Location Scouting

The majority of our video is going to be filmed in the woods around Great Leighs. We chose this location as it has a large assortment of different backdrops to film against, such as the dense woodland which we will use for the close up lip syncing shots, and the vast, open ground which we will use to film the tracking shots. However, there are a couple of other scenes which require different locations, such as the one at the end when the protagonist finds his way out of the forest, which requires us to have a shot of him on an empty road. Below are pictures of our final locations, along with some of the other locations which we considered using.

Other scouted locations:

St Andrews Park Woods-
This is a similar location to the area that we plan to film at in Great Leighs. It is located in Melbourne, Chelmsford. This is a good place to film for the group because it is local, meaning getting to and from the destination is easy. Also it is good because the location matches the sort of location we are looking for to film our music video in. The problem we may face with this woods is that there are houses nearby, this means of a night time (when we plan to film) the houses will have lights on, and these lights may be visible in our shots making it look not as believable and not very professional. I think in order to stop this from happening we will need to consider particular areas within the wood that would be good to film in and get rid of any areas that could cause potential problems. This will mean that we will be able to use time effectively on the day of filming and know exactly what spots we can film in without having any external influences that could affect the professionalism of our filming.

Danbury Common Woods-
Again this location is similar to St Andrews and Great Leighs woods. This location is larger than the other two locations meaning we would be able to have a variety of locations within the woods. Also there is a stream that runs through the centre of the woods which could be used to our advantage and could produce some nice looking shots. I feel the main drawback with this location is the distance as being in Danbury would mean having to travel 30 minutes or so from Broomfield. This would mean that we would have to travel there lots, which isn't convenient. Therefore this could be used to film some of our music video, but also use the other locations as they are local to us. Also this will mean that we can discuss why and how we used multiple locations to aid us in the production of our music video.

Broads Green Woods-
This location is good because not only is there woods at this location, there is also large open expanses of fields and also lakes. This would mean that we could use the field to film some of our long shots or establishing shots and also similar shots on the lake to add some creative visual shots in. This would be effective at night as we could film the moons reflection on the lake and then add this into our music video to help people understand the narrative and why it is being filmed at night. The location would allow for a lot of diversity and different shots. Therefore it would certainly be worth considering. Being local, it means everyone could get to the location too. The only problem we faced was that the lakes are privately owned, and meant we would have to seek permission prior to filming them. Overall the location was good and matched the criteria for what we were looking for from our locations.

By carrying out location scouting, it helped us to understand how different locations had there positives and negatives and how we could use these to our advantage. Also by carrying out scouting it meant rather than just turning up and filming anywhere, we could plan and were able to get filming done efficiently. By planning locations it meant the shots could be planned too, ensuring everyone from us, who were producing it to the actor playing the lead role in the music video new exactly what he had to do.

Final Destinations Used in Music Video-
Great Leighs Woods- This was the main location, used for the external shots. We used this to great effect as we managed to go to different areas within this location, meaning we could get a variety of shots. Also, we used different shot types in order to allow us to have a variety of shots, meaning when we edited the music video together it was interesting to watch, and had different shot types in it to make it look real and professional.

St Andrews Park Woods- This wasn't the main destination and was only used to do some more basic shots. This was ideal as it was closer to the majority of the group members and allowed us to film some extra footage that could be used in our music videos. The shots here were usually the less important shots, that were intended to very quickly cut from this to another. the important shots were therefore filmed prior at the first destination mentioned above.

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