Scouting for ghosts

Three blokes talking toot in an old house

We had a very successful scout of Bilsington Priory this morning with Russ and Tom (cinematographer and assistant cinematographer respectively). We worked our way through the whole script and figured out basic lighting and blocking ideas.

One interesting discussion we had was around aspect ratio. Russ is of the opinion that ghost films work best either 2.35:1 or good old 4:3. I must admit I’d not given the issue much thought, but when I thought about the shots as I imagined them when I was writing the script in my head, I realised they were more 4:3. So we agreed to work with that.

Russ has given me some homework, so I’ll be watching a few classic ghost films, including The Haunting (1963), The Legend of Hell House (1973) and Whistle and I’ll Come to You (1968), in the next few days.

We also mooted the idea of shooting black and white, but there was such a nice warm glow in the main room we’ll be shooting in (above), we thought we’d stick with colour.

The main thing that I was glad of was figuring out the ‘scary jump’ sequence. I’d been running it over and over my mind and never quite getting how the location would work. Then I realised that the ghost girl, being a ghost, could probably be in more than one places, so once I twigged that, it all clicked into place.