Potential Locations
The scramble for locations will be far more intense this year, especially considering my group and I want to make sure we really get the location diversity up on last year's project. Last year we only ended up using two maybe three locations whereas this year we're thinking about really branching out and trying to incorporate a variety for our film. The following are locations we will potentially use:
#1 Luke's House (Green Screen)
The front of Luke's house is a possible destination for our green screen usage. It is wide enough for us to assemble our green screen as well has having both cars there for us to use. Not only this but there is more than enough space to fit in lamps, floodlights and any other choice of lighting we might end up needing in order to film. Luke's house looks like one of the best places to do our green screening really. Despite this we will still be open to the elements which could mean the wind and possibly rain, if there is any, could hamper our chances of getting good footage. Along with this, there is also the problem of even lighting. We really might struggle with making sure there aren't shadows across the screen due to unbalanced light setups and glare if we film during the day with light bouncing off the car metal. Even so, Luke's house is still probably our best (and easily accessible) bet.
#2 My Grandad's Garage (Green Screen+Poker Scene)
Another choice for the green screen location is my Grandad's garage. It is one of the ideal places to film a green screen scene purely because I am confident that we can light it up evenly enough for the green screen to not get shadowed in any place or for the lighting to produce glare unlike with Luke's house. This is true especially if we close the garage whilst we're filming because then there will be no interfering ambient light. On the other hand, I know that my Grandad's garage is really quite small meaning that we'd have to do one car at a time and we'd struggle to get into the cars once they're actually in the garage. There is, of course, enough space for the green screen to fit and we can manage the lighting but opening doors to the cars will be tough especially with the Astra we're using for the interior shots! Despite this, it might well end up being the most successful place we'll be able to film with a green screen. Along with this, it will be a great small enclosed space with which we can film a very good opening scene (with our poker set as can be seen below).
#3 My Garden Alleyway
The desire to want to open the film with an alleyway scene lead to me having to discover whether or not my garden alleyway could be a suitable option. It's got a door at the end for the characters to burst out through to start the action and it's big enough to fit both our characters running. The problem is that it's possibly not wide enough to fit both our characters running along with any cameramen or additional cameras set up anywhere along the way. This probably means we'll only be able to work with a limited amount of shots here but we could certainly try anyway.
#4 Alleyway Near David's House (Seaview Alley)
Another choice for our alleyway scene is a location right next to David's house in which we can have a variety of cameras set up and it's more than wide enough to fit a car let alone both our runners. The idea for this would be to have him (David) come up the Seaview Stairs (see below) and then run down this set of alleys and into the open street to get into his car which would initiate the car chase. Surrounding settings are somewhat ambiguous which helps in our transition to the car chase as these roads could really lead anywhere. Despite this, the immediate area by where the cars would be parked are slightly too residential for what we plan on having in our plot and the mixture of the grass floor with concrete is somewhat confusing for the audience to get a rough idea of where they are.
#5 Stairs Near David's House (Seaview Stairs)
Luckily for us, David's house is situated in an area which has a lot of convenient filming locations that can suit what we want. The stairs have a fair amount of space to work with and we can get a decent mix of camera shots in there. The top of the stairs leads to the residential area where we could have David and Luke hop into the cars and start the chase or we could use the bottom of the stairs to go down and then start the car chase from the road down there instead. Unfortunately both sides of the stairs are perhaps slightly too residential for our plot again. Not only this but there happens to be an unfortunate lamp post in an inconvenient position on the stairs at one point which could end up physically affecting the dynamic of our chase.
#6 Seaview Point (Establishing Shot for Car Chase)
Because we planned on keeping the action continuous throughout in our story, we decided that we would try to not spend too much time on the establishing shots of the film. Instead we would dive straight into most of the scenes straight away with little to no establishing but then, just before our car chase, we would establish the city and country that it was happening in - hence we decided to go for a scenic shot from Seaview Point. Here we could pan across to show our setting for our whole film.
#7 Bridge
For one of our locations, we needed a fairly open area with which we could have enough space for David and Luke to run through but without causing major disturbances for the general public. We considered going to a location in Bournemouth at first as we were sure we could get a large shopping area we could get the duo to run through but, upon inspection, we realised it would never have worked because of the density of civilian pass-throughs. Fortunately, Jordan knew of an area near Poole centre that had a large runway and some steps that we could use as a foot chase but that was also quiet enough for us to not need to be too conscious of surrounding people.
#8 Creekmoor (Near Jordan's House - Final Scene)
The desire for our final scene location saw us head to Creekmoor. An area near Jordan's house seemed perfect to us. Our final scene required an open area where our protagonist could park his car, come out and look inside his bag without interruption which meant this pathway was basically exactly what we needed. There's rarely any passers-by and it's a quiet area which added to the idea that David had escaped the chase and could now check he had what he'd wanted all along. Most importantly for us, though, was that there was enough space around for us to make use of our trolley and for us to get a nice variety of shots for our final scene.