Diary of Shooting at Hutton Mount

On Saturday 13th March at 10am we arrived at the abandonned house in Hutton Mount which we had hoped to be the setting of our thriller.
In preparation of this day, we had previously gone to research this location by looking at and photographing each of the rooms and and any qualities of the house (eg. burnt ceilings, broken windows etc) which we felt would act as effective iconography for our thriller.

In an attempt to gain permission to use the house we asked some neighbours if they knew who the owner was but noone was able to give us the information we needed, so we decided to carry out our filming with the hope that permission wouldn't be necessary

However, on the day of filming we managed to shoot two seperate shots and set up a third before the police arrived and told us that the house was unstable for us to be there and that we would have to shoot our thriller elsewhere. It became apparent that a week before, some young people had gone into the house and were involved with drug use, arson and an attack on some officers.

After discussing and brainstorming other possible locations that we could use instead, we felt that Shenfield Cricket Club could be the most effective option we had and arranged to go and take pictures to see if it would be suitable for our existing storyline on Thursday 18th March.

Jade Smith