Planning For Final Film: Location shots

For this task we have had to determine where the location of our film is going to take place and to take some pictures of the location where the film is going to be set. We have decided to do this because a film's location can have a dramatic effect on the audience and can make a film seem a lot more dramatic and suspenseful and can really help to grip the audiences attention.

For the location of our final preliminary task film we had many group discussions about what we wanted the film to be like within the opening scene and what effect we wanted it to give to the audience viewing the film, both aesthetically and artistically. We have decided that we want our film to have a very dark feel throughout it with an underwhelming sense of eeriness, maliciousness and spite. Even if their was nothing explicitly on the screen which depicted a sense of evil, we wanted it to be inferred through aesthetic elements within the background such as lighting, the location and camera shots/angles. We decided that we are going to shoot our opening scene at night time as this would depict a sense of vulnerability  for the protagonist who is in danger because of what the situation he is in and the people that he is dealing with. Also, because the film will be filmed and at night time this helps refer back to the protagonist and helps to depict his "inner evil" that is usually characterized and exemplified by the protagonist within common psychological thrillers. We decided to shoot our film in a multistory car park and we will also be including a few shots of within town throughout the film. 

The multistory car park was an appropriate location for our film as it tends to exude a sense of dark and danger within the night time hours, thus helping to emit a sense of eeriness to the audience to help build up suspense and tension throughout our film. This location is also a very practical place to shoot our film because as most of the filming we do will be within the car park, it doesn't matter what the weather conditions are like outside. Within my childhood, I always felt of multistory are very interesting, complex and dynamic places. I always remember the overwhelming smell of a very strong chemical disinfectant (such as bleach) and human urine wafting throughout the dark, dismal and desolate environment that is the multistory car park. This smell was never was never comforting and always made me feel a bit nervous and on edge. What I also found very fascinating about this location was the fact that they have a sense of enclosure and interior while being partially unprotected and exposed to environmental exposure (there is a ceiling for the most parts, yet their is no door, no windows...this says something about the place if we looked into it in more depth rather than just capturing a location). Multistory car parks are also often very old, dank, grimy and dilapidated places that seem to have an essence of art ridden within them which would be able to be recognized within our film and would help to add another dimension of corruption and malfeasance to it as well as enabling us to capture something using composition, placement and the use of colour from within the building. 


The lighting within multistory car parks is also something which would add to the atmospheric effect - the lights are often covered within a thick layer of dust and cobwebs and are sporadically flickering. The fact that a multistory car park is a place which is used every day and not seen as a place which embodies a lot of character and uniqueness makes it even more fascinating and intriguing. I also liked the idea of shooting in a multistory car park because of the myriad of levels that it has. Thus, allowing us to be very experimental with our camera angles and shots because we could test on being on different floors and by using its different features such as the stairs and the elevators this would allow us to engage in a sense of in between (both of which would be a key part in showing the storyline and showing transition within the protagonists placement within the environment - the stair cases and elevators in particular admit a sense of insecurity, lack of instability, complexity and entrapment. The levels will also enable us to shoot in the same place however meaning that we could explore how different elements looked and if these elements would look better on another level/part within the multistory car park etc. It would also be interesting to see how a different sense of emotion and feeling is created when we shoot on different levels. (For example, what effect is created on the top level in which is fully exposed and how is this different to a level which is in between two others?) In addition to this the overall environment of the multistory car park feels perfect for what we are attempting to create within the few moments captured for the opening sequence and would allow us to use the complex and fascinating environment to our advantage and would create the effect needed for the underlying psychological themes which will be heavily induced throughout our film.