Poppy’s Location Reccy Odyssey
Lynley, Chloe, Katie and I started the day off by doing some location reccies for our production. We thereby split our tasks into our respective job roles, which meant for Chloe to establish first contact and acquire contact details of the owners. Lynley had a look at the locations to see whether they (could) match up with her artistic vision, while Katie scouted for possible sound issues. And I took care of the logistical aspects of it, namely: whether the locations were spacious enough to allow for the equipment and shots required, and how the situation on the power outlet front would look like.
Is there enough space for cast and crew to film? Where are the power sockets and how many are there? How many lights would I be able to rig? Would I have to light an entire storefront and if so, would I need a lot of equipment or could it be done with what we have at hand at college?
So many questions, and only one way to find out: Location scouting!
Our first target was the Chilli Cake Café that I referred to in an earlier blog entry. It is conveniently located at Church Square, which is why started off with that. However, unexpectedly to all of us, the café was closed today. This seemed quite odd, since we’ve previously seen it open on Tuesdays.
Thus, I went online to look up the opening times of Chilli Café again, and saw that they indeed were supposed to be open that day. Researching a bit further however, I found conflicting information on the opening times online, as some sources stated that their opening times would be from 11.30 to 14.30, but also, that it was closed now.
Since I did not know whether there was any software clitch going on, we took the safe route and postponed the location reccy for this café until after 14.30 that day to check whether it still was closed, and thus proceeded onto Folio, which is right next to Chilli Café.
This we did, because we all remembered from our Fresher’s Week that there was an eerie basement below it, which would be a marvellous location to film at for our witch's ritual, if permitted. However, until entering Folio, we learned that the director of it had left early for lunch that day and we were asked to return later that day.
So far 2/5 planned locations were not immediately accessible to us. Hooray!
It somehow dawned upon us that we should have more closely enquired opening times prior to us moving out, even with those locations that always seemed accessible to us. However, since we were all assembled already, we decided that we would pop down to York Road and have a look at the Café Rappor Bar, which I also recommended in another blog entry.
This café actually was opened, and we were not only able to have a look at the interiors and even grab some photos, but Chloe also obtained more contact details. While I quite liked the look of the café, there was only very limited access to plug sockets, since there were none in the common area, and only two which I could see behind the bar.
Furthermore, the window side was very long and consisted almost continuously of windows, which – in wider shots – would render the effective controlling of lighting scenarios (and hiding the equipment respectively) difficult with the equipment that we will have access to.
Finally, Lynley was not very happy with it either, as it did not match her vision and Katie flagged up sound issues with the busy road nearby, that could even be heard over the loudly playing music and chatter in the busy café.
Thus, we collectively decided that this location would only get a lower priority on our ranking and moved onto a fairly new café on Park Road, which was a recommendation from Katie. However, even though we all received lovely business cards from a very eager-to-help shop owner, and even though the sound environment, the window-situation, as well as the power socket-situation was slightly better, I had to flag up massively and move it to the bottom of the list:
For the shop has only recently opened and was still in a major state of renovation. Whilst the front third of the café looked nice, the counter and the rest two-thirds of the café were neither painted, nor properly decorated. And although they claimed that they would be done with their renovations by the end of the week, I doubt that they would have it fully and properly decorated by the time we will be filming and it didn’t yet properly look like a café.
With that knowledge, we returned to Church Square to see whether we would have more luck with Chilli Cake by then. However, since it was still closed, we moved onto Church Street to have a look at another location that I had proposed earlier on: Juniper Lounge.
However, upon arrival, this bar was also closed, and by then we were convinced that our future location reccies would only be conducted after double-checking their opening times. With that mental note made, we then returned to college to grab some lunch and wait until we would get clearance of the director of Folio to enter the basement in his business. As soon as we’ve been informed that he was back from his lunch table, we moved over to Folio and asked for permission to enter his basement. He let us through and within less than a minute, we had entered the most eerie basement you could imagine.
Now THIS was promising!
Whilst I realised that I completely misremembered the size of the first room in the basement, we still found and even more promising room in the far back of the basement. Whilst this room had not been renovated in years and did not have any power sockets or windows, it was not in an endangering or dissolute state. There is enough headspace even for tall people, the floor is level, no mould or damp is growing, no electric leads are hanging around and no wooden beams were rotting or about to fall (Strike!). Compared to the eerie atmosphere in there, I’ve rarely seen a British basement in such a stable state.
The room even comes with tiny windows, which would allow us to shine redheads through them and create shafts of light by additionally using a hazer. However, additional LEDs and long extension cables for redheads would be needed as:
The room itself is really dark
The closest functional power socket is at the other side of the basement
After assessing and discussing the location in depth, we got back upstairs and attempted to visit the Juniper Lounge one last time that day to see whether we could grab some images. But, alas! As it was still closed, we returned to the library where I hopped onto a computer and used the proper Google search machine to finally assess the issue with the conflicting opening times. And with a proper browser used, I was able to get all the information I needed on both Chilli Cake and Juniper Lounge’s opening times:
Seems like we will have another location reccy on these two cafés during our lunch-break at Thursday.
Wheeee!
References:
Facebook (2019) Chilli Cake Kitchen and Bar [online] Image taken from: https://www.facebook.com/chillicakekitchenandbar/ [Accessed on 19 February 2019]
Facebook (2019) Juniper Lounge [online] Image taken from: https://www.facebook.com/Juniper-Lounge-266237040665909/ [Accessed on 19 February 2019]