#location manager

I don’t care if the budget is tight. Bad locations management cost indie films thousands more than if they had just designated someone to do the job of locations manager. Locations aren’t just cool places to film your project, they have to accommodate the entire production. This means parking for cast, crew, & work trucks, power (or a place for the generators), running water, working bathrooms (or a place for honeywagons or portas), changing areas & actor holding areas (or a place for trailers), a production office, space for catering, space for DIT, space for crafty, staging areas for equipment, extras holding if there’s extras involved, signs to show where everything is so crews don’t get lost/confused/wander into no-access rooms, etc. That’s all that needs to happen to justify having the actual set at the location. That’s a lot of shit to handle. 

And this isn’t just in pre-production, locations need to be maintained throughout the shoot and even during wrap out. They need to be cleaned (and something has to happen with the trash), they need to be prepped like putting down mats and layout board, they need paperwork and permits signed, the neighbors need to be warned of anything weird happening at what times. Filming on a street at the location? You need to make sure there’s a street permit, that the cops are aware (and show up to redirect traffic during filming). What about that neighbor with the lawnmower during takes? What about that car in the driveway in the background of the shot that now looks like it’s pulling out and ruining continuity? Who’s going to talk to the guy next door about keeping his porch lights on for the night exterior?

These are all things we don’t think about in pre-production as directors and producers. The grown-ups have their hands full with casting and equipment rentals and crewing. If they’ve got a location, they’re not worrying about the daily minutia. Nor are they thinking about permits and contracts and warning the neighbors. No, these things are all under the title of the Location Manager and may whatever god you’re into help you if you don’t have one. 

LOCATION MANAGERS ARE THE BACKBONE OF PRODUCTION. As an AD, it’s incredibly hard for me to do my job properly without a locations person doing theirs. Location issues and poor management cost productions lots of time and money, no matter how big or small the production is, and if I have to stop what I’m doing on set to figure out a solution to a location problem, we’re losing shots, which makes no one happy. 

What the hell does a location manager actually do?

Fuck, what don’t they do? A lot of their job is undercover ninja style work. A vast majority of it comes from proper pre-production where they attend the location scouts and address the pros and cons of locations while still in the decision phase. A good locations person has no problem telling a director or producer that a place won’t work if it won’t work. If a location is agreed upon, the manager makes sure the proper paperwork like contracts with the owner and permits for parking, street closure, etc. are signed and filed. They also will notify the neighboring areas about filming so businesses and neighbors aren’t surprised and can plan accordingly. When locations are “locked”, managers then make sure each of these locations can accommodate the production by planning basecamps, parking, bathrooms, catering, and other areas at the location. 

During production, the manager will utilize either their own location PAs or the set PAs to help with daily management of the location such as trash sweeps, setting up tents when needed, putting down layout board, wrangling the neighbors, landing worktrucks, putting up signage, etc. 

What makes a location a bad location?

Bad locations manifest themselves in different ways and have different levels of bad from a mild inconvenience to a total clusterfuck. Sometimes we deal with the mild inconveniences of a location if that location really works for the set. But there are some things that really rank a location in the clusterfuck territory:

No interior infrastructure accessible. Say you’re filming in a field out in the country. There’s no power. There’s no bathrooms. There’s no shade. Now say your budget does not have the room for a generator, gas for that genny, trailers, or a honeywagon. Now also say there’s no neighbors that will let you use their building nearby for those things. If you’re spending more than an hour at this field and have more than 5 people on your crew, don’t film there. Find another field.

Near construction, an airport, seaport, active music venues, or just anywhere uncontrollably noisy. Unless you have the budget for, and plan to, ADR... OR... your project is MOS. Don’t do this. There’s only so many sound blankets you can put up to muffle the sound of a jet engine.

Live businesses and public spaces. Your ADs will try to schedule scenes that need to film at these locations during dead times, like when the store is closed, or when the park is the least populated. A location manager will budget out a way to “own” the space during filming, such as having police to lock down a public area with signage and barricades, or buying out the store for a certain amount of hours so that’s it’s closed. If you don’t have this budget, you’re gonna have a bad time. Trying to film in a business when the business is open means sound is fucked, lockups are fucked, and a whole lot of annoyed customers around your equipment. And actually, this can be more expensive than just buying out the hours, especially when the shoot gets shut down because the owner is complaining that you’re disrupting business too much. 

Lack of accessible worktruck parking. Dirt roads are only good on camera. Using them to get equipment to set is harsh and even worse if the location has any sort of weight limit bridges or low clearance crossings. Worktrucks/production vehicles can’t park around the corner for loading and unloading, they need to be at the set. If you can’t do that, you’re going to lose a lot of time with load-in and wrap. 

No adjacent working bathrooms.  It is a requirement that a work site has a working bathroom. This is a law whether the show is union or not. Portas are acceptable but the location needs to have a space for them so they can be delivered easily and they need to be cleaned and dumped if you are filming at the location for a long period of time. No bathrooms or space for honeywagon or portas? No shoot. 

Any locations with a lot of restrictions that essentially makes the production unable to operate. Look, if you’re finding yourself fighting the location just to bring essential equipment and crew in, or if the restrictions on the location are so much that you’re hemorrhaging time, the location is not fucking worth it.  

But I still want to shoot in the Grand Canyon anyway!

Cool. No one’s stopping you. Except for permits, money, and accessible roadways. Look, productions film in “bad” locations all the time, but the bigger productions have the time and money to handle the problems of locations like these. If you can get your hands on a permit to film in an iconic but problematic location, that’s wonderful. But your work is not done. Now you need to figure out a game plan for production. It’s an even bigger case to hire a location manager who can help you make sure the shoot happens properly and safely.

The director or producer locked in a very bad location. What do we do?

Happens more than you think. Directors and producers get their hearts set on a certain location for whatever reason and won’t let go. Some have locked in locations before the rest of the production staff have even been hired. There’s ways to deal with problematic locations that don’t screw over your shooting days. Think about going to a smaller crew at these locations. Pairing down to only essential crew if necessary. Script rewrites so that big scenes don’t happen in these locations. If that doesn’t work, lots of meetings and location scouts with department heads to come up with a good game plan for the location. Deal with the problematic locations first. Give yourself the time to come up with solid plans for them. Don’t wait until the night of the shoot to discuss where basecamp is going. Hit that shit in pre-pro. 

I could keep going on and on about the importance of a location manager and a good location department. I could do posts just about the importance of budgeting location PAs and what they do separately from set PAs, but experience really can spell that all out for you. Plus, this isn’t a locations blog. 

What we really need to understand that when dealing with locations and people who own these properties, they don’t understand film production. They don’t understand what it means when you say you’re just gonna have a few vehicles, or it’s just a couple scenes. Films need equipment and accessible accommodations to work properly and most of us aren’t that great at talking to non-film folks about what a shoot actually looks like. If I had a dollar for every time an owner got upset at the sheer amount of bullshit we bring to a location on every given day, I’d be on a beach right now paying someone to inject me with margaritas. For real. We’re terrible at talking to civilians and this is honestly your location manager’s number one job: they know how to talk to the public without being completely terrifying, overwhelming, condescending, or fake. They know exactly how to lay down the truth and get the owner to sign the dotted line. And if they can’t do that, they know how to tell you to move onto another location.

Next time you’re budgeting for a production, make sure you, at the very fucking least, throw a line item in there for a dedicated location manager. You’ll be glad you did.