Research and Planning 15: Our planned filming location and set design

As our scene requires a large amount of empty space, we initially had very few ideas as to where we could film our sequence. However, we soon found out that we could use the studio at our school, albeit with a few limitations. Since we will be shooting after the school day ends at 3:45pm rather than a weekend, the duration of our shoot was about five hours from 4pm to 9pm. Furthermore, our school will only remain open at such a late time if there is an event, such as a music concert. This means that there will be very few days each week in which it will be possible for us to shoot. On top of that, the days in which the studio is open must also be agreeable with our actors. Needless to say, it will be very difficult to organise our shoot. But the studio is easily our best option for a filming location as it gives us a great amount of control of scene and lighting.

We used the curtains to cover the
 whole of the back wall

The above picture shows the studio; our chosen filming location. This location offers a great amount of control: blinds can be brought down over the windows, the curtains are attached to a track which takes them in front of the back wall, which we can then remove from the shot during the editing process. We also have plenty of space for the table and our actors around it.

We decided that a sketch of our set would help us visualise where we will need to place our lights and take our shots from. The crossed area behind the table shows what will be hidden by the curtain, whereas the line over the table shows the 180° line. Our main characters, Blake and Jen, are marked as B and J respectively. The other two players are the table, who draw guns at the end of the sequence, are marked as C and T. The dealer is marked as D. Deciding how to light our scene was quite difficult, as the position of the dealer meant that we could not simply have a single light. Instead, we positioned our lights, marked as 1 and 2, as shown below so that we can light all of our characters except for the dealer. We also had a spotlight directly above the table.

Once we had finished setting up, we were very happy with how the scene looked. We were aiming to create a sense of neo-noir with this scene as the majority of the events in the opening are a reflection of previous events. We believed that removing detail from the background would make the scene appear more dream-like, so we were glad to see that the scene adhered to our expectations.