Location
Recce

The location Recce was a joint task for me and one other team member.  First, we had two locations in mind.  Two forests near our school.  We wanted to go and look at both of them to see if they were accessible and suitable for filming.  We wanted a forest with open space that our character could walk through, so we didn't want it to be too dense with trees.  We wanted it to be accessible for us to carry equipment to as at this stage, we did not know how heavy or bulky the equipment would be.  A key concern was the ground as we didn't want it to be too uneven and muddy creating slants for our tripod.  We also wanted a field that we could film in as we knew that not all of our shots would be in the forest.  We wanted the field to be open, wide, long with some visually distinct backgrounds so that as our character walked through it, the viewers would get a sense of the journey that the character was on.  

We went and viewed the two woods, which we referred to as Forest 1 and Forest 2.  First, we went to Forest 1.  We soon identified that Forest 1 would not work. It was an enclosed space, the ground was uneven, the forest was too sparse.  We looked at our surroundings thinking about shots and discounted Forest 1 as the trees were so sparse we could see our school in the background.  This would not work with our narrative of our character getting lost.  Next to Forest 1 there were farmers exercising their dogs who were against the idea of us filming there.  The main reason we rejected Forest 1 is that it didn't have the feel that we were aiming for, we were looking for the right composition. The path to Forest 1 was overly muddy, there was an insufficient contrast between a green field and darker wood that we wanted, the field providing a feeling of safety and the wood giving a sense of danger.   We did not photograph this location as the farmers were not happy with our presence and we felt it was sensible to leave.

Next we visited Forest 2.  Initially, we were concerned we might have the same issue of farmers not being happy we were there.  We introduced ourselves politely to the local farmer and explained why we were there and she was happy with us filming.  She was used to students using this location.  When we first looked at the field and forest (see videos of field) we could see the contrast between the green lush grass and the enclosed forest was a good composition.  The route to the forest that our actor could walk along had a good variety of backgrounds so that the viewer wouldn't just be seeing the same scene and would instead get the feeling of the journey. Forest 2 matched what we had envisaged.  It had sufficient trees but clear enough for our actor to have a clear path to walk along to where we would place our noose.  

When we compared Forest 1 and Forest 2, it was an easy choice.  Forest 2 offered us more versatility of shots, it was more visually interesting to look at, it was more accessible for us, it was closer to our school, it had a gate for our character to hop over into the woods.  The local farmer was also happy for us to film there and there were less people, dogs or potential reasons to interrupt our filming.