Ep. 50 The key to successful documentary film location scouting

You’ve come a long way since we started this journey, but now it’s getting very real - it is time to start working out exactly where you will be filming. 

Naturally, preparation is key! The more you understand the locations you are shooting in, the less obstacles you’ll have to overcome on the day. 

Okay, when I read that back that seems a fairy obvious step in the filmmaking process and one that doesn’t need to explained. But there is more to it than it may seem. Location scouting is an incredibly important step in not just finding a place that looks perfect, but will also function well when creating a documentary. 

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Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:03

Hello, filmmakers, and welcome back to planning for your pre-production for your documentary or film project. Now, you have definitely come a long way since we started this journey. And if you've just joined me, don't hesitate to jump back some episodes to get to the beginning of this series, The Moonshine Moonshot, on how to develop and produce your documentary film. We are deep in pre-production and it's getting very real. It's time to start working out exactly where you're going to be filming. Location, location, location. Mmm, now if you're thinking of exotic views in Italy or the desert landscape surrounding Jordan, well, come back to Earth. Where your film's going to be filmed depends on what your film is about, isn't it? And that might get your creative ideas flowing about the type of stories that might require some exotic locations in the future. Well, me, for example, I am off to Alabama later this year, and I am super excited. That's going to be an amazing location. I've never been deep south in America, and I'm very much looking forward to it. But when I say location, the idea of finding locations for your film, it does sound pretty obvious. But in documentary filmmaking, it can be a lot more complicated than you might initially think. There is more to picking suitable locations than it seems. So location scouting is an important step in trying to find a place that not just looks right for the shoot that you're having, but will also function well when you're creating a documentary. And preparation, of course, is the key. And the more you understand the locations you're shooting in, the less obstacles you have to overcome on the day. Now, why am I telling you all this? If you're new to this podcast, I'm Sue Collins and I am part of the team behind Moonshine Agency, an impact film production house producing films that have positive social impact. Impact films are films that are designed to take an audience from passive viewing to being an active participant. And it gets them doing something, getting involved and being part of the solution. And I've recognised that learning how to craft films is a very challenging process. And when I was just starting out, it was actually very hard to find information and learn about filmmaking without formal study or without being under the wing of a great mentor. So avoiding the pitfalls, being pigeonholed, running out of funding, or simply not understanding the business side of the industry has meant that over the years I have seen many people with a lot of talent give up or simply move on to more stable work. But my hope is to see the industry thrive here in Australia and beyond. And I recognise that to do that, I've got to be more open with my skills sharing. So I've decided to share more of what I've learned through many years of filmmaking through this podcast, The Moonshine Moonshot, and also through online courses at the Moonshine Communications Academy. So make sure you check out the Academy, particularly the resources section, where you can access lots of free downloads like check sheets and ebooks that go with a lot of the topics that I talk about in this podcast. And if you haven't come across them already, there are some great online courses available through the Academy, such as my recently produced one called Define Your Ideal Audience, which helps you figure out who your project is best suited to well before you even roll camera, and that is gold for any marketer. So check that one out over at Moonshine Communications Academy.com. Now to today's topic, locations. I know it's so exciting when you're actually choosing where you're going to shoot your film. Now, documentary is very often interviews and lots of interviews, and you can't always be that particular about where you conduct those interviews, but there's definitely some things you can do to improve your opportunity of getting a really good on-screen look to those interviews. Now, I do acknowledge that not all documentaries do have direct-to-camera for interviews, but majority will. So for those who will be filming interviews, the first thing to do is really think about how you can get a controlled indoor environment, one which your interview will be comfortable in, but will also technically support you. For example, don't try and put your interviews next to a construction site. And I am definitely speaking from personal experience on this one. Just the other week we were doing a shoot and we actually didn't have any choice over the location. The person we were filming with picked a particular room for us to film in, and it was right next door to a construction site, and there's really nothing we could do about it. There was just drilling going on, and that's just the way it is sometimes. However, had they let us know that a little earlier, we might have been able to schedule the shoot for when, you know, the construction crew were on their lunch break or really early in the morning or late in the afternoon when they'd finished. So knowing where you're going to be shooting in advance can really make a big difference to how you plan out your shoot. So it can be common that the general placement of your shoot, as in what location someone chooses for you to film in, is actually going to be at the mercy of your talent. And it'll be to do with their time and where they're located. And if you're going to them, you kind of have to often just think on your feet and work with what you've got. But you don't have to have it all be quite random on the day when you arrive. You can do some things like you could ask them for photos of the space before you get there. So you've got a little bit of an idea about what sort of thing you might need to do to set up. Perhaps they could even take you on a little video tour, and that can be incredibly helpful, even if it's just for a few minutes. It might feel like you're imposing on them to do that, but it will make it really beneficial for you. And even just little things like are you going to have room to set up all your lights? Do you need a three-camera shoot? Are you going to have chairs? All those little bits and pieces that you might not consider until you get there. You'll have a little bit of a chance to think it through before you arrive. The other thing you also kind of want to think about is the backdrop for the story that you're telling. So, for example, you might be filming an interview with a specialist doctor, and maybe the space they've provided you with is actually inside a nail salon. And that's going to make absolutely no sense to be interviewing a doctor at a nail salon unless the topic of your interview has something to do with, you know, cosmetics and nails. And, you know, it's going to probably leave your audience wondering and a bit confused. I mean, I would also question, it's probably a pretty random example. I mean, why would you be in a nail salon to do a shoot with a GP or a doctor? So maybe not the best example, but I think you understand what I'm trying to say. You want the interview location to represent or tell a story or be suited to the subject that is in your interview or the subject that they're talking about so