How to Scout Locations for a Movie

Video Transcript

"Hi, Scott duPont. Film Producing 102, welcome back to Expert Village. Well, our next little segment here is on location scouting. And, normally this will happen during the casting process, possibly before the casting process, but definitely after you have all the money lined up and you're ready to shoot and you have a pretty good idea of the schedule. When you're going out to talk to people about locations you need to give them a certain date or range of dates when you're going to come invade their business or invade their home or take over their property. And, I use that kind of jokingly, you've got be very honest to people about what a film crew is all about because it's not just one or two people with a camera, sometimes even a low budget film can have twenty, forty, fifty crew members and lots of cars and trucks. So, you want to be honest with people and one thing that I give to all my co-producers and all the team members that I've assembled on all my projects, I have a location form and I'm just going to go through some of these check lists that you want to consider before, or as you are going out to location scout. You want to make sure to find out whether or not a permit is required. If its public property or government property, usually it will require a permit. Sometimes permits are free, but you just have to go through your local film office to get that accomplished. Are there restroom facilities? If you're going to shoot someplace for twelve hours, I don't care if it's a house, a business, a field; you've got to provide some restrooms for people. Otherwise, you?re going to have some serious problems, you know what I'm talking about. Is there plenty of parking? Another thing, you want to check the sound. So, when you go out and do a location scout, you want to look up into the sky, see if there are any planes, or if there are any nesting birds. Anything like that can really make shooting in that location a problem. Interior sound, if you are shooting indoors, are there refrigerator going on, are there ice coolers, if you're in a business, are there big air conditioner handlers. Electrical, you need to do a quick electrical check. Are there plenty of outlets, if you're just running a few small lights? If it's not able to accommodate great big lights, you might want to look into a generator. Neighbors, you want to find out if the neighbors are film friendly, if they are used to having people out there. And those are some of the tips, so use this kind of form or develop your own form and good luck scouting. We'll be back in a minute on Expert Village with a few more topics."