Domiciles Gameshow Concept Bid Miniature Set Model

The immigration home office scene and location was described as miserable, distressing, depressing, dirty, not looked after, this damaged, worn, lacking warmth and humanity.

As production designer it was my job to try and find good locations.

The description had me at first seeking

Derelict offices

Cold tiles basements such as a morgue or old swimming pool

Industrial basements

Prison

What I was ideally seeking was somewhere like the Hawkins Lab scenes from the TV show Stranger Things

A secret government illegal lab where children with telekinetic powers were imprisoned devoid of any warmth love or fun
 
The tiled look had me thinking of morgues, what I guessed swimming pool basements may look like, an empty supermarket ware house with all the pipe work showing.
 
I searched on line with very little luck.

I visited a variety of places, contacted owners to ask if we could get permission and what would the cost be including:

Community Centres

Old office buildings

An old abandoned car show room

Library offices

Old nightclubs in old building or railway arches

Either these locations did not fit the brief:

Too well-lit and nice

Not enough available camera angles

Too well used meaning we could not get the time we needed for filming

Too far away from the college

Too plain such as art galleries

No permission, but the primary problem is we had next to no money and costs to hire started around £1000

Class mates also just wanted to use a class room so did not have to travel and free even though nothing like the brief.
 

There was a location I found in the college which was a long conservatory next to the school canteen. But this was deemed to be too costly and time consuming to convert to what was wanted and to cover up all the windows effectively.
 
I did find another part of the college that was idea, all broken and damaged but we were forbidden as it had been condemned end for asbestos risk

I spent over a month searching but then had to submit to the pressure of running out of time, not being allotted any budget and class mates not wanting to travel to use a college classroom which I did not want to use at all.