A2 MEDIA BLOG
FINN'S ROOM
We used Hannah's room as the location for Finn's bedroom. We found it would be a good room to use as Hannah has a lot of art supplies such as paints, paint brushes and even an easel, which were placed throughout the room to assist in giving the impression that Finn is a creative individual. This required us to move the television and various posters from in Hannah's room elsewhere to free up space, which was then filled in by different pictures and hand drawn designs for the head that were created by Megan and Hannah.
HUT
We chose this location to film as the meeting place for Finn and Logan for a variety of reasons. One of which is that it was very local and easy to access as it is right next to Parkstone Grammar School, making it convenient for recording just after school. Also the degradation on the hut itself assisted us in achieving a suburban setting.. Also we found that it was a good location to use as it 'looked the part' in a sense due to it's graffiti, making it believable that it would be a meeting place/hangout for teenagers.
However, a problem we encountered was that we had to use a ladder in order to get our actors on top of the hut, which would prove to be a health and safety risk due to the uneven ground surrounding it that we would be placing the ladder on.
Skatepark
We made use of the skatepark for much the same reasons as we used the hut, due to it's suburban feel, but also it's locality. Similarly to the hut we felt that the graffiti added to the shot and made it more artsy while also making it seem more realistic that two teenagers would decide to spend their time together at the skate park. Furthermore we felt that this was a nice location to add as it would allow for us to develop the relationship between Finn and Logan some more before they go back to the house, as we originally had this idea but felt that it was too rushed, but by incorporating the skatepark into our short film we felt it was a fair deal longer and made the time that the two characters spent together seem much more sufficient.
FINN'S HOUSE
We used Rebecca's house as Finn's house, this made recording easier as the mother was played by Sharon, which is Rebacca's mother. This meant that by filming parts at their house it was easier to gather everyone in the same place. It was also much easier using Rebecca's house as it was generally a lot quieter than everyone else's. Not only that, but the layout of the house was also more convenient and allowed for a larger variety of shots as, for example, we were able to show both the Kitchen and the hallway in one shot.
REPTILE SHOP
We decided to use the Reptile Shop as it would allow us to add a side story that ran alongside our main story, and it meant that we could use a basic idea that would be easily achievable within our five minute period. The shop that we used was 'Reptiles Plus', once we found the shop after some research online, I contacted the owner of the shop and arranged for a day for us to come in and do our filming. There were however, a couple of issues with using the Reptile shop, such as the fact that we only had one day to film all of the shots from within the shop, this meant that we couldn't just reshoot anything or get more shots at a later date, a further issue was that there were still customers entering the shop which would interrupt the process of us filming. Despite this, the benefit of being able to add the side story, we feel, has paid off.
Dundas Road
We chose to use Dundas Road and other roads that surrounded Rebecca's house due to the fact that it enabled us to have a scene that consisted of a few shots of Finn riding to meet her friend. The reason we chose this location is that the roads within it were generally quite quiet and as such meant that they were much safer for us to use when shooting Finn riding the bike. Due to the locality this location was also very easily accessible and we were able to easily transport the bike to and from the garage for use during these scenes.