How to Get Movie Set Property Clearances

Video Transcript

"Rhett Reiger White Caspian Studios on behalf of Expert Village. Speaking for a minute about property owners and neighbors. This is very, very important. On and independent movie shoot you should have your clearances. You should have all your locations signed off and everybody should know but we all understand on and an independent film there are times you're shooting gorilla style. Which is you get in and get it down and get out as fast as you can. Even when you have your clearances signed you will have people who come to your shoot, looking around, wanting to touch things, walk around, get a shot in the camera, get a little cameo here, yell out something in the middle of a dialog scene. It happens all the time. You've got to be prepared for it. There are a couple ways to deal with it. Number one the way not to do it is to get angry. Do not get angry, do not yell and don't disrespect anybody. The best way to do and my film school teacher taught me this and I think he was right. First you start with negotiating. Hey can you guys just, do you understand what we're doing? Give them a little, just entertain them. Tell them what you're doing. You know ask them a little about why they're there and you know are you sure we're respecting your space. We're not making too much noise. We'll try to be out of here as fast as we can but if they’re not going to be at peace by that just by pure logic and politeness. You may have to pay them off and I suggest keeping a few hundred dollar bills in your pocket. Believe me it works. Somebody will not shut up and they're a nuisance and they're going, they're determined to mess up your shoot. You just walk up to them put a hundred dollar bill in their hand and say thank you so much and walk away. People are going to have a hard time coming back to giving you more trouble after that."