Additional Location Recces: Preparing for a Worst-Case Scenario
Since the progress on our production of Sweeney Todd was rather slow due to actor’s lack of interest in the roles of Mrs. Lovett and the street vendor, and the fact that we could not yet secure that perfect set in Preston Park for our purposes, we decided to do an alternative location recce for Victorian interior locations just in case Preston Park fell through last minute. This, again, was a good chance to practice and deepen my knowledge and experience of doing a location recce.
Thus, Chloe, Hannah, Has, Nathan, and I set out to go to the Historic Hartlepool Quay to investigate the Victorian street there and capture some photos of it. Since the LVL4 and LVL6 students were all busy filming and used most if not all of the kit, we were not able to take out separate camera equipment for the location recce and thus had make do with our smart phones instead.
Arriving at the Historic Quay, Chloe asked the museum’s manager whether we – as film students of The Northern School of Art – would be able to get access to the Quay for a location recce free of charge, and indeed we did. As soon as we were inside, we realised that we would have another lovely outside location for our film shoot that was closer to home, and thus, possibly saving on petrol costs.
However, taking a closer looks at the interiors of the Historic Quay, we quickly realised that it would fail us in regard to its interiors: Here, the rooms either consisted of modern museum floors or cafés that looked at being designed in the 1990s at best, or the interior sets were not well suited to being redecorated as a pie shop, as they were either too dark, or furniture was bolted fast into the ground that could not be removed, or the rooms itself would need major redecorating as they were already heavily decorated.
Furthermore, lighting these sets would pose a major difficulty, as the ceilings were not only extremely low, and the space already crowded by the crew, not to mention additional lighting equipment inside, there was also no sufficient power supply and very limited space to put up lighting that would be sufficient enough for our daylight stock but not casting any shadows.
Finally, it was obvious from the style and history of the entire location that the visuals heavily relied on the naval style, thus not being quite the fit that Preston Park would have been.
With one of the sets that would have been somewhat usable, we realised that a small museum-like video installation was taking place right next to the set, thus not only constantly attracting the public, but also being very audible due to loud audio levels, amidst other anachronisms that would easily get in shot due to the small size of the set itself.
However, we established that Chloe would at least go and try asking them whether we could use any of the somewhat fitting rooms while she would also look around the North East to find a Victorian set that we could use alternatively. In the meantime, we would see that we would get the rest sorted and plan further for the worst case scenario.