Location Scout Encounter reported!
Location Scouts typically go door-to-door after a bit of research and some calls / emails when the spec calls for a certain type of neighborhood, house, business, etc. Herein are misc reports of encounters with location scouts by people who may or may not had ever heard the term “location scout” or knew what the title / phrase meant 😉
Location Scout Letter
– wherein a lay-person finds one of our (location scout’s) ubiquitous query letters we leave with people when we are on the hunt for suitable filming locations around a given area. The location scouting requests are often made for very specific aesthetic, visual or logistic / geographic specifications so we look high and low for the locations and often leave the query letters with people who’s closest experience with film production may have been to buy a box of popcorn at the theater 😉
First Encounter With a Location Scout
– dan allen- comedian, poet and scientific philosopher: I think I just lost a $1,000 | June 26th, 2006 | by dan allen
How you ask?
Last Friday I walked up to my house and noticed there was an envelope on my door. At first I thought it was restaurant paper spam, but I realized it was a psuedo-personalized letter.
Dear Resident,
“Your house has been selected to be in the New York Times fashion editorial. We are fully insured and you will compensated for your time. Please call the number listed below if you are interested.”
Location Scout letter (Shaughnessy Lodge) on Flickr – Photo Sharing!
| Uploaded on November 11, 2005 | by bmann
Why the first or second floor? Are they going to jump out of the window?
This was, by the way, taped to the front door of my apartment building this morning.
Law & Order Location Scouting
– rachelleb.com: Law & Order Location Scouting
Thursday night when I came home from work I found this posted outside our apartment building door and there were a bunch more laying inside our door. It’s signed by the Law & Order Location Scout.
Full text of the letter: …read the rest…
See also: Law & Order Filming
Location Scout Story: When Everything Goes Right
Location Scout Story: When Everything Goes Right – House of D | David Mamet likes her house. So what if it’s for a crime? | Written by Nancy De Los Santos | (From the October 2007 issue of “Written By“)
A knock on my front door interrupted my workday late one afternoon. The mail had already been delivered, I wasn’t expecting the FedEx guy, and Jehovah’s Witnesses usually stop by on the weekend. Being a writer with a vivid imagination, I was cautious. I stood behind the white security door, knowing whoever was out there could neither see me in here nor shoot me, at least not with a handgun. But I could see him. A 40ish buttoned-down kind of guy, brown hair, Oxford shirt, khakis. A white guy-a distinctive characteristic in this mostly Latino and Chinese neighborhood.
“Who is it?” I shouted through the door, checking if it was locked. It was. The buttoned-down guy explained that he was a “location scout,” looking for a house to shoot a film scene. Before he could finish his sentence, I told him I wasn’t interested.
MetaFilter: TV filming at your house?
A location scout slipped a letter through our mailslot – call him if we’d be willing to let them “rent” our house for the filming of a television show episode. I haven’t called him so I don’t know how much they might pay, or any other details. Have you ever done this? Is it an awful headache? I’m interested in hearing how it worked out for you.
posted by CheeseLouise to home & garden (24 answers total) 3 users marked this as a favorite
…more…
Doctorius | Grab Life By the Horns: Dodge Films a Commercial at My House
People who live in Los Angeles often harbor fantasies of being on television or in movies. Likewise, it is also not uncommon for the homes in which these people live to share the same dream! On Friday, March 7, 2008, my home was given a chance to live this fantasy when part of a commercial for the 2009 Dodge Journey was filmed in my driveway and the street on which my house is located.
Different kinds of location scouts than those of us that normally location scout for film, tv, photo, commercials
Another Kind of Location Scout
– Carroll County (AR) News | Blogs | The Ubiquitous Pig | The Ogallala Blues | Daniel Krotz | Posted Tuesday, August 26, at 4:53 AM | via Google News Alerts
…One person who does understand what we are doing is the very fine American writer Annie Proulx. In her novel, That Old Ace in the Hole, she comically and bawdily tells the story of Bob Dollar, a callow and hapless “secret location scout” for Global Pork Rind. The book is about how Bob slowly and only in due course discovers the environmental and human costs of manufacturing “pork units.” Along the way, Proulx treats us to a social and natural history of the panhandle that informs us about what is happening to the Ogallala–and how we can become wiser stewards of this great and not readily renewable resource.
AARP (American Association of Retired Persons) The Magazine’s Location Scout
is not really about location scouting for film / television or photo but rather, finding a suitable place to live, based on a number of of different criteria. So this is yet ANOTHER kind of location scout 😉
That said, AARP Magazine’s Location Scout could still be used in some measure by a location scout or producer to help pinpoint some aspects of a geographic location that might lend that themselves toward determining the most suitable place to use as a location for a given production.
In any case and if nothing else, the AARP Magazine’s Location Scout is a fun read and presents some food for thought regarding one’s own lifestyle preferences.
For instance, if you…
- go to the AARP Magazine Location Scout front page and use the “Start Now” link, you are transported to a page with the heading “Climate / Locale” and presented with a number of options to chose from based on Climate preferences.
- Next you are asked which Area of the United States you would prefer to live in.
- Next you are asked three questions regarding Housing: (affordability), (price appreciation), (availability of senior housing options – it IS the AARP, after all), (property tax rates), (utility costs) and (housing starts)
- Work preferences – (low unemployment), (high job growth), (overall income tax rates), (sales tax rates), (cost of living) and (taxes on pensions)
- Arts, Culture & Lifestyle – availability of… (museums and galleries), (dining options), (performing arts), (libraries), (internet access)
- Recreation – (presence of professional sports teams), (boating, surfing, sailing), (river or inland lake), (outdoors / national parks), (golf courses)
- Transportation – (commuting), (mass transit), (airport(s)
- Health – (affordability of medical and dental care), (quantity of physicians), (air quality), availability of… (nursing homes), (home care options), (meals on wheels), (geriatric medical specialists), (on-demand medical transportation)
- Education – (level of spending per student), (high graduation rates), (cultural and intellectual opportunities), (range of school options)
- Then you get your results!
- Yahoo Search: AARP
Location Scouting On Mars
…via ComputerWorld | Twittering ‘from Mars’ | ‘Cheers! Tears! I’m here!’ Mars Lander declares By Heather Havenstein | June 6, 2008 (Computerworld)
The parachute is open!!
Come on Rocketssssss!!!
I’ve landed !!!!!
Cheers! Tears! I’m here!
Those were the messages that NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory sent out on micro-blogging site Twitter in a five-minute time span May 25 as its Phoenix Mars Lander descended and touched down on the Red Planet.
Location Scout electronic book
…what follows is as abstract an observation on the subject of location scouting as I personally have come across yet…
Read Production Notes For Occupation: Location Scouting online FREE (pdf)
Page One Excerpt:
that’s all setup fire cover-up forest in revolt the haircut unseen we open here
backstory attached obscene invisible voice over perhaps these are the events
thanks to this oblivion alone that we can from time to time recover the person that we were,
place ourselves in relation to things as he was placed, suffer anew because we are no longer
ourselves but he, and because he loved what now leaves us indifferent parts all parts all
pieces the camera blind unable to carry on work of analysis all parts departure
smoke from wood rubble now sand scattered solid as it’s small can’t be smaller
atomic we shoot ruin at night softly luminous
