During the first day of filming our lead actress wasn’t available so me and my partner decided to use the time to test out some of the shots we had planned and figure out how they could actually work in practice rather than just on paper, which ended up being really useful since there were a few shots that looked good in the script but needed adjusting once we tried them in the real locations.

We ended up with a couple of shots that were useful but also genuinely hilarious since we had our lead actor and one of our friends fill in as the couple for the test shots, the performances were terrible but in the best way and it actually helped us figure out angles and framing since we could see what worked and what looked awkward without wasting our actress’s time on shots that needed refining anyway.

I feel like this ended up being one of the more productive days we had even though nothing we filmed was usable for the final cut, since going through the motions of actually shooting the scenes gave me and my partner a much clearer idea of how to direct the real thing when our actress was available, and it’s something I would definitely do again on future projects since rehearsing the camera work separately from the actual performance makes both things a lot easier to manage on the day.

Here are a couple test shots: