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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.
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.
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
www.scottspears.net
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