Recce 1 and 2 - Comments

Our original plan for a recce, which involved taking the DLR from Canary Wharf to Deptford Bridge on the 11th of January and filming on the latter station did not work out at all. Upon boarding the DLR and setting up to film our first shots, we were told by a steward that we could not film on the DLR without permission which, unfortunately, we did not have. Furthermore, we were not allowed to film on the station which we had originally intended to.

After some discussion about where we could re-film our sequence, we decided that we would film the station sequence at Lewisham, the train scene on the overland service and the alleyway sequence in it's original location - near Deptford Bridge station. However, when we began shooting on the overland train, it became apparent to us that filming on this train would be equally problematic, as there was very little space to film and a fair amount of co-passengers. At this point, we decided that we would have to scrap the idea of filming the first half of the opening on the train and would film at another location.

We decided on filming the first half of the opening on London Bridge, as it had a modern, industrial feeling, similar to the one we hoped to achieve by filming near Canary Wharf. We found that we could transpose the narrative from a train to the bridge easily, with very few changes - the most notable ones being shots of the surroundings of London Bridge to establish the more vast location rather than shots of the train moving and arriving at the different stations. The second half takes place in a river walk rather than a station, which has many interesting paths and staircases that would make good locations. The main problems that we will need to iron out include lighting and sound. Many of our low angle shots or close ups often result in the actors being silhouetted by the natural lights. This will mean that we will have to strongly light our actors in the actual shooting. We are also intending to use a microphone for both dialogue scenes in the opening. As a point of note, we also hope to film the final alleyway scene in a car park - however, the lights in this particular car park only seem to turn on after approximately 4:45, and our recce footage of that location, which we filmed before the lights were turned on, was particularly grainy. We may consider waiting until the lights have turned on to film in that location so as to avoid the grainy effect.