By Chance Shirley
March 18, 2004
Part Four: Location, Location, Location
Leeds, Alabama. We're in an accounting office that's doubling as a small town, Andy Griffith-type police station. Chuck Hartsell, co-director and actor, is bashing a zombie's skull with one of those big metal flashlights. Fake blood is flying, the camera is rolling, and I'm enjoying the gratuitous violence until I look over at the white wall on the other side of the room. It's dripping with the red stuff. The white wall, clean a few seconds ago, is now covered in sticky fake blood.
Twenty minutes later, the wall is clean again. Our fake blood is, fortunately, water-soluble. It did stain a couple of other items -- we'd over-pumped the sprayer and it got seriously out of control. Hopefully, though, the accountants won't notice or care. Because we're scheduled to use the office again next weekend. And if we get kicked out, we've got quite a few pages of stuff we'll have to re-shoot somewhere else.
It's a little scary shooting scenes on property you don't own. No matter how careful you are, accidents will happen. Mess up your own house, no big deal. Mess up someone else's... big deal. But, I'm not shooting one of those movies where two guys sit on my couch in my living room for 90 minutes and talk about what they're watching on my TV, so I gotta do it. Because, in my opinion, one of the most important things you can do to improve the production quality of your movie is choose appropriate (and interesting, if possible) locations.
An example: I was watching a super-low budget horror film on DVD a while back. How did I know it was super-low budget? Well, early in the movie, one of the characters is at a strip club. There's a topless girl dancing on a table and everything. It all looks okay until I notice that the dancer is bending over because her head is almost touching the ceiling. Now, I'm not an expert on strip clubs, but I know that they have high ceilings. The scene I'm talking about was obviously shot in someone's basement, dressed up with a disco ball and a few party lights. The filmmakers should have either re-written the scene, cut the scene, or shot the scene in a real strip club.
How hard is it to get into a real strip club for shooting? I don't know -- I've never tried. But it never hurts to ask. First rule of indie movie producer club: never be afraid to ask a question. The worst answer you can get is "no."
Actually, "no" isn't that bad. At least it's definite. One of the first things I found out about making movies in Alabama is that people don't understand that you can make a movie in Alabama. They assume movies are only made in Hollywood. And maybe New York City. The first time I approached someone about using his place of business as a movie location, he looked at me like I just arrived from Mars.
I hear that in big cities, you run into the opposite problem. People are so used to massive Hollywood crews coming through, they expect every movie production to pay thousands of dollars a day to use a location. Even us little indie types who are lucky if we can afford a couple hundred bucks a day. But that's not a problem for me, at least not on this shoot. I do want to film a movie in Manhattan someday, so I guess I'll find out about big city shooting at that point.
Scouting High and Low
Like most movie-related searches (props, vehicles, food), location scouting begins at home, with friends and family. I mean, if I'm shooting a medical thriller and my dad's a big shot at the local hospital, I'm gonna get him to pull a few strings for me. Fortunately, my dad's not a doctor and we're not shooting a medical thriller. But, my girlfriend's dad is the accountant for a sports bar and we needed a sports bar for one location. The manager of that bar even had experience dealing with movie crews. So he didn't look at us like we were space aliens. Bonus. But then he kind of ripped us off. More on that below.
After tapping my friends' resources, I called my local film commission, the Alabama Film Office. When a big Hollywood producer wants to shoot a movie in Alabama, he calls the Film Office. The Office tries to help the producer find good locations because the Office wants the producer to be happy and spend a lot of money in the state.
What did the Film Office say to me, with my paltry indie budget? I don't know what it's like in other states, but the folks at the Alabama Film Office have always been very nice to me. In fact, they've never asked me about my movie's budget. And they hooked me up with one prime location, a cabin in the middle of nowhere. I mean, this place couldn't have been more perfect for our script. And I wouldn't have found it without calling the Film Office.
Even if I don't get any help finding locations from the Alabama Film Office, I try to stay in touch with them while working on a project. That way, I can give people someone official sounding to call if they question my motives. "No, this is a completely legitimate movie. Call Tommy Fell down at the Film Office if you want. He knows me."
My limited research has turned up commissions for most states, and some individual cities. I know if I'm ever shooting in, say, New Mexico, my first call will be to the New Mexico Film Office.
Some locations are as easy to find as just walking out the front door. I've found out that many cities don't require a shooting permit for sidewalks, parks, and other public property. Especially if you're not bothering anyone. If I was in an unfamiliar town, I'd probably call the mayor's office or city hall and double check. In Birmingham, I just go out and shoot. No one has complained yet.
You might be surprised how easy it is to get a road closed sometimes, especially in smaller cities and towns. We needed to shoot a car chase for the ALICE IN WONDERLAND movie I worked on last summer. One of our producers called the mayor of some little Alabama city, Chelsea, I think, and talked to him about it. The mayor was so excited we were shooting a movie in his city, he got a couple of police officers to come in and block off two or three miles of road for a couple of hours. For free. He even hung out with us while we shot.
A couple of weeks later we were working on the same movie in a parking lot in yet another small city. A police officer saw us while he was driving by. He stopped to ask if we needed him to "block traffic or anything." We thought about the shot we were working on and said, "Sure. Why not?"
Speaking of public property, another good location resource I've found is state parks. Not only do they often have great natural features, they sometimes have a building or two just right for shooting. We needed a church for a scene that we probably wouldn't be able to shoot in a real church, due to the scene's content. We found a historic church at a local state park that we could rent, no questions asked.
The Cold Call
Should all of the easy options fail, there is always the cold call. Put on some clean clothes and a smile and start knocking on doors. I found a great grocery store for a shoot a few weeks ago. A buddy of mine had read the script and said he kept picturing this particular grocery store in Jasper, Alabama, for one of the scenes. I drove to Jasper, found the store, talked to the manager, and he let us use the place on a Sunday morning, before store hours.
When I go on a cold call, I think it helps to have as much information as possible for the location owner. I usually give them a folder containing:
- Our boilerplate "hold harmless" agreement and location release. This is a contract that says we won't sue the location if we break anything (or anybody) while there, and that we'll pay for anything we break of theirs. It also gives us permission to use images of someone's private property in our movie. You can download the agreement I use, but, keep in mind, I'm not a lawyer. If you use it for one of your projects, have your lawyer take a look at it first.
- Script pages of the scene we want to shoot at the location, so the owner has some idea of what we'll be doing and how long we'll be there.
- A copy of the Location Owner's Guide from the Alabama Film Office, available at http://alabamafilm.org/locationownersguide.htm. This answers a lot of basic questions about letting a crew shoot on your property.
- My business card. Nothing fancy, just company name, my name, and a phone number. Chuck made them for me on a PC for cheap, and they come in handy all the time.
I've had good luck with this method so far. I think having all this stuff on hand in black and white probably makes me seem a little more professional. Plus, if I get nervous while I'm trying to close the deal and forget what I'm talking about, I have the information in the folder to remind me.
W.I.I.F.M. (What's in it for me?)
In a perfect world, I'd get all my locations just because the owners love movies and want to help out a struggling filmmaker any way they can. In the real world, someone eventually says, "Sure, you can shoot here, but what's in it for me?" Then I have to talk money.
I'm terrible at bargaining, so I usually try to get the owner to name a price. I then either say "yes" or "no" based on whether I think it's worth it. If you're curious, here's a list of how much I've spent on locations so far for this shoot:
- Hunting cabin, including surrounding woods: $200 per day
- Friend's house: free
- Grocery store: $100 for half a day
- Barbecue restaurant: $50 per day, plus the owners dressed up like zombies for us -- very cool
- Sports bar: $540 for a day and a half, including lunch one day
- Accounting office: free (so far)
- Church: $250 for 2 shooting days plus 2 setup days
I'd say I've spent a little more than I'd like on locations up to this point. But, again, I drive a poor bargain. The only one that really bugs me is the $540 for the sports bar. I made the mistake of not agreeing on a specific price before we started rolling for the day. The deal was that we'd get the location for free and pay the guys at the bar to make lunch for us. We discussed it beforehand and the manager of the bar gave me a $250 estimate. When, at the end of the first day, the owner asked for more than twice the original estimate, he already had me by the balls. Either we pay him $540 to keep shooting there, or we waste $200 in film stock and go do re-shoots somewhere else.
Hopefully, I will learn from this mistake. Second rule of indie producer club: before you turn a camera on, or even unload the truck, hand the owner a location agreement and get him to sign on the line which is dotted. Then give him a check for the agreed fee. Then, finally, unload the truck and start shooting. That's kind of a long rule. But you get the idea.
Going Places
As I'm writing this, we only have a few shooting days left on the schedule. We have locations lined up, verbally, at least, for all except two of those days. Which reminds me. Anybody know where I can get a video store in central Alabama? Cheap?
Aside from the monetary cost I mentioned before, we've spent a lot of time on these locations. Finding locations takes time, schmoozing owners takes time, prepping locations takes time, and cleaning up when you're done can take a lot of time. If we continue to get good looking footage, though, it's time well spent.
