Major Project: Donington Park Location Scout

Major Project: Donington Park Location Scout

Today we headed up to scout a new location, namely Donington Park. This is a racetrack where Alex will be taking part in an important track day with his race partner Sam, in order to get him familiar with the car and prepare him for the race. The track day is at the end of the month but I felt it important we go up there beforehand (since neither myself or Cailan had been there before and Alex was also quite unfamiliar with the track). By going and scouting the track now we can get a sense of the space we have to work with, the scale of the track, where it's easy to film/access etc. 

We arrived at the track shortly after 10AM to give us almost a full day to walk around and scout the area. Before this, as producer I had emailed the track explaining the project and that we had been working very closely with Brands Hatch. I gave them details about what we'd be doing and emailed over a copy of our public liability insurance to ensure we had trackside media access. 

Upon arrival, the team headed to the main office where I spoke to Sam (the person I had previously been talking to over email) where I introduced the team and explained the purpose of today's visit. He then helped us get familiarised with the track and how media access works at this location. After this he sent us to get signed on in the media office, where I gave over a copy of our PLI and signed on the team. That was the majority of my work done for the day, as this was a location scout there wasn't a whole lot for me to. But this was ok since the majority of my work was to arrange the media access for this day and put together a schedule which all went very well I thought. 

After we had signed on we went to get a few cameras from the car that would allow us to take reference pictures of the track that we can look back on and use to create camera plans. We also took this time to familiarise ourselves with the layout of the track (it's worth noting that the extended layout was in use today. Although this is not the layout Alex will be driving and meant we had to slightly change our planned walking path, it caused very little issue when planning). I also used this time to download a digital copy of the site/track map to use for reference when we were walking around.

Being a location scout there was not a huge amount on the schedule. Having checked the weather beforehand I was expecting unwelcoming conditions (namely strong wind and rain), although the rain thankfully held off, the wind was even worse than we had expected for most of the morning. Which made walking and taking photos a bit difficult at times. Fortunately, when scheduling the day I was generous when allocating time to spend scouting each area, which paid off. We were able to spend a good amount of time assessing each corner as a group and taking both photos and videos of the sight as cars came round (to give us an idea of what it might look like when Alex is on track).

Cailan did a good job as DOP during this time taking plenty of photos and videos everywhere we stopped, and checking with me to find out where we were on the map so he could plan and have a reference for camera plans that he'll help Alex to create later. Although Alex had only been here once before his knowledge came in quite useful as he already had a base idea of which places we should stop at and communicated a clear directorial vision to both myself and Cailan (explaining where would be best for static cameras, where cameras can be handheld, places camera operators can move between etc). All of which was really useful to us, and will aid in our plans. 

I made sure to give Alex and Cailan the space they needed to work whilst encouraging us to move on at times so we didn't fall behind schedule.

Due to the adverse conditions early on and an incident on track, there was a large gap between the morning sessions and the afternoon sessions. As a result, we weren't quite in the planned spot by the end of the morning and had to wait around there for the afternoon session to start before we could move on. This meant our afternoon scout took slightly longer than I had planned but it did not prove to be a significant issue at all. As we were still able to complete the scout on time and get a detailed reference of the entire track and the pitlane (which I encouraged us to check out before we left).

Overall the day proved to be a success, I'm glad I encouraged us to scout the track since the knowledge and material we obtained will prove invalubale when planning the shoot and will allow me to be of greater assistance to any additional crew we have (since I know posses a greater knowledge of the location than I otherwise would have done).

Although there was little for me to do as producer apart from confirming the initial media access and permissions. I still feel I had a worthwhile impact on the day assisting the other two who both did exactly what they needed to do!

We are now in a good position going forward.