Locations

We are very fortunate in Norwich to have a great variety of locations each with their own merits and disadvantages. We even have some streets that have been used in major blockbuster movies such as Stardust in which one scene was filmed in Elm Hill in the city centre. Elm Hill is also a prime location for our music video as you will see below. As a group we went out for a walk around the city centre taking Tamas's camera with us and all in all we took 48 photos of the streets in the city that we could use in our music video and the majority of them I think we will use. We are searching for locations with a classy feel but at the same time an urban darkness to match the loss of love that our protagonist couple experience. So far we have managed this well, on top of finding locations that give it a distinct British imagery.

The photo above was taken down Old Post Office Court which is a very small alleyway which currently has some scaffolding down it (seen in the picture below) which creates a gloomy mysterious atmosphere which is great for our narrative which is quite dark and ambiguous. We will have to be quite clever when filming in this location however as we do not want a great big car permeating the middle of the screen, but with the staircase accessible it means that we can take high angle shots of the ground where the actor is, which varies the types and distances of our shots.

This is the scaffolding down Old Post Office Court which is great because it creates dark shadows and a focal point at the end where there is just light, this would be really interesting as it symbolises the male character entering the dark and coming out into the light indicating some sort of redemption or recovery which will eventually happen at the end of the video. The narrowness of the alleyway also connotes the way in which in his mind he can only focus on one thing, which is the girl. Also from this angle the alley looks quite long it shows how long his journey will be to find the girl of his dreams.

This shot demonstrates how dark the alley is allowing a chance to get some chiaroscuro lighting to give our narrative an ominous feeling. On top of this as our main protagonist is meant to be dead although the audience does not know this yet the light at the end of the tunnel is very symbolic of heaven which in the male character's case is the woman he is looking for. It also represents redemption for his previous crimes in life.
This picture was taken from up the stairs in the first picture and is a great shot for the beginning of the video providing a good establishing shot and as it is high up a panning shot could easily be used to connect the building with the street. A shot looking down the stairs can also be used which is quite nice and can be made quite disorientating as shown below, which introduces us to the characters state of mind.

These steps are also great because they are dark and twisting enabling a variety of shots and with the slatted handrail tracking shots will look great through the railings. High angle/birds eye shots are hard to get in productions like this because of the lack of equipment so being able to do one is great, also it fits in great with our idea for one of the shots as we want a high vantage point shot of our male actor to make him seem small as though his state of mind has made everything insignificant to him apart from the woman he is looking for.


This street is an old fashioned cobbled street which is just the old looking urban scene we are looking for because it is romantic but still a little grimy, also it is set on a slight hill meaning there would be plenty of opportunities for low-angled shots. However as you can see this street is usually quite busy with shoppers going from Jarrolds to Quick Spirit, it is due to this fact that we probably will not film here.


This is an archway at the Norwich University College of the Arts. We had not originally planned to film here however on walking past I just loved the way in which the archway perfectly frames the window behind it, this has a great connotation of reflective/double meaning.


This wilderness was also next to the archway which is quite nice if we were to do a tracking shot from the side to under the archway as it would show the overgrown derelictions of the town. On top of this it reflects the insanity and overwhelming emotions behind the main character.


This is Colegate Avenue which is very picturesque because of the pebble dashed walls and beamed buildings, however this has a road that gets quite a busy so it would be problematic in filming.


This side street is brilliant for what we are trying to achieve because it has wonderful uneven paving, old pebble dash walls on one side with fabulous Georgian windows on the other side of the street, which connote to the sense of lost entrapment. In addition to this it is a very long, straight, narrow street with a great vanishing point to represent our character's never ending journeys towards each other.


In our specification and points to cover we have to show within our music video a certain aspect of Britain this is why I am showing you this because it shows the top of a cathedral over the houses, we have plans to include a church scene within our video to show an aspect of English culture (albeit oldfashioned culture) and it fits in with our storyline because our main character is suggested dead, but is still walking the streets so a recurring image of churches is very relevant.


We took photos of this road because it reminded us of 'The Yellow Brick Road' and Dorothy's journeying adventure. This also has a great vanishing point but with a twist at the end which also reflects our narrative. Due to The Wizard of Oz connotations it does add a sense of fantasy to the actions of the narrative.


Because our narrative is predominantly a love story the use of water is great for fade shots and shots where faces can be seen in the water to mirror cliches within the genre. This part of the river is also good due to the slatted railings again reinforcing that this is an urban setting.


This shows the view of the river over the bridge which gives a view of the way the water reflects the sky and its surroundings which look like they are encroaching on the light swallowing it up.


The shot above shows the weeping trees over the river which add to the morbid feeling as they droop into the water as if tired and giving up the will to live.


This shows the view from behind the drooping trees branches this will give us a perfect opportunity to use some tracking shots using the effect of light across the leaves creating the chiaroscuro effect again.

The two pictures above are from Elm Hill which as i mentioned before is a prime shooting location for large scale hollywood productions like 'Stardust'. These streets are perfect with their authentic aged feeling with the cobbled narrow roads that end up like a maze which closely relates to our narrative structure.

Again this is another part of Elm Hill where we will definitely be filming, these shots also show how uneven the roads are and how often it is to find slopes enabling a variety of different angle shots like the view point down the slope and up the slope shown above. On top of this if we decide to use close-up shots of feet walking they will look great on top of the cobbles.

This is Prince's Avenue which is very much like the other places I have shown you except it has a lot more beamed buildings which would look great in tracking shots.

Update: The Scaffolding down Old Post Office Court has been taken down; there are still plenty of shadows however the vanishing point is highly diminished and so has the impact. So filming there may be irrelevant.