Location Shots

Before we shot our final trailer, we considered a variety of different location that our filming could take place. These were mainly shot around the school site as the characters involved are school children and it would be appropriate for the main location to be an educational institute. Below is the shots that were taken for consideration and an evaluation of their usefulness to our movie trailer.

This first shot is of the main school yard, although there won't be any specific scenes here with the characters in, there will be a short clip of filming of this area at the very beginning of our trailer. This will be done as a landscape and hi-angle shot and will be used so that audiences are aware exactly of the characters location. Although this shot does not give away too much information about the plot of the film it gives an idea of the characters backgrounds and their personality throrugh the school that they attend. In most movie trailers it is very common that films are set within the summer months, which means any exterior shots emmulate the current season, so romantic comedies would usually be filled with sunshine. Unfortaunatly for us, as we are filming these shots in late autumn/winter it will be very difficult for us to show the summer season how we would like. If we were to use this shot it is important that we manipulate these clips in order for them to appear brighter and relate to the happy and bright feel to the film.

This is a shot of a school canteen and in most teenage comedy films that are done in a school setting, contain atleast one scene in a school canteen. This location has a variety of different strengths and weaknesses. One of the strengths is that it is a popular convention of a romantic comedy (that are set within schools) so by using this location in our film trailer we will be following the norm and therefore making our trailer more realistic for its genre. Another strength is that it ties into the film and relates to it, as a canteen such as this one only really exsists within a school, it shows audiences automatically where the film is going to be set. However, when taking this shot we noticed a lot of background noise from canteen workers behind the shutters and we evaluated that potential disruptions from staff members could be a problem when attempting to film in this location. Another problem of shooting in this canteen would be that it is usualyl locked during lesson time to prevent any unsupervised students coming through and when it is unlocked it is break times, so filming our trailer here will be incredibly difficult as this location can get very busy and sound, props and characters will become drowned out by other schoolchildren. We have chosen not to use this location in our trailer because of the potential distractions that may occur when filming here.

This 'hut' is used a lunch-area for current students within the school. However, we think it would be a useful location to include in our trailer as a romantic spot that the two main characters could escape to. As this location is not nessercarily something you would see in many schools it could either be shown as an area within school our we could film it ourselves so that it would appear to be in another area outside of the school setting as a 'secret' place that the characters can go to. This location is set in one of the main areas of the school site so it is essential that when we decide to film there is little distractions from nearby classroom windows or people walking past in the background (like there is in the background of the picture) Despite these problems we have decided to use this location in our trailer, during the 'picnic' scene where the male and female lead are first seen together in a romantic location.

As our male lead character is a stereotypical 'geek' it is possible for his character to spend a lot of time around books and in school settings such as the library, rather than being in school canteens and common rooms. However by using this location it would be difficult to shoot as this library in particular is busy at most times throughout the day, even during breaks so it would be unsuitable to film a large amount of scenes here, it could perhaps be used for a short clip without dialogue. If we later decide that a library should be included, there are a number of libraries around Coventry that could be used as a filming locations. However this could prove just as difficult as we would have to have prior approval from libraries to use their services and the filming that is taking place could prove noisy and distracting for other library visitors. Based on these reasons we have chosen to not use a library location as it seems difficult to do so without causing problems and disruptions for ourselves and others.