Location Scouting - Lucy Clark Re-sit

The opening two minutes of our horror film requires a variety of different locations, including inside a house and several outdoors. We are looking mainly around the Broomfield area, because it is local to our actors and so will be easier for them to make it to filming dates. It also means that we can get more done each day of filming because we are cutting out excessive travelling.

For several of the scenes we need to film inside a house, and believed it would be best to film in one of our own to avoid an invasion of someone else's privacy. We decided to film these scenes at Emmaline's house because it is close to all of our other possible locations and so will be easy during filming. We considered several different rooms in the house to film in, including the kitchen (as is used in "Scream" to good effect) but decided on the bedroom. The reason behind this choice is that it is a very personal room, and so boundaries are pushed even further by the antagonists.

(a still taken from "Scream")

This was a final choice of bedroom to shoot our victim in because it's a light colour reflecting the innocence of our actress. It will also be easier to have someone hide in this room as there is also another room attatched. The double bed may also make the charactar seem more realistic and imply she is the only resident in this household, whereas single beds seem more child like.

For another of our locations, we looked at filming by some derelict looking garages by Church Road in Broomfield. The reason we think that this is a good place to film is because it looks very empty and makes the lone female protaganist look very vulnerable as she walks through the area. They are dark and the moss and grass outside of them is overgrown. The idea of derelict buildings being used in horror films is a fairly common convention, where normally it is an old "haunted" house that is used.

These are the woods that are located right by Chelmer Valley and Broomfield Hospital. The reason we're looking into filming here is because there is a footpath that runs through them and the tree's are quite sparse, and so it looks as if it is simply a short cut to her house. The woods are quiet as well so there wont be much background noise, which again complies with typical horror films, because the victims vulnerability is played on. A film that makes use of filming in the woods is "The Blair Witch Project" filmed entirely on handheld cameras and it a very good example of a film that makes the audience feel uneasy and scared in this type of location.

(photo from http://www.mediabistro.com/fishbowldc/nbcs-version-of-the-blair-witch-project_b24462 )

This is Court Road. We like this location because it is quite a wide, open road, and there isn't many parked cars or houses along the sides, which gives the impression of being totally alone. Also, the street lamps are quite spaced out, therefore when it is dark, you can only see the part of the road that the street lamps light up. This means that we can work with shadows and people hiding in the darkness, giving the audience a sense of unease. Because however, it does get dark quickly, we would have to work out a filming schedule that fits in with the lighting, to ensure that it isn't too dark to film, but dark enough that the effect we are looking for is achieved.

We are aiming to shoot the majority of our film during late afternoon/early evening, because the darkness will aid us in trying to create an eerie environment and make the audience feel uneasy.