Location

Like many social realist dramas, my film is going to be entirely shot on location as opposed to the hospital scene being set up in a studio. This isn’t necessarily due to lack of budget, but my choice as a director to create a very real film, with dialogue being recorded on set too.

As Mike Figgis sums up in ‘A guide to digital film making’ (2004), ‘When looking for a location you need to consider many things, the obvious ones being ‘Is this the place that would suit your film best?’ ‘Does it look cinematically good?’ But you also need to consider questions such as ‘Will your crew fit into the space?’ ‘Where can your actors wait when they’re not being filmed?’ and ‘Is there anything that’ll compromise the period your film is set in and give away that sense of verisimilitude?’ Mike Figgis’s point is a very valid one, and consequently when I have been looking for locations for my film, all of these things have been taken into account, not only for the practicality of filming, but the way it looks on screen too.

To start at the beginning, scene 1 in my film is split into two locations. The first being the hospital to which the third scene is also set and the second is the empty scene which is meant to be set in limbo, this is the same as scene 4. I had to find a place that I could make look like a hospital or a room that was very clinical. Back in my AS Photography, I did a photo shoot in the hair and beauty section of the school, up at an industrial estate called Woods Browning. I did it to explore the issue of asthma and how I had been hospitalised by it in the past. The room that I used was a hair and beauty treatment room, which looked like a hospital in a very clinical way, so I went and asked if the people who run the vocational courses if I could film in it, and they were very co-operative and gave me dates when I could film there.

For the second half of scene 1 and all of scene 4, I needed to find a empty, bleak space that would symbolise limbo/heaven/a dream-like state before death. My initial thoughts were to book out the drama studio on the school site, set up a bed in the studio space and kindly ask one of the technicians to set up one powerful spotlight on the bed, giving the illusion that the bed is the only thing masked in light, surrounded by the dark. I went to talk to the head of the drama department about when I could book out the studio, and she told me that there would be a big delay because of the sheer amount of productions and classes that would be going on in that room. With this in mind, by photography teacher told me of a really old bleak worn out industrial unit up at Woods Browning that I could film or take photos at. He had the key, so I decided to go and have a look. The location was a large room that let in a lot of light, but it was very dilapidated, dusty and worn out. In my mind, I thought that I could bleach bypass the footage that I get in there to make it seem really bright and set up a light to help create mood and atmosphere.

Moving onto scene 2, I knew that this was the only scene that I would be filming outside and with this in mind, I know I have to be careful of the weather. I went looking through various locations, such as Delphi Bridge on Bodmin Moor, but I decided that it was too open with a road that was near by possibly causing audio disruption. I had a think, and decided to travel to Respryn Woods and have a walk around to find somewhere that was suitable. There is a photo of the place I have chosen on the right. With a river near by, I knew that this location would be more suited to the script than Delphi Bridge.