Locations- Practical Task

Locations- Practical Task

Inspiration

I watched a series of clips from horror films which focussed solely on the location. They tended to be set in scary, isolated settings which maybe had a religious connotation with it e.g. The Omen, and this setting allows for symbolism e.g. crosses and bibles etc. 

I also saw part of 'The Blair Witch Project,' which was set in a forrest. This meant that there could be point of view shots from behind trees as well as creating haunting shadows and jump scares, which conforms to the genre of horror.

Because we haven't yet decided on a genre, it was quite hard for me to pick particular places to take pictures of. As a group, we knew we wanted to go down the 'horror' route, but we hadn't narrowed it down to a particular 'horror' genre. Therefore, I decided to take pictures of settings which conformed to the broader genre of 'horror'. 

Challock Woods

The first location that I visited was Challock Woods. Using forests and overgrown areas would be good for horror as they are normally quite dark and enigmatic; there is also a sense of life within the trees, as well as having live creatures e.g. spiders and beetles (pictured below) which again makes it an ideal horror location. 

(I liked this photograph because firstly it had a long, spindly spider in which provokes fear amongst a lot of people, and secondly, it looked like there was a crucifix carved into the tree trunk as well.)

(In these two photographs, mum and I thought that it would be a nice idea to demonstrate horror within this location.)

Ulcombe Church
I visited my local church and graveyard to get some more photographs that can be associated with horror. Religion is commonly used, as is death, so I figured a church would be idilic.

(This was my favourite picture that I took. The camera had fully focussed on the crucifix and the Jesus figure was really detailed. This is good symbolism for Christianity as well as death. I put the black and white effect on it (and a lot of the other photographs as well) because it just makes everything seem darker and scarier)

(Again, all these gravestones shows the death of lots of people, but not only that, a lot of them are overgrown with plants and have cobwebs on them, showing the age and how long they've been there for)

Park

This location was a bit different from the others. It could be associated with children and an abandonment, particularly because there is police tape on the see-saw. I also reduced the saturation of the pictures to make them look greyer and more dull.

(In these two pictures, I pushed the swings slightly so it was swinging independently, giving it a ghostly effect)

Abandoned castle in Sutton Valence

I didn't even know that this existed until I Googled 'scary locations in Maidstone'. On Sunday, I woke up really early and drove to Sutton Valence while it was still dewy from the night before and it wasn't too sunny either so didn't look very happy. The castle was really grand but also falling apart and as I said, and like the park, had a sense of abandonment. This location out of all of them was my favourite because it was really different and it didn't feel like I was in Kent because it's such an old castle. Not only that, but I think that it would be an easy place to film and it was relatively quiet a well. 

London underground
This weekend I went to London. The underground tube station was quite deserted and is also quite a rural area. This location would be suitable for a more modern horror. I also thought that 'Mind the Gap' would be quite a cool name for a film.

My Grandad's shed

The final location I decided to take pictures of was my Grandad's shed as it is under trees and is looking quite old and tatty. My inspiration for this came from Cabin in the Woods.

Evaluation
Overall, I was quite happy with the locations that I chose and the photographs that I managed to get from them. As mentioned, my favourite location was the abandoned castle and also the church because I liked the symbolism. I wish I had got some more abstract pictures of each of the locations because I think that doing this would have shown it's potential nicely for filming our horror opening. If I had more time, I would have been able to research into other scary locations around Kent as well as having more time to figure out all the different functions on our camera to achieve the best quality picture possible; but all in all, I was really pleased with the outcome of the photographs.

 

 

 

Evidence of me taking the pictures: