PreProduction Unit- Visiting Discovery Park Recce

Today I visited the Discovery Park complex in Sandwich which we intend to use as the laboratory location in our film. Finding the place was actual very simple due to my phone having a reliable GPS system, but something I noticed was that the facility was around an hours walk from the train station in Sandwich. For someone like me, this isn't a problem, as I regularly jog and power-walk, but I have to understand from a production and travel point of view that any actors we want to use that arrive at the Sandwich train station will probably not be okay with walking for an hour, and as such will either want a taxi, or one of our production crew to pick them up in a car if possible.

I met with Renata, the public liaison at the Discovery Park, who spent a good hour or so showing me around the facilities. I was very impressed with the overall layout of the laboratory, and I definitely feel that the place suits the kind of atmosphere and layout we want for our film.

The building I was shown around is known as Building 500, and is usually rented out to scientists for perform experiments in, and certain parts are rented out as office space. Renata told me that all the areas shown in the photos above would be available for us to shoot in, should we choose to do so.
A few things I made sure to note while checking the place out are;

• There are parking spaces
• There are power outlets available for camera charging
• Some areas look quite bare, and will be in need of some "dressing up".
• In some areas (such as the corridor and forye' areas) there is a lot of echo, which I believe would be very noticeable in recordings. We can either avoid using these particular areas, or see about investigating ways we can reduce the echo in the editing process.

The moment of truth came, and I asked Renata how much the facility would cost for us to use.

She mentioned that major films are usually charged around £1000 for a full days shoot, and £500 for a half day shoot.

Since we are students though, she advised that we just pay what we can. 

All in all, I am really excited to be using this facility in our film, however, I have one reservation, This location will barely appear in our film, and as such I need to figure out whether or not it's appearance will be worth the money.