Location Analysis
hall-j-4Location Analysis
When it came to choosing location, we decided that we wanted to set the opening in a normal home. This is because we wanted to create a sense of familiarity for the audience, and then turn that on its head by mixing in disturbing imagery and events as a way of taking away the audience's feeling of safety, making the scene more intense. Because of this, using our own houses for the setting seemed like the easiest idea, given that we all live in typical, average homes, and that using our own homes would obviously be much easier than using other homes since we have complete control over when the filming can be done. We ultimately decided on filming at Brads house. This is because the houses layout was perfect for getting good shots, angles and transitions, which are all important factors in the grade that we're given for the production. The house is also fairly tightly packed, not so much so that filming is difficult, but enough to make scenes feel more claustrophobic if we need them to. We also considered using the farm that Tom lives on, since it would have opened more varied location opportunities as well as giving our scene a sense of isolation, making the scene more tense. In the end, though, we settled with Brads house for convenience, as well as the opportunity for good shots.
The layout of the ground floor of the house (since we don’t plan on using the second floor for more than one or two shots, apart from a shot of the hero looking into a mirror at the top of the stairs) is fairly simple. It's made up of a single, thin corridor running through the middle of the house, parallel to the staircase. The corridor runs into the kitchen, which is where most of our filming is going to happen, as well a connecting to a lounge and dining room which we won't be using as much as the kitchen and corridor, but is still good to have in the background for making the house more believable for the audience. The kitchen has a door straight into both the garage and the garden, meaning we won't have to be running up and down the house for shots in certain locations.
There are very few disadvantages to using this house as our location. The biggest issue is probably that the colours in the house are slightly warmer and more vibrant than in our colour scheme, and even though we can change the colours once we start editing, there will still be a slight difference. As well as this, the house is quite busy, and there isn't much spare space on the worktop in the kitchen, leaving less room for our own props that we could have in the background of the frame.
Despite these issues, Brads house was probably the best option out of all of our choices; the layout of the house alone saves lots of time and effort trying to find good spots to shoot from, more than making up for the houses issues as the location for our final production.
