Tutorial, reccie and a new shoot!

Last monday we had a tutorial on our documentary project, we had a small structure planned in which we use 3 locations framed by a urbexers "getting ready" scene however after discussion we decided to remove it. This meant that our Monday filming session was open so instead we went on a reccie and recorded the urbexers interviews.

On the reccie we looked at 4 different locations, unfortunately we felt only one of them was big enough to spend a whole section on. After talking with our producer and director it was decided that as the doc. is split into 3 parts, the past of urbexing, the present and the future of urbexing, mixing the three smaller locations would work really well for the final part, the future of urbexing.

We spent Wednesday filming in the best location, so we wanted to get a lot of stuff, we hope to fill a whole 3 minutes with the location so good coverage was important. Here is my shot list for the day:

X	#	SHOT	Action	Notes
	1	LONG	Urbexers walk up the top stairs	Into the main graf room Could try track up the stairs
	2	MED	Urbexers past window	Only see the mid
	3	CU	Urbexers face through window	So out of focus you cant see the face
	4	Long	Establishing shot
	5	2shot	One urbexer either side of the top staircase	Camera position in the middle
	6	Med	urbexer defacing something
	7	Long	Ext. shot of urbexers outside in doorways	One point perspective (like shot in SToolls)
	8	CU	Cam infront of face shot	Should get at least 2
	9	Long	Urbexers walking outside	Through the hole in the wall, track to hole.
	10	MED	Urbexers coming out of the basement	Show urbexers from the back as they come out.

We got most of the shots from the list as well as a lot of others, Steve also had a shotlist he forget to bring but worked of the photographs from the reccie to give him an idea of what to shoot. We also happened to bump into a graffiti artist that does a lot of work in the building. Although it wasn't planned it will work brilliantly in our doc as in the interview both urbexers mentioned occasionally bumping into people.

What I really loved about this location was that it has the same abandoned feel as Stanley tools but it is on a completely different scale. The whole location feels more homely and small, less industrial, it gives the location a different identity to Stanley Tools. The graffiti in the place is awesome, meeting the artist was really enlightening, it was great to see him work but the building itself has a lot of awesome features to exploit. For example we found a hatch in the top floor that we could see through, the stairs are perfectly centrally composed and look brilliantly cinematic, and the decay of the paint in some areas reflect the amount the building has withered in time. The flaking paint is something I really wanted to see in Stanley tools but never found so I am really happy with getting it in this location.

Hopefully we got enough footage to fill the 3 mins in that location as we are filming the three other locations next week. I need to make sure that in these locations we get;
More tracks
Defacing
Camera in front of face shot
Pans

Fingers crossed the next shoot goes well as the editing needs to be getting done as soon as possible with the deadline in a few short weeks!