STORY TELLING UNIT: Preparation for the shoot (Actors and Locations)

Before shooting for 'The Meeting' (which I later renamed 'Distracted') could commence, there were several things I had to arrange before hand.

Actors:

The first thing I had to do was find my actors. Due to this being our first project, we were allowed to use friends and family as our actors. Therefore, I decided to use my friends Jason Efstathiou and Alex Hargood.




Jason Efstathiou as John.

I chose Jason to play my character John as he has the exact look I was going for. I wanted a bearded man to show that John has more things to worry about than shaving and personal grooming etc.

Jason is also very good at following directions and commands which made him an ideal actor.

Alex Hargood as Kyle.

I chose Alex to play my character Kyle as again he already had the look I was going for.

Alex was also extremely good at following instructions, meaning that shooting the trailer was very straight forward as the actors did exactly what they were required to do.











Locations:

I then had to decide on locations. For my trailer I decided I needed 2 main locations, John's house and a pier. I decided that John's house would be very simple, with bits of clutter scattered here and there. The majority of the action within John's house would occur within his office space, I saw the breakfast bar in my kitchen as the perfect location for this.

The black worktops create a very simple look which would then make the audience focus more of the clutter that surrounds John. This location also allowed me to get the overhead shot of John working in his office due to the amount of space available.

My screenplay also involved John walking through a hallway. The hallway in my house is very simplistic and therefore made the perfect location for this scene. I also needed to shoot a scene where Kyle was trying to get into the house past John. In terms of getting a film permit for this scene, it made great sense to shoot this at my house where I would have no problem getting the home owner's permission.

The pier I decided to use was the Sun Pier in Chatham. Having been to this pier previously, I immediately thought of it when looking for locations. My character needed to be followed down the pier for a while, the space on the Sun Pier allowed me to do this. I also needed the water levels to be quite high to make my story line look probable, the water always seems to look higher at this pier than any others in the surrounding area making it the ideal location.