I want to shoot a movie on DV set in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Instead of using a lot of CGI, the idea is to use real locations (and enhance them only where necessary with CGI).

I know some movies do this, like the Japanese scifi movie Dragon Head which was shot in Uzbekistan.

However, I am not sure where to start or who to call etc for more information on these kind of locations. I live in Belgium and will shoot interior scenes here.

Hope somebody here can help me.

Thanks!

When I was a kid in high school, we made our own little Super 8 movies, it was a great way to spend the summer. We shot this one story my buddy wrote, a science fiction piece, which involved a guy stranded on a barren planet totally devoid of features, a concrete wasteland.

Out at a nearby lake there was an immense spillway below a large earthen dam. Floodgates would channel water overflow into a valley for flood control. Most of the time, year after year, this place was empty and dry. There was a gigantic concrete apron at the base of the spillway, it had to be several acres in area. That was our set. We shot it in such a way that our hero appeared to be completely surrounded by a huge concrete desert. Worked out pretty well.

Of course we had discovered the location first and then wrote a story around it as an excuse to use it. If there's a spillway at a lake in your area, maybe it would work for you.

Ah, super-8 memories... :-)

Actually, editing together numerous more nearby locations into a "post-apocalyptic world" is an option i do consider. There are interesting abandoned places in Belgium.

But my favorite location is this one... however it is forbidden to film there, i believe.

http://www.ne.jp/asahi/saiga/yuji/gallary/gunsu/gunsu-html/01.html

Clevelander filmmaker Jason Tomaric's postapocalyptic DV movie One (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0227189/combined) featured a scene shot in a barren wasteland that was actually, if I recall, a flattened landfill in Ohio that went on for acres. He also shot inside futuristic-looking locations--white tubes and tunnels lined with pipes--in a NASA facility.

Those pictures of Gunkanjima remind me of the pictures of Chernobyl linked to in this thread (http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?s=&threadid=24500). Thanks for posting the link.

The Chernobyl link does not work. (Not that I would be able to convince a crew to shoot there...)

"The One" seems interesting, I had not heard of it before. Thank you in turn for posting that link.

Industrial places. Parks. Buildings that might be torn down.

It seems like the series Stargate:SG1 has filmed in every abandoned quarry in British Columbia.

Of course, you have to worry about permissions and safety.

The official website is at whoistheone.com (http://www.whoistheone.com). The movie has never received a release or even a screening since it was reshot and reworked over a year ago.

A shame that the Chernobyl photo essay is MIA. Haunting images, poetic captions. Not even a Google cache remains. I wonder if she got in trouble for her incursion.

Actually, it turned out that she doesn't regularly take motorcycle trips into Chernobyl. That was fiction. She took those photos on a supervised tour (some were from other sources). No one is allowed into that area without permission.

Rock quarries, decrepit piers, docks, abandoned buildings, factories, cement mills etc. are good places for that post-apocalyptic look - of course here in New York it's easy to find those things.

Since you're in Belgium, you might be able to find some abandoned castles and keeps. Or maybe take a road trip into East Germany or Poland.

I've always wanted to shoot a post-apocalyptic scene with Stonehenge in the background - as a nice "reminder" of lost civilizations.

Keith: Oh. How did you come to know that?

Here's a mirror, anyway, for Jan. (http://xpda.com/junkmail/junk153/chernobyl/)

I think it was debunked on BoingBoing.

Indeed. (http://boingboing.net/2004/05/26/girl_photoblogs_cher.html)

Gunkanjima is freakin on my list now behind Petra...

I thought Petra was destroyed when they tried to take that cup past the seal.

I think the climate would be tough on any seals...

Jan,
I suppose it's way too far for you, but the best place I know of to shoot a post-apocalyptic type move is Green River Utah. Economy is lousy, so hotels and other expenses would be very cheap. There are hundreds of miles of BLM land (Bureau of Land Management) that don't have environmental restrictions. You could even camp for free in the desert there if you wanted, with no permits or fees required or anything. You could do all the filming you want, even set off explosions (in the desert. Just get off the roads as far as possible), and nobody is going to bother you. I swear. Lots of people like to go shooting in the desert, so if you had actors running around with guns, it wouldn't freak people out. Best thing is the BLM roads. In order for their rangers to keep an eye on things, the federal government has built a huge network of fantastic (unpaved but still really great) roads that wind around through the desert and don't really go anywhere. Very seldom traveled. You won't see more than a couple of cars a day in most areas. This is very remote country. In fact, you could die if you got too far out and your car broke down. Anyway, with these roads you can access a fantastic variety of rock formations, with soil that ranges from bright red, to white, to purple (I'm not kidding). Last time I was there, it occurred to me that this is exactly what I would imagine Mars looking like.

Marco, thats a very smart idea.

I might be able find a good desert area a little closer, in Spain.

But Green River Utah is definitely on my "must visit someday" list of places in the world!

Now that you mention Spain.. a few years ago I saw a short made by some guys at my filmschool..

It was shot in a deserted town that looked very creepy. The buildings were pretty old (early 1900´s) so it might not be exactly post apocalyptic.. unless apocalypse was after the Spanish Civil war or the WWII.

I´ve been trying to remember the name of the town.. but it was long ago..

Anyway I think there are a few ghost towns around here....

"But Green River Utah is definitely on my "must visit someday" list of places in the world!"

Well, if you do make it to Utah, remember there are many areas with much more spectacular scenery. They're also crawling with tourists. I mention Green River for filmmakers because it is one of the most desolate and ugly places I've ever seen. I few years back a group of bad guys went on a murder spree and disappeared into the desert in that general area. They killed a bunch of cops, and despite helicopters and a relative army of folks looking for them, nobody could root them out of the desert. This went on for months. So far as I know, they never did find those guys, although they had a habit of killing each other one by one and leaving the bodies behind.

I remember an old photography website with abandoned buildings in Belgium:

http://www.abandoned-places.com/

So COOL!

I remember another photo site where the subject was abandoned hospitals, mills, factories and other institutions in the rust belt of the U.S.

Also there was a film recently called Session 9 that was shot on video that was filmed in an abandoned institution of some sort. Nice film but most of it was the atmosphere of the building.