Location

We knew that for a Thriller movie we needed a location that the director would be able to portray as somewhere not just eerie or scary but also in a way isolated and were able to convey anticipation and excitement that constructs the basis of the genre.

As well as considering the above I had to find a setting that would be easy to travel to, set up camera and film as well as being safe.

At first the concept of the film was couple of teenagers unknowingly being stalked and followed; before becoming increasingly aware and concluding in a small chase/fight/struggle scene which would define the line between the Horror and Thriller genres.

With this in mind I set out to find locations which would in a way be linear for the chase but would also allow for various shot types rather than close ups.

At first the walks through the various woods in Buckingham were considered. I found that they would be easy to get to and to stand up camera – there would also be little noise or people interference during the filming. However I realized that the number of camera shots that the Director would've been able to film were very limited. This is because the paths were narrow and the trees obstructed a lot of the shot if we chose to use the camera far away from the actors.

One of the walkways I considered for the Thriller:

Additionally the woods only gave off the vibe we wanted at night, a time which was inconvenient for us to film as it would've been too dark for the camera and wasn't a flexible environment for us to produce the film.

Secondly I thought about the roads on the outskirts of town near the University of Buckingham and on the Mount Pleasant estate were a good place to film the Thriller. The streets could be a decent location for building tension however the setting suffered from the same setbacks as the woods as in the location only really worked at night.

After some thought I decided that the abandoned office block near my house would be an almost perfect place to film the Thriller. It was easy for most of the group to access as we lived at least 5 minutes away from it.  The building was not completely empty as it was filled with debris and equipment so its abandoned look was one of exciting and not boring. The rooms varied from large and small and with the sun somewhat filtered by the dirty glass and half ripped apart curtains and blinds we had enough lighting to properly capture the scene and make it look somehow rough at the same time.

An example of one of the rooms that gave us enough light to film however was able to give off the vibe we needed for a Thriller scene:

The rooms varied from large to small and there were plenty of areas for our desired types of shots. The front of the building had a car park/walkway are which allowed us to have an establishing shot that we really wanted to include in the film for the audience to understand where we  were.

In addition to our filming in the Abandoned Building and immediately outside of it we wanted to have a scene where the actors are walking towards the building. I chose a bridge up the road which the actors would walk under and towards the building – the idea was that the camera would start directly above their heads and change angle as they walked further down the road.

With the location chosen I could then start to edit the storyboard with the types of shots in mind at different places.