Locations.

We spread filming over two locations, outside of school, by the gates, and in Fort Horstead. Because the victim is a young schoolgirl and we were trying to represent her as vunerable we wanted to do it near a school location but we decided against doing it in school for multiple reasons. We were worried that if we filmed in a school location it would make us look like we were lazy and could not be bothered to go out on location and film. We also decided against filming in school because we decided that a kidnapping probably would not happen directly in a school eviroment because of the security systems that schools have, instead we decided to film outside of the school gates, to still show the school enviroment.


The second location we used was Fort Horstead. This took a long time to find a place that was suitable for our needs. We emailed Fort Horstead and said that we needed a place that was dark, dingy and ominous and they were more than happy for us to come along and see if it was suitable. When we actually filmed they supplied us with two heavy duty daylight torches because when you are in the cave without them, you cannot see your hand in front of your face. This was highly appropriate for the hostage scenes. We didnt have to worry too much about lighting when we went to visit because we knew that, not only would we have the daylight torches, but we would also have the lighting kit from the school. Filming in the cave was fun because it really set the scene and gave us great mise-en-scene. Lighting-wise we used candles to create an orange glow against the brick walls, the lighting kit from school and also the two daylight torches. We were able to bounce the lights off of the walls to create the effect that we wanted for each shot. Within the cave there was and alley behind the room that we were filming that had window holes and we used these on occasion to get the lights where we wanted. We moved the lights around depending on the shot and effect that we wanted and this is where the window holes worked to our advantage because we were able to run the line through the alley and have the light in the hole that cast the best shadows and created the light effect we wanted.


Using a cave was hard work, but it allowed us to produce some brilliant results. With filming on location mise-en-scene is pretty much already present because you are filming in the place your characted actually is, but Fort Horstead really went that much further because there were huge spiders and dirty floors that really made you think that the place was un-cared for and out of the way, which in reality all of the other magazines had been turned into offices and they could not turn the one we filmed in into an office because a fire had damaged the walls. Even though this sounds unsafe, it was explained to us that the magazine was perfectly safe for use, just not for renovating, because the walls would not take major changes.


Overall, I am really happy with our decisions on the locations we filmed on. The enabled us to get the best shots avaliable and really showed how much effort we put into getting the best we could.