Difficult shot practice

We had a particular shot in our film that we wanted to try out before principle photography began as it was rather difficult. We wanted a shot that went through the computer, showing all the insides, and coming out of the other side into a different scene.
Our first challenge was getting a computer that was disposable, and luckily our college had some old computers that were unused so we were allowed to take one. This meant we could go to work taking off all of the panels to see how much room we had inside for the camera.
The second challenge we faced was that a regular camera would not be able to fit through the computer. Luckily, one of us has a GoPro with attachments, so we used the monopod so we could slide the camera through.
Next, we needed to find a way to create a hole so the camera could actually get inside. There was a panel on the back that came off fairly easily, but creating a hole at the front was difficult. There was a mesh grill on the front which we cut away with wire cutters (which was hard!) but eventually managed to create a gap big enough to get the GoPro through.

Now we had a gap big enough to get the camera through, we needed to make sure the insides of the computer allowed enough space for the camera to move all the way through. We only needed to move a few wires to allow enough room, so that did not take long.

Now we had a clear path and the camera could move through easily. Inside, when the camera was moving through, we wanted a big shadow of a fan moving to be cast along the sides. To do this, we removed one of the fans that was inside the computer and made our own rig which would work almost like a cookie.
We had a small metal panel that was part of a larger panel which we removed from the back of the PC. This was perfect to mount the fan onto as it fit perfectly across the gap where it would be. We used superglue to mount it to the panel, then mounted (again, with glue) the panel to the rim of the hole on the side of the computer.

We put the panel back onto the computer, and shone a light through the hole which we cut out like so.

 This cast a shadow perfectly onto the inside of the PC just as we imagined. Although this took a long time it was worth the effort as it created a really nice effect inside and lit it well. Despite this, we had the problem of the fan not spinning easily as it was hard for one of us to operate the camera and one of us to hold the light and move the fan manually. We tried to coil string around the base of the fan so when we pulled the string it would spin. This worked to some degree, but it kept getting caught and was costing us a lot of time.
To solve this, we cut off the top off a bottle and glued that down onto the top of the fan. This way, we could coil string around the fan without it getting caught so it could move more consistently. With this, we were finished, and put the panel back on and shot the scene.

This is the result.