Location Scouting: The Pill Box.

Location scouting/first day of filming!

Location

These are the pictures from a location in the outskirts of Tunbridge Wells. We found a perfect location with a Pill Box next to a corn field.

 This is the Pill Box, the inside had scraps of wood and was a bit damp from small leaks in the ceiling, which had an interesting and creepy effect which would have matched the conventions of a Horror trailer.

 The corn fields were good for our original idea of a chase. We tried filming Lucy running down the gap in the field to test different angles.

This location had a lot of fields and a lake which crossed a few of them. The day we went was sunny which made the location seem more appealing and because it was picturesque, it meant that it would be able to use it to subvert conventions of the genre.

We decided not to choose this location as we were focusing more on technology which obviously our location didn't have. We decided to use a location that had a variety of different technologies and access to different types of lighting we could use as well as a look of cleanliness for Lauren's scene which makes the clip look staged and set up on a small budget which of course is what our Cult would be like.

Experimenting with editing!

Code breaking.

Dealving further into our genre, I found this article on the Guardian film blog about a new psychological trailer by Darren Aronofsky, called the Black Swan, starring Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis as two rival ballet dancers. I love the fact that simply by having it set in the decadent world of ballet and performing, it is already breaking the conventions of it's genre - ballet being an unusually glamourous and stereotypically feminine backdrop in comparison to the generally more male and urbanized settings of psychological thrillers e.g. derelict buildings, busy cities etc. - though when considered the world of dance and ballet is just as pyschologically intense, if not more so, than many others. Perhaps having their psychological thriller in such an unconventional setting will have changed their whole handling of the genre itself - instead of a faster and more abrasive thriller, maybe they will have handled in a more fragile and tender way, more gracefully to be fitting to grace of the ballet itself? I'm in love with this idea of setting our own thriller - something we'd originally foreseen as very gritty and underground, to somewhere completely uncharacteristic and innovative, glamourizing our thriller as it were. The trailer isn't a teaser and elements of the narrative are revealed, but I'm still finding the narrative hard to decipher - which the article discusses, could it be mental illness it's toying with or are there elements of the supernatural, as some scenes suggest? There doesn't seem to be too much of a buzz around it and I can't seem to find any sort of promotional website for it but I will be interested to see the teaser trailer, and the actual film, when it's released.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/filmblog/2010/aug/18/black-swan-natalie-portman-trailer