Location Recce - Tonbridge Park Toilets

When re-filming our film opening, we decided to use public toilets to add comic effect and more narrative as well as giving a specific, more obvious place for the title of our film to go and be isolated. This made it easier for the name to be identified for what it is as well as showing that it is an opening, and where it ends as this is the last credit shown.
This post shows the recce of the toilets that we did. We wanted it to be a confined and small space to represent how she has been thrown out of her house and has almost no option for her to go, so she is confined in what she can do.

We thought the no-smoking sign on the toilet wall could add to irony of her life, as our protagonist is addicted to drugs and this is the focal point of the opening and rest of the film. However, we did not get round to filming this part of the location unfortunately so had to leave it out of the opening.

The photo above shows the toilet stalls which we had in almost all of the shots inside the public toilets. We took a low angle shot from either end of the toilets when the protagonist walked in and out of them. We also wrote in eye-liner and lipstick onto the metal stall doors small phrases such as "David has a small dick" and "call this no. for a good time" which added comic effect and allows the comedy genre to be seen amongst the drama genre.

Location Recce - Bedroom Change

1st February 2017

Under certain circumstances, it turned out that we were unable to use the first bedroom that we planned so had to recce a second choice.

We liked how this bedroom looked as it shows the tom-boyish side of our protagonist from the stereotypical blue. It also has non copyrighted posters on the walls which we thought went well with the messy character.

We planned to move the bed into the centre of the room as this would allow us to use the space around it to fill with the credits and allow for panning shots.

As a group, we realised that we would have to remove certain parts of the room, such as names and photos of the boy whose room it is, as this could distract or confuse the audience towards the personality or identity of our character.

However some aspects could be kept, such as guitars and guitar amps, that build the background and interests of the character. As well as this, the bottle tops on the wall could be taken off and scattered on the floor to add to her messy persona and underage drinking, enhancing the theme of drugs once again as well as the genre of comedy drama.

When taking pictures of the bedroom, I decided to take a picture of the bed from a high angle, as this is what we desired to do during the actual filming of the opening, to allow a sense of what it would look like in the final piece.

Location Recce - Tonbridge Park

3rd January 2017

After storyboarding, we as a group knew we had to start looking and scouting out the locations that we wanted to film the different scenes in and knew we would have to shoot these in various natural lighting in order to fully test each one.

We also thought about props we would use to make the scene look more realistic as well as fitting with the colour palette that we made for the opening and genre of comedy drama.

This would help in the long run as it gave us a clear and set idea of where we would be shooting and how it would look on camera in our final opening.

The first location that can be seen in our opening is one of the teenage girl protagonist who will be sat on the edge of the bench shown.
On the left, is our first choice as the background has neutral colours as well as a slight interjection of the colour palette, however extremely subtly in the corner, we thought it seemed effective.
We had also planned for 2 children to rush past during the zoom in shot of this scene, and realised the path may be useful for this.

We then took some example shots including a member of the group to exemplar how the actor playing our protagonist would look on the day or whilst shooting.

This helped as we could see how the scene may look after shooting as well as allowing us to test the exact position of our actor within the frame and also the rule of thirds that we want.


As well as this, we decided to make a short video explaining the issue of shadow from the sun, including an examplar clip of the bench.

As a group, we found a similar bench, also inside Tonbridge Park. This particular scene included the background of trees which we originally desired, and also made the location more obvious as the gate in the distance is a clear semantic example of a park.

As part of our sound palette, the group decided on having ambient background noise of a park. This will play at the start of the film opening over a blank screen before cutting to the first scene of our protagonist on the park bench. Below, is an example of the type of ambient sound we want in our final piece.

Location Recce - Brick Wall

3rd January 2017

The second location we knew was necessary was a brick wall, preferably old or dirty looking with pavement at the bottom as a pose to it being grassy.

This was for the second scene of our opening where our protagonist would be shown standing as if outside a party of some sort in more dressed up clothing than before, taking a pill to demonstrate the theme of drugs. 

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    This was our initial idea as it was actually outside a club, however it did not fit our ideas of how we pictured it to be, as we imagined the wall being a lot more sheltered off therefore a naturally darkly lit shot overall. 

However, the final decided location for this was a wall that was very close to the park where the first shot will be filmed. It was a lot more dirty looking and already had graffiti on it, which is what we had in mind. This is as we wanted to put the name of our company onto the wall during the editing stages and this left negative space for us to do so, as can be seen by using a member of the group to show where we would place our actress.

Location Recce - Bedroom

3rd January 2017

Finally, we recce-ed the bedroom that we wanted in our final opening. Our vision was to have a room with a double bed in the centre to give us space to pan around from one side to the other.

Charlotte suggested her parent's room which seemed to work well with our idea, as well as giving us an extra room, the bathroom, where we decided we could finish the opening in, before cutting to a black screen.