Major Project: Prison Shoot Day

After months of trying to aquire a prison to film in and having no luck we were resorceful and managed to find a prison escape room. This location would be adiquate for our needs and we weren't completely restricted for time or access as what we would for a real prison. We brought Chelsea, a photgrapher studying Photography at UCA with us to photograph some behind the scenes and also action stills. This location was ideal material for a poster, and having plannd a design of how we wanted to have a shot of a prison cell we decided to also give her the poster brief (see blog on posters).

When we arrived we phoned the place, and the first problem we were hit with was we were told we would need to come back another day as the managr wasn't in. Because we had already arrived we thought we would go in ourselves. This was something we booked in advance and were specifically told to come along this day. We found the manager who was happy to help us and gave us free access to film anywhere. The issue was resolved. Because we had a lot of equipment to hand, we asked if there was anywhere to stre bits we weren't using and so we were able to lock in a safe room. THis meant we didnt have to go bakc to the car everytime we needed different equipment as parking wasn't very close by. We then had a quick tour/recee of the location and noted down the rooms/areas we wanted to film in and immediately began shooting.The shoot process for this was fairly planned in terms of some of the shots we wanted to get but when it came to actually filing on location we took the shots and began to improvise with what we had. For example, some of the lighting was very atmospheric.






I went in with a shot list of what I wanted to get. I sketched some of these ideas in a storyboard form in order to visualise it properly and also allowed me to take insperation from other Netflix documentaries. For example:





As you can see the picture on the left is from TIME: The Kalief Browder Story and on the right is a shot from the prison shoot. I was able to recreate this by planning and researhc and inspiration in this case has come from many different places.


Overall todays shoot was a success and the use of prison island made a great substitute for an actual prison. We were given great access and Mike who was in charge was also able to benefit from it as we are going to send him some of the clips we dont use and also photos to help promote his buisness on social media etc. We were able to use his location for free and we would give him some well shot content for free. Besides form this it all fits very well with the tone and atmosphere of our documentary.

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