I went scouting for locations tonight with my friend Lance, who is going to be doing the cinematography for my upcoming short film.

One of the film’s main locations is a deserted city street in an industrial neighborhood. We set out to try and find some suitable locations.

There are a couple shots at the location that take place at night, and Lance was concerned about whether we would able to use available light when shooting (streetlights, etc.), so we started looking for locations as the sun was setting.

For the locations I liked, I’ll probably go back during the daytime to get a sense of traffic, noise, etc.

A couple requirements of the location — there has to be no signs of other people, if possible — no parked cars, no cars driving by, no people. I want the environment to be overwhelmingly urban and industrial. I also want to keep signs of plant and animal life to a bare minimum.

Here’s what we came up with tonight.

LOCATION #1: N. Campbell, near Elston Avenue

My thoughts:
This was the first location we found that was interesting. I took the most pictures here.

I don’t know — there’s way too many cars present (even on a Sunday). Things look a little more suburban than urban to me. There’s too much green.

LOCATION #2: N. Ada

My Thoughts:
I liked this location a little more. I fancied the Chicago skyline in the background, but it might work against my narrative where some characters are stranded. Looking north there is a bar with some lights which might give us trouble conveying the sense of isolation. It’s okay, not great.

LOCATION #3: W. Wayman

My Thoughts:
I definitely need to go back to this location. I took very few pictures of this. I remember being somewhat dissatisfied with some aspects of the location, but just a few hours later I can’t remember what they were. I like the ledge in front of the building.

LOCATION #4: N. Laflin

My Thoughts:
I liked this location a lot. It was gritty, industrial and appeared deserted. One problem I had with this location was its proximity to Lake Street, which is relatively busy. The Chicago El’s Green Line also runs directly over Lake Street, which could create headaches when we are recording sound.

LOCATION #5: N. Spaulding

My Thoughts:
This was the last location we saw before wrapping up for the night. I liked this location a lot as well. It was just off Grand Avenue, but there was a little jog off of it which kind of isolated the whole street. It had no cars and a great industrial landscape.

Here’s a map of the locations we have looked at so far:

View Larger Map

If you have some industrial locations that you think might fit what I’m looking for, please let me know. Bubs has been on the lookout for industrial locations for me, but I figure it doesn’t hurt to have a few more eyes.

I’m sure I’ll be posting some more location photos in the near future, most likely taken during the day.

We have the four male leads cast for my upcoming short film!

We still have some very small speaking parts left to cast, but I didn’t feel they were necessary to audition people for.

The next crucial step in the process — finding a good external location where a large part of the film will take place.

Well, it’s started. Casting for my movie! The script has four male leads, two of which are already cast. We had auditions at the Portage Park Center For The Arts on Saturday, for the two remaining roles.

We didn’t get a huge turnout (we advertised the fact that the roles would be non-paying, as this is a low-budget short film), but several people came in and read.

It was really neat having actors read the lines, and interact in a few of the scenes from the script. Some lines were delivered with an inflection that I hadn’t heard in my head. Some lines came out generally clunky, revealing possibilities of improvement for dialogue — you can think a line is natural-sounding, but if someone can’t say it naturally there’s a distinct possibility it’s the words that are the problem. In either situation, it was pretty cool, as I could see something on the written page growing into a more flesh-and-blood, breathing thing. It was like a 2-D shape suddenly becoming 3-D.

After a while, it was hard to judge the effectiveness of a performance. But I felt in the moment. I knew when there was a direction I wanted to go in a scene, and I did a reasonably good job (I think) of conveying my intent to the actors.

It’s really happening. The film is really going forward. It’s pretty exciting.

My next big hurdle is storyboarding, and working with my friend who is shooting the film to solve potential visual problems that arise (special effects shots, dialogue scenes in a moving car, etc.).

We have a couple more people auditioning on Thursday night. I’m looking forward to it.

So, I was kind of panicking last night about the upcoming audition we’re holding for my short film, S________ for the S__. I wasn’t feeling very prepared.

So that’s when I reached for the 3-ring binder. This one little stupid object makes me feel so much better about the film — more organized, more in control. Now I can break this large project into more digestible pieces.

I have separators in my binder. Script! Schedule! Budget! Cast/Crew! Props! Camera!

I have a brand new lefty spiral notebook in my binder, that I swiped from MizSplotchy. I have Post-Its. I have pens.

I am so ready.