Aaron and I ended up going on a massive location scout. We found some brilliant locations. However, the following are only the locations we have settled on.
Firstly, we spoke to the people at Leonard Cheshire Disability and the have confirmed that they are happy for us to film in their garage!
The main bunker location would be put together inside a large garage at Leonard Cheshire Disability. Fortunately, Aaron’s mum worked for them part-time, so she was able to put us in touch with them. Until Covid-19, they were more than happy for us to shoot in the garage. It was filled with unused clutter, but they said that it was all going to the dump, so we could do what we liked with it. We would have wanted to clear most of it, but there were a few bits and pieces that might have been nice to keep, like the chairs.
The issue was that there was obviously a door, however, we could definitely shoot around it. Next to it there was a kitchen and a bathroom that we could use during the shoot, and even a place where we could lock our equipment overnight. You could just about hear cars from the road nearby, but we would be able to dampen this out. We also had as much electricity as we wanted. We found this location fairly early on, so we will be able to plan much of the film with it in mind.
Ruth seems happy Aaron and I found the location, because I think this was one she was particularly worried about!
Here are some photos of it:
Next, we found Coatfield Lane and Giles Street. A lot of the flats in this area are no longer used, so while it feels like it should be busy, it isn’t. It has a ghostly feeling to it. The weeds growing through the stones really added to the feeling of abandonment. I think this location really sells the abandoned city. I also found the ‘RAD’ graffiti quite funny, so I wanted to get a shot of it in the film. The issue was that some of the doors had lights on outside of them, so we would just have to be careful to shoot around them.
The park we ended up finding was at Harrison Gardens, which is actually down the road from my flat, which makes things handy for storing kit, etc. I liked this park because of the trees lining it. I think it’s exactly where someone trapped in the middle of a city might go.
Finally, Ruth agreed to let us use her flat. Ruth’s flat was perfect for what we needed, not to mention the ease of access considering it belonged to a key member of production. I wanted a flat with a combined kitchen and living room. The bedroom also had high ceilings, which would be useful for the hanging scene. An issue might be that there could sometimes be noisy traffic outside the window, however since there is no dialogue inside the flat, this shouldn’t really be a huge issue.
I think now that we have most of our locations sorted, other aspects of pre-production should be much easier
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