that it makes sense visually as well as what they actually say in the interview. So thinking about lighting. How you do the lighting will be somewhat dependent on the space and what equipment that you have. So try to make sure that the location allows you to put your talent in a spot that's going to work with any natural lighting that's available to you in the space. If it's an incredibly stylized chute, you're probably going to need to blackout windows and have your own lighting. Again, that's probably more something you're going to do in a studio. So anywhere you can make the best use of the natural light, avoid someone being backlit, which is going to be hard for the filming. And then complement it with any lights that you can bring yourself. Or if you're really lucky and you have a fantastic space and you can simply light it all from your own gear, that's fantastic as well. The more you know about the space before you get there, the more you'll be able to make those creative decisions and it won't hold up too much time on the chute trying to figure it out. Now the next thing is sound. Sound is so important, and anyone who's done any filming really understands that when you've got rustling microphones, there's noises in the background, it can be really distracting. So the more controlled you can have the environment, the better. And as I mentioned before, preferably don't set up next to a construction site. And the presenter was we were just filming at the local park and he had a lapel mic, we had a boom mic, we had controlled the environment as much as possible. But almost immediately as we started shooting, a train went by, you know, not too far away. A light plane went overhead of all things. A huge garbage truck came rolling down the street, and people were walking on a sandy path just behind where we were shooting. So we got the crunch, crunch, crunch of their feet. You would not think that all these noises, you just don't hear them in everyday life. But the second you roll camera, you'd be amazed how many sounds there are out there in the world. So thinking that through before you roll camera is going to really help you make decisions on whether, you know, that park outdoors was the best choice. Maybe we should have driven a bit further and gone to somewhere a bit more secluded. Who knows? Just got to know in advance to be able to take the most benefit out of the locations you shoot in and not be hindered. Don't forget about your team as well. Now, if you're handling lights, microphones, cameras, leads, you really don't want to be all squished into a tiny little space. But, you know, as I say, beggars can't be choosers. Sometimes you just have to work with the space that you've got. But, you know, as much as possible, try and make sure you've got space on your location to have these things set up without them becoming any kind of trip hazards or just really uncomfortable and awkward. And if it is going to be a really crammed-in shoot, try and get through it as quickly as you can. So don't leave it until the day is, I guess, all of these things that I'm saying is don't leave it to the day. But if you're traveling, you really don't have the luxury of pre-planning to quite the same degree. So I acknowledge that 100%. And depending on the scale and resources of your production, you might feel inclined to scout your location on the day to resolve the issues as you go. But as I was saying, I encourage you to prepare as much as possible. Just getting some photos or, you know, some video footage, as I was saying before, of the space can make a really big difference to your planning. And regardless, you just need to really think about, you know, if if you don't do that preparation, what are the risks that things could go a little bit pear-shaped? You might end up with someone, your interviewee, for example, getting really frustrated and or bored or could really set their nerves off, having to sort of sit while you're really faffing around trying to get everything just right. And that brings me to another point, actually, which is understanding your gear. When you're out on locations, as best as you can, understand and know your gear. Make sure your crew know their gear. Practice your setups as much as you can, particularly when you're just getting started, because, you know, you don't want people sitting around for an hour while you're adjusting the lighting. You really want to be able to just, you know what, we we've got a couple of camera bags, which are fantastic. They're almost like those doctors' bags and they sort of zip down the middle and pop open. And because we've been doing this for such a long time now, we can literally set up a space for an interview in, you know, 15 minutes. That's lighting, sound, and camera equipment. But it took us a long time to get, you know, really efficient with it. So the more you know your gear, the better packed your gear is, the more you understand how to set it up, and everyone knows how to work together as a team on location is going to really, really help you with being really efficient, and then you can be efficient with people's time and just makes everything run a lot smoother. Now, we talked a lot here about interviews, but of course, the other part of documentary is the observational or b-roll footage, and you usually need quite a lot of it. So, how exactly you want to really gather your B-roll? It really comes to your personal preference. For myself and the team here at Moonshine Agency, when we're filming, we thrive in keeping, as I was saying, our equipment and setup really simple so we can stay super flexible. And that allows us to move in and around the spaces we're in and you know, capture as much B-roll as possible without holding up the interviewees for their interview. I mean, even just yesterday, we actually worked as two teams of two, and one pair did an interview, and the other pair went for a walk with another person we were interviewing and did all the overlay and the shots of them walking through corridors and arriving and the meet and greet, and all those little bits and pieces that just really help you put your sequences together. Then we had a drone, so we were able to put a drone up and get some fantastic establishing shots. So all of these things just think through what sort of overlay do you need and what do you need from the location that you're in? Because often getting overlay, you're very time poor, and the people that you're with don't have time to escort you around necessarily, depending like if you're on a university campus or a hospital and you've got to have their communications person with you. So all of these things need to be taken into account. So the more you think this through before you arrive, the easier it's going to be on the day. So that pretty much covers locations and locations. It's really about preparation, it's about understanding where you're going to film as much as possible prior to arriving on the day. And as I said, just getting photos or some video of walking around the space can be hugely beneficial in that planning. So I hope this has helped you with locations and I hope it's inspired you rather than made you concerned or worried about it. Um, but if you've got any questions, don't hesitate to reach out. You can reach me on all the social media platforms at Moonshine Communications Academy, and you can just also email me if you need to, which is support at moonshinecommunicationsacademy.com, and you can find all of that on the moonshinecommunicationsacademy.com website. So head on over there, hit subscribe on whatever platform you're listening on, and I will be back next week to get a little bit deeper into pre-production for your project, and very soon we will be moving into the production phase. So go you get out there, be a filmmaker, make that film. Because remember, are you trying to be a filmmaker or are you making your film? Anyway, look forward to speaking to you soon.