filming for our music video, we decided that we wanted to do a test shoot. This would mostly be to test out the lighting, styling / costume and colouring. For our test shoot, we used a Samsung Digital Camera and a HTC Desire S smartphone to record the footage - although these are not  what we intend to use for our final product, they do enable us to film in HD and see how this quality affects our footage.


Test shoot from getzombified on Vimeo


As you can see, we mostly focused on trying to create the right 'spotlight' lighting effect against a dark background because we knew this would mean that our footage would have more contrast (and therefore be much more visually striking). I also felt quite uncomfortable on camera when we first started, so knew that this was something that I would need to work out before we began filming our music video!
We also tested out how the light would react with different surfaces to create interesting images, for example, we shone the light on water as it was moving down a drain, which make interesting moving shadows / ripples. The light reacted interestingly on frosted and patterned glass too, with close ups looking particularly interesting.
Overall, our test shoot was a valuable exercise, as it allowed us to experiment and be creative without feeling pressurised for an outcome. This meant that we got some interesting ideas and more of an idea of what does and doesn't work!