Finding the right locations for your film is really important. When looking for locations you have to bear in mind, not only if it's the best you can get for the scene you are shooting, but also if you can afford it. In many places you have to apply and then pay a permission. This happens, specially, in cities, the more crowded the more difficult. If your story has a scene inside a house, any house, properly dressed, can work. If you are shooting outside, try not to draw too much attention by bringing lights, dollies, tracks... if you go in "guerilla mode", that is: "go, shoot, run", you'll probably can film in many more places than you think. Also think about transportation. If the place is very far away, you still have to pay to bring your actors and crew. Try not to have more than one location per day. Moving things around takes a lot of time.
It's also good to be flexible here. If you find a really cheap, wonderful location, but it doesn't fit in your story... can you change the story a little so that you can use it? We are talking about having no money, of course. If you have it, just go for it!
For In a Dream, we had planned two days of shooting. In the end, it was three days, because we had a problem during second day of filming (not really our fault: we needed a typical black London taxi... and we got a white one!) and had to repeat a couple of shots. This is rather inconvenient and potentially dangerous. We had to call again our actors and we were lucky they were not working on a project at the moment. Sometimes you can plan every detail and then something happens. It always does, so face it with determination and a smile on your face.
The first location we used was the most important, because all the shots with visual effects were filmed that day. We had the biggest of lucks because a friend of Jesús, Yone Santana, was a teacher at the Multimedia department of Brunel University (Uxbridge, London) and he had access to an incredible green screen studio and loads of equipment: cameras, lights, microphones, tracks, dollies, tracker markers... and we used all of them. We shot two scenes from the dream sequence and the talkshow scene. We needed all the actors that day.
It's also good to be flexible here. If you find a really cheap, wonderful location, but it doesn't fit in your story... can you change the story a little so that you can use it? We are talking about having no money, of course. If you have it, just go for it!
For In a Dream, we had planned two days of shooting. In the end, it was three days, because we had a problem during second day of filming (not really our fault: we needed a typical black London taxi... and we got a white one!) and had to repeat a couple of shots. This is rather inconvenient and potentially dangerous. We had to call again our actors and we were lucky they were not working on a project at the moment. Sometimes you can plan every detail and then something happens. It always does, so face it with determination and a smile on your face.
The first location we used was the most important, because all the shots with visual effects were filmed that day. We had the biggest of lucks because a friend of Jesús, Yone Santana, was a teacher at the Multimedia department of Brunel University (Uxbridge, London) and he had access to an incredible green screen studio and loads of equipment: cameras, lights, microphones, tracks, dollies, tracker markers... and we used all of them. We shot two scenes from the dream sequence and the talkshow scene. We needed all the actors that day.
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| Filming at Brunel University's green screen studio. Top left: Yone Santana. | |
The second location we chose was The White Hart Hotel, in Kingston-Upon-Thames, London. We found this location after checking many hotels online and calling them one by one. The reasons why we decided to film here were that the rooms looked great for our story, they let us film anything we wanted in the rooms and they offered a reduced fee of £10 per hour, so we didn't need to book a full day, which we didn't need. We used 5 hours in total, with all actors except Paul. A little bit tight, but we finished all the shots just in time. The White Hart Hotel has several types of rooms. We selected one that was decorated in a classic style, with a lots of black and grey tones. It was quite serious and moody, which was what we needed for this scene. The wall was decorated with a painted wall paper, that we used for one of the transitions of the film. One anecdote here is that, after booking the moody and serious room, we arrived to the hotel and were shown to the "superhappy, orange, family" room. Of course we changed it immediately but for a second we thought "ok, this is not a good start".
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| The White Hart Hotel. Bottom right: the superhappy room. | |
Our last location was right in front of Chirst the King church, at Byng Place, Central London. Our friend Antony Allen suggested this location. We visited it and it was simply perfect. It was quite quiet, to be London, there were very few people and cars, it was well lit and the location was beautiful, with a classic stone church and three typical London red phone boxes. Red is kind of the official colour of the film, so the circunstances were ideal. We filmed here with Cydney and Rosaleen. A good thing when scouting locations is to visit them at the same time you are going to film. This place in the morning is really busy but at night... Another anecdote is that when we found the location we chose the phone in the middle and when we opened the door there was a horrible smell inside. All we can say is it was human... we believe. So before the actresses arrived Dan and Jesús used everything they had at hand to hide the stench, like putting a lot of fallen leaves on the floor. When Cydney asked what were those leaves doing in there we had to lie: "aesthetic purposes". We told her the truth but not before finishing filming.
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| Filming at Blyng Place. Top left: trying to hide the unhidable. | |
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