Preliminary Exercise - Location

For our preliminary task as a team we looked at different locations to film, looking at each with a different criteria in mind. These were the atmosphere, the look of the place and how the accessible the location is.

Originally, when we were first planning and storyboarding our task we had planned for it to start outside panning from a possible thunderstorm and rainy clouds to an alley where you see an iconic walking shot so we searched locally for a similar alleyway that we had initially thought of. I looked at Google maps so that I could find the locations easily and to see if they suited our requirements without having to travel to inspect them first. These were the places we found:

An alleyway in Ottery St Mary, this is next to the Old Mill factory which would allow a pan shot however it is a highly trafficked area with a main road next to it so filtering out the unwanted sound would be a difficulty.

 This is an alleyway in Sidmouth next to the Santander bank, I liked the atmosphere of it - it's very eerie and dark. However it's in the high street and it is very commercialised and clean losing the raw effect that we want.

Here is an alleyway in Tipton St. John, I like the natural and dirty look of the location however we want it to look industrial and not so green also with the public foothpath sign it lessens the effect of danger also the walking shot would not be able to go ahead if I am stumbling over the rocks and roots.

After the alleyway scene we thought that I could be seen walking into an abandoned building, which would have given an eerie and dangerous feel to the piece. The only building that we could find locally which would have suited our needs was the Ottery St. Mary abandoned mill factory however we did look at other buildings to see if they matched what we wanted. This are shown below:

This is what I believe to be the Dairy Crest abandoned factory in Taddiport, nr Great Torrington, it is a big location meaning many places to shoot the film however it would be difficult to travel so far with all of the equipment.



                                         

After searching online for abandoned buildings on www.theurbanexplorer.co.uk I saw a post about Beer Quarry so I went onto Google street maps and found a photo taken by Jim Rider of the quarry. I love the overgrown feel of the location however it would be difficult to create or find an indoor scene because of the natural feel of the location.

When looking through the selection of locations we decided to use the Old Mill Factory with the alleyway next to it to film the scene in, since it's very accessible so we can re-film if we need to.



After discussing we decided not to use the alleyway scene as the weather was unpredictable and as there weren't any thunderstorms near we abandoned the idea, we also decided that if we shot the outside scene and if it was raining or thundering we would need to edit the non-diegetic sound in which would have made it extremely difficult for the editor with the audio clips.

Researching locations to film in will help me and my team in future when searching for locations for our main task because we will be able to assess the problems with the site quickly which causes us to be more time efficient.