We organised to do a test shoot one week before our actual shoot in order to ensure that the lighting and equipment we had planned to use was going to be practical. While I knew that doing a test shoot would be a good idea, because it would allow us to properly scout out the location and ensure that it was going to be appropriate to shoot in, I did not initially think that it was necessary to borrow all the equipment to accomplish this.

I learned through the experience of doing the test shoot, that borrowing the majority of the equipment that we planned to use for the shoot was extremely valuable. We had planned to light the dining room table where the two actor’s would be seated with an LED light suspended high above the table using a C-stand. We tried this out on the day of the test shoot, and found that while it lit the table quite nicely, it was not practical for certain shots, in particular the wide shot of the table. We couldn’t get the c-stand into a position where it was effectively lighting the table and not in frame. This was an important discovery, because it encouraged us to go back to the drawing board and come up with a better solution for our needs.

We ended up going back to the techs and explaining the problem we were having. They suggested that we suspend the light/lights on a long horizontal poll, held up by two C-stands. The distance between the c-stands would ensure that we had enough space around the table to get a wide shot with no equipment in frame.

You can bet that i’ll be doing test shoots for all future projects that require this kind of focus on lighting, and I’ll be borrowing all the equipment we plan to use.