Scouting out locations

Though at the time we had had a rough idea of what kind of locations we wanted to use for the various moments within the film trailer we needed to find physical, real world locations in which our vision for the trailer could come to life - especially given the fact that we did not have any kind of large scale filming studio in which one could construct all the various sets that they desired ripe from their imagination. This meant that we had the job of location scouting for possible filming sites for which we needed a total of about 12 different locations - which is small for your typical film trailer but for us needed some serious searching given the fact that it would be difficult (though not impossible) to look too far affield (aka outside of Stafford).

Some of the locations that we would need to find were more simple in nature such as small communal rooms (for Mya and Christopher's introductory scene), building exteriors (for Mya's introduction to the institution) and a medical room (for when Mya first begins to grow suspicious of the institution).

 All we really needed in the communal room was a large enough space that either existed or could easily be remoddled into a circle for what would be a group session.

The most important thing for the building exterior was for it to look important, new and official. If it met all of those categories then we could use it, the only slight trip up was that we needed to make sure that the building chosen did not cite its actual name in a way that would be too difficult to cover up. This meant that we had to opt for our second choice (shown opposite) because our preffered choice had the site's name plastered on the windows and 'doormats.'

The medical facility that we desired was not required to be overly state of the art due to the fact that we only really needed a medical bed for Mya to sit in. All we really needed was the implication that she would be in a medical room whilst she was to ask what was going on thus confirming the medical link and illustrating her aroused suspicions as to what was happening.








One of the more complicated locations to find was to be a counselling room in which Mya could talk to a therapist regarding her traumatic experiences. For this location we needed two things:


1) The room had to be large enough to fit two people facing each other whilst looking somewhat as one might expect a basic therapy room to look like.
2) There needed to be space outside of the room such that you could feasibly sit directly outside whilst also having a clear line of sight into the room so that you could see roughly who was doing what inside


Finding a location for the Therapy sequences was one that Evie and I had to discuss at greater length because we each had our own ideas as to what could practically work.

On the one hand, she suggested that we use the therapy room shown below:

This room would have been ideal due to the fact that it had the professional vibe to it (given the fact that this was in fact an actual counselling room used by professionals). However, it lacked the second crucial element (to have space outside that allowed a look in through the open door) and would have meant we could not film ALL of the therapy moments hear, which would have stolen the consistency of the therapy scenes.


I preferred the room shown below:

 Whilst the room itself did not possess quite the same professional vibe seen in the first possible location, the one shown below (that Evie eventually came round to agree upon) would allow us to create a kind of contrast between Mya and DR L Church's characters' with Mya shown to be in the dark and DR L Church shown to be in the light. The space outside was perfect to allow a chair to be positioned therein and for the camera to look into the room from the outside.