Silhouettes and Knives - Test Footage

Today me and the director booked out the studio and did a few test shots of lighting and 'throwing' knives so see what could be achievable and also looks good. It is also something for the editor to experiment different effects and colour corrections with. I just used my Canon 750D for this, since it was just a test.

We experimented with different lighting set ups and props to produce different silhouettes (I'm pretty sure I took pictures of this, but I can't seem to find them!). We switched between two and one redhead and focused on the wolf mask. The director managed to make it blink and it looks really effective.

We then looked at using people as a silhouette. We used two red heads at first which produced a three dimensional effect (almost like the actor was fighting with herself). The director liked this one over the next one. For the strings (which also look effective in this set up as it looks like there are a lot more than there is), we attatched them to a broom stick and also to the actor (loosely).

We then used one red head to produce one strong silhouette. This set up looks more classy, which is not what the director is particularly after. The above one symbolises more chaos, like the atmosphere in a circus and the film in general. This one is more calm and conventional.

We then moved on to the knife throwing tests. We cheated the shot so no knives were actually thrown. We got a close up of the knife and I did a swooping pan (I talk about this more in the blog post here) to create the illusion of it being thrown. We attatched fishing wire to the knife already in the wood so someone could make it move (we did originally have someone move it with their hand but it's hard to get out of the way quick enough and is easy to see). 

It took a few times to get it just right, and the results do look pretty good! In the future, I should also do a swooping pan when the knife gets thrown so it's easier to edit (I didn't think it would be at the time since it happens to fast, but it does, so I will!) The director has also made a blog post about filming it in slow motion, and balloons popping in slow motion? But I have not been confronted about this. I am not sure how we would do this. We have used a camera with slow motion for Wynyard Hall (the Sony FS7) but we had to hire that out for a lot of money. Slowing it down in post maybe an option.