How to Scout and Book a Location for a Commercial Shoot

Sometimes, there’s no substitute for the energy, visual scope, and richness shooting on location can contribute to your video. When you want to capture unduplicatable texture and showcase a particular location — be it your company campus, worksites, customer environments, street shots, or famous downtown locals — you will need to prepare for an on-location shoot. This calls for a solid location scouting plan. This blog covers the considerations and important steps you need to tackle to ensure your on-location shoot runs smoothly.

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What is Location Scouting?

Filming on location means capturing video outside of a controlled soundstage. In these cases, scouting scene locations is a crucial step in the pre-production process. Typically dictated by the story or the script, a location scout qualifies and helps to select the locations that will work.?

To get started, location scouts will typically pull up previous locations from their database, called a “file pull” that could be a good match. Once those options are exhausted, they will do remote calls and research through public and private databases before going out to scout new locations in person. Scouts will share key details of the shoot with the locations, vet their interest and availability, and take detailed photos for review.

Once there is a short list of interested locations, they will be organized and presented to stakeholders in a “scout report” with photos, pricing, and information on the limitations and realities of filming at those locations. This process can be repeated as much as budget and time allow until the right location is found.

When Should You Start Location Scouting?

Location scouting is a part of the pre-production process and ideally takes place quite early on. While scouting generally can’t begin until the bid is awarded and the overall project budget is locked in, bringing in an experienced scout or team who can give recommendations during bidding will save you time, prevent overages, and avoid stressful surprises.

Searchlight often engages in the scouting and location management process early on, either during the bidding process or right after a project is won.

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Important Location Considerations So Your Video Production Runs Smoothly

1. Time on location: How many days will you need your location? Are there lighting or time of day requirements (daylight, pale blue early mornings, warm golden hour?). Some locations may only be open to filming outside of business hours without substantial fees. Even in public areas such as city streets and parks, there may be “rush hour” or time of day restrictions on what is permissible.??
2. Size of Production: The number of crew and vehicles, footprint of required specialty gear, and work truck staging needs are all crucial for a scout to know. Some locations that may be a good fit for a smaller shoot might not be viable for a larger production without extensive logistical support, such as shuttling in crew from another “base camp” location.
3. Your Timeline: Permit requests for public areas, including those required for logistics like parking, can take a week or more to process depending on the jurisdiction. 3-4 weeks of scouting and preproduction time is ideal for most shoots, but every location and local government rules are different. It is important to get the advice of an experienced scout to make sure what is promised to the client is actually possible.?
4. Location impact: What alterations such as restaging furniture, painting walls, or “clearing the frame” in public areas will be required? These details can greatly affect the cost and viability of a location and are crucial for the scout to understand from the beginning of the process.

What Should You Look for in a Good Location Scout?

Searchlight approaches location scouting as one component of our comprehensive location production?capabilities. It isn’t enough to simply find the ideal location. It is also important that safety, compliance, photography, and all the talent and crew have seasoned experts to manage traffic, the set, and any potential day-of obstacles that arise.

With 10 years in the industry, Searchlight has served Fortune 100s, household names, and many premier agencies, producers, and production companies. We have the talent, expertise, and experience to bring the reliability and adaptability that professional sets require — all with hospitality in mind. We take pride in being the easiest location team to work with, never compromising on quality.

Searchlight can manage any of these core duties for your next film project:?

• Scouting: Get the connections and knowledge of a team, not just a single location scout in the Atlanta area and Georgia statewide.
• Location Managing: Have your project coordinated by a team of top-tier location managers with a qualified ALM on set at all times.
• Permits: Don’t let your production get derailed because of paperwork. We cover all the local government requirements such as notification compliance, ENP placement, ATSSA traffic control plans, and more.
• Logistics: Experienced and ready to tackle even the most difficult company moves and project complexities.
• File Pulls: Our Southeast region rolodex is over 2,000 locations deep and constantly growing to offer our film and media location services.
• Support Services: Location protection, set waste disposal, custom maps, location signage, contractor management, and more.
• Consulting: We will get your project on the right track and save you stress, time, and money - guaranteed.

Talk to the Searchlight team about locations in the Southeast USA.?

Book a call to discuss logistics, bidding, workflow, timelines, and your vision for the setting of your video or film.

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