Location, Location, Location: Scouting Tips
by Scott Spears
Just like in real estate, when you leave the studio (if you
were ever in one) one of the biggest factors to a good
shoot, is location, location, location. I’ve been on many a
location scout and have seen some great location and so not
so great locations. One of the biggest things when seeing
what looks like a great location is you have to think will
it work logistically. The factors to locations are cost,
sound issues, power and logistics. We’ll break those down in
a minute.
First, who should be on the location scout? As many crew
people as possible, but it’s not feasible to take the entire
crew to each location (unless you have a small crew), so you
need to pick department heads, the director,
cinematographer, 1st assistant director, art director, sound
mixer and production/location manager. I like to bring my
gaffer if possible. These people all look at locations in
different ways and will have different and valuable input.
When all these people aren’t there, then somebody on the
scout should be looking out for them. Sometimes when it’s
just me and the director out scouting, we both have to wear
different production hats and not just consider picture
needs.
COST
This is the easy one, either can afford the location or you
can’t. A good producer might be able to wheel and deal a
better price. Sometimes you have to use some imagination
with a place that doesn’t quite work, but is affordable.
This is where the director has to envision the shots he will
need. There’s a famous story from Akira Kurosawa when he was
asked how he achieved a “perfect” frame for a period film he
directed and he said, if I had panned to the right there was
a modern factory and if I panned to the left, there were
power lines, so the frame was set. I’ve been on scouts where
people have said the location wouldn’t work because of some
factor, but after talking with the director, we realized
that element would never be on camera.
SOUND ISSUES
Here’s a line I like to use on sound mixers (please sound
folks, don’t take a offense, I’m joking), “they’re called
motion pictures, not motion sounds.” It usually gets the
riled up, but seriously, you have to not just look at a
location, you have to listen to it. Is it on a street with
heavy traffic? Is there construction nearby or the potential
of it? Is it in the path of an airport? Do a bunch of
college party kids live next door who will throw the world’s
biggest, noisy-est party ever in the middle of your intimate
drama? If it’s a multi-story building, who lives upstairs?
Somebody who stomps around in combat boots? There are
hundreds of noise factors that can slow or grind your
production to a halt, so be on the lookout.
If you start to like a location and think it will be high on
your list, take a moment and stand silently. Listen for hums
and buzzes. Find out if they can be eliminated. You should
visit it again at a different time of day to make sure there
isn’t some factor that changes. Say you visit an apartment
that looks perfect in the morning, but it sits above a bar
that at night cranks up the music, well that would be a
sound killer. Some smaller airports cut back on night
flights, but during the day your location will have a flight
overhead every two minute. In general, try to think when
you’ll be shooting and seek out any sound factor which would
slow or halt shooting. Sometimes these things can come out
of nowhere and cannot be predicted, but you should do your
homework.
(Here’s a side note: Refrigerators are the bane of sound
mixer’s life, humming back to life in the middle of takes
thus ruining the sound, so the solution is to turn them off
during the shoot, but often times they don’t get turned back
on after the shoot and the production gets a bill to replace
the spoiled contents. Here’s a clever way to avoid that:
somebody is assigned be the last person to leave the
location, be that the A.D., location manager or a PA, they
should put their car keys in the fridge, that way when they
go to their car to leave and pat their pockets for the keys
they will remember they put them the fridge for a reason and
will have to return to the fridge and will remember to turn
it back on. This was taught to me by a wise Assistant
Director. I love tricks like this.)
POWER
A nightmare for gaffers is lack of power. If you need a
shaft of sunlight pouring through a window that is created
by lighting, not the sun, and production can’t afford a
generator, then you need lots of power. Older buildings
should be given special inspections. I’ve shot in apartments
that had only two twenty amp circuits which means if you
plug in more than four lights, you’re going to start blowing
breakers. We ended up borrowing power from an apartment two
stories above and just dropped cables out the window to feed
our lights. Not ideal, but it worked. Does the place have
plenty of outlets? Where are the circuit breakers? You
should know where they are so if you blow a breaker you can
get at it to reset it. I’ve had hour-long production delays
because a fuse box was locked in a closet and nobody could
find a janitor to open it. Get to know whoever’s in charge
of the keys to all the doors in a building and make them
your best friend.
(Another side note: Here’s the Scott Spears lazy man math
formula for calculating power needs for lights. Say you want
to use three 1000 watts lights (1Ks for short) and a 500
watt light. You take the watts and add them up which makes
3500 watts, then you divide that by 100 (I know it should be
110, but that’s why I call it a lazy man formula) and that
will give you the amps you’ll need, which in this case will
be 35 amps. Most houses have 20 amp breakers, so you’ll need
at two dedicated breakers for your lights. Total watts/100=
amps needed. 3500/100=35)
LOGISTICS
Locations bring there own set of logistics, just like
people. There are a lot of things you don’t think about as
you walk around a cool location lining up shots and thinking
how you’ll use the space, but there’s a lot more to a
location than that.
Where the heck are the cast, crew and equipment vehicles
going to park? A film production takes up a lot of space so
there better be parking. How do you get all the gear to the
location? Are there elevators or is the crew going have to
drag a ton of equipment up four flights of stairs? Exterior
locations have these same concerns. I’ve had to hike about a
mile uphill for a shoot with gear on my back and in each
hand which ain’t fun, but you gotta do what you gotta do. Do
that six times to start and end your day and you’ll think
twice about that location.
Don’t forget about changing rooms for cast and a make-up
area. Here’s a biggie, are there enough bathrooms? Nothing
can get you booted from a location faster than to have 30
people trying to use one bathroom and to have the toilet
overflow.
Now you and your stuff are on set, but where do you put
people and extra gear when they’re not working? All the
grips and cast not on camera need someplace to hang out
while shooting is underway.
Do you have a place for the cast and crew to eat? Is there a
large space so everybody sit together and eat? That’s a
great way to build camaraderie (as long as the food is good,
but that’s a whole other topic.) If you don’t feed people on
site, are there restaurants nearby. Be careful letting cast
and crew loose upon the world because they’ll all come
staggering in a few minutes late with the excuse that the
waiters were slow or some other problem.
Some locations have special requirements, like no shoes,
cover the floors or be out at a certain time. Make sure
everybody respects these rules or you may be looking for a
new place. If a location throws on too many restrictions off
the bat, you may want to look elsewhere because once you’re
there, life may get even worse with more rules and
complaints about even minor infractions.
PAPERWORK
Everybody hates paperwork, but make sure to release forms
signed well ahead of the time to shoot at your great new
location. If you wait until the last minute, like when you
have all your crew standing outside waiting to get to work,
then the owner my find some “unknown” reason for jacking up
he price, otherwise known as they’ve got you over the
barrel. Have proper forms and photo releases for the
location.
FINAL THOUGHTS
I’ll close by saying my rule is to try to leave a location
better than I found it. Don’t leave a mess because
eventually that reputation will catch up to you and you’ll
start getting locked out of places.
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Scott Spears is an Emmy Award winning Director of
Photography with 14 features under his belt. He’s also
written several feature screenplays, some of which have been
made into movies. You can learn more about him at
http://www.scottspears.net
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Copyright (c) 2007 Peter D. Marshall / All Rights Reserved
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