Reconnaissance

One week before I was due to shoot my horror trailer I visited possible locations to check its suitability. When planning the trailer I thought that Ruislip Woods would be the perfect location for my horror trailer because it's a large woodland area and because of its close proximity to my house. After travelling there by bicycle I was able to ride around most of the woods to find an isolated part of the woods that could be used as the camp site. After roughly one hour of searching I found the perfect spot. There was a clearing and there was a few large logs that could be used as seats around the camp site.

During my search I also found an uprooted tree that was now sitting at a 30 degree angle which enabled me to climb up its trunk to get a better vantage point. This spot would be perfect if I wanted to shoot a high angle shot as I was about fifteen feet up in the air.

For the alleyway scene I knew that there was a network of alleyways behind my cousin's house, also in Ruislip. So I went there and found an ideal alleyway that was both skinny and scary. It was just wide enough to allow a person to walk down it and had graffiti on the walls.

For the film poster I wanted to find a quite road that could be used as the main picture on the poster and luckily bordering Ruislip Woods is a road called Fore Road, it ran the whole way up the east side of the woods. I found this out on Google Maps so I decide to visit the road and see whether it was quite enough to be used. To my delight, it was the perfect street to shoot an eerie photo. One section of the road had no car parked on it and had several street lamps lighting the dark road. Waiting until night tme to shoot the photo it was able to get two street lamps in as well as a large oak tree in the background creating a very scary photo.

In the opening scene I wanted a few shots of the car's journey to the woods so I had to find a long straight road inwhich I could film the car coming down the road and pass the camera. Breakspear Road just west of Ruislip Woods was the perfect location for this scene although it did take several takes to get the right shot I was happy with the end result.