We have built a rig to hold all the items of the salad plus a part of a bowl. There’s a pouring rig as well using a bottle on an axis.

We made a splash rig to test the possibility of water drops in the air.

I’ve had a salad bowl cut in half. It looks very similar to the hero. (all high-speed tests were shot at 600 f.p.s.)

Shot 1 – Top shot pour

 diluted 40%                   diluted 20%                   diluted 10%                  diluted 10%

We did some new tests with different dilutions of the sauce. The thicker the sauce is, the less we see of the tongue shape in the pour. The black and white take from yesterday was made with a solution of 40%. (For the impact in shot 2 a thicker mix looks much better).

A “tongue’ is not visible in a straight top shot, (see first test film). We also shot a tongue in three quarters.

Shot 2 – Salad cream lands on the lettuce

The sauce was diluted with 10% water at room temperature.

The impacts in this new, closer test film were shot using a thicker mix, (dilution 10%).  The shape and position of the leaf have a big influence on the shape of the splash.

We made a splash rig to make water drops drops in the air. I would advise against this. (The water drops in the Valletta film were shot as a separate plate. They may even be a different speed to the main action, I’m not sure).

Shot 3 – Drop of sauce hits lettuce leaf

Drop tests. Shot with a solution of 10%. I shot several different kinds of drops so that we can talk about what we’re looking for…

The drops in the first film fall from 50 cm., in the second film from 25 cm.

The bouncing of the leaf when the drop hits it is maybe nice?

We can make a “spectacular splash” but we need to retain the thickish, “realistic character” of the sauce.

A 25 millisecond water drop falls from 80 cm. on the edge of lettuce leaf. We can vary the power of the splash by changing the height.