a

1. Production process
Pre-production:
Neil Marshall wrote and directed ‘The Descent’ therefore he designed the majority
of the film with help from the team of filmmakers also involved in making the film.
He spent over 2 years writing the script with help from the producer Christian Colson
who is also managering director of Celador Films Production. Neil and Christian went
through 10 to 15 drafts to make the script for the film.
The filming took place in the United Kingdom, the outside scene took place in
Ashbridge Park, Scotland and inside the cave scenes was filmed on sets built at
Pinewood Studios where set designer Simon Bowles had created all the sets for the
cave adding up to 21 cave sets overall. The cave scenes was filmed in studios
because the filmmakers thought it was too dangerous and time-consuming to film in
a real cave and the location of the film outside was considered by help from the
location mangers.
Marshalls original plan was to cast a mix of male and females but because most
horror films did this and in his other film ‘Dog Soldiers’ he casted all boys so
therefore he casted all women as the main characters. He also gave all the
characters different accents so that the viewers can tell the difference between all of
them. To find the actors to play the roles in the film, Neil Marshall would go through
managers of actors and visit casting studios to find the right people to play the role.
The producer of ‘The Descent’, Christian Colson, and also the director of Celador
financed the film at a low budget. To make this movie, Pathe and 20th Century Fox
worked together with Celador.

2. Production:
Apart from the rafting scene at the beginning, there is no real action shooting within
this movie; this is due to health and safety alongside
In order to prepare the actors for the film, the girls had to participate in activities
such as rock climbing to help them do better when getting around the artificial rocks.
For the car crash scene, they had to use a controlled location in order to make sure
there were no random people or cars in the shot. This allowed them to make the
cars crash without actually driving them at high speeds and leave the audience
clueless of this.
As with most films, a green screen was used to create backgrounds and scenes,
which could not be made in the studio. This was done when they entered the caves
and had to lower themselves in due to the fact that it was too expensive to actually
build the entrance. Dummies were also used for parts like the dangerous bits of
rapids and when Holly’s body was thrown down to another room in the cave.
Another example of using model shots is at the beginning in the rapids, they used
dummies instead of the actresses in the more dangerous shots.
When shooting on the studio set the filmmakers decided to use the lighting that the
characters had on them like the head lights on their helmets instead of set lights to
make it more realistic and create a more dark effect. Overall there were 21 cave sets
built by Rod Vass and his company.
Post-production:
After the filming of the film was finished and filmed, a fair amount of editing was
performed to sequence the scenes in order and add in computer generated images
to remove parts of the scenes where the studio was visible and/or parts of the movie
could not be done in real life. Many of these effects were made in the car crash
scene; multiple shots were used with fast switching intervals in order to make the
crash look realistic while the cars were actually hardly moving.
When the film is finished, computer effects are used to substitute out the green
screens as backgrounds the movie was actually going to use in the scene. At one
point, the raft was filled with dummies in order to not risk the actor’s lives during the
filming an the camera was positioned so that the audience could not tell it was
dummies, this scene is also cropped and edited so the dummies look like the actors
and the scene only lasts so long that the audience cannot point out details.
CGI was also used in the cave when a group of bats jumps out on Sarah. The CGI
wasn’t as good as in other movies therefore it wasn’t often either which suggests the
editors were not very experienced.
Sound effects were used throughout the movie and were only added in after the
filming. These were recorded elsewhere and range from the sound of rushing water
in the rafting scene to the quiet dripping sounds in the cave.