IN NEED OF AN “EXTRAORDINARY” LOCATION, BUT CAN’T AFFORD A “LOCATION MANAGER”?

In an ideal world, we would be able to make a few phone calls and hire a “Location Manager,” that incredible human being who “finds ideal locations for a film shoot and negotiates fees, terms and permissions.” However, in the world of true indie filmmaking, that position is like the unicorn that you hope to see one day…

In the meantime, here’s one free option that worked for me: Knocking on the door of my ideal location!

So, as you probably saw in the film, we needed a Victorian-era house that had stairs, a hallway and an attic since the plot was supposed to take place in the Netherlands – how wonderful! Except…. we were shooting in Los Angeles, CA where there’s hardly any European looking anything…. and we had no money to pay for what an actual location like that would cost. I posted on Facebook, Craigslist, asked my fancy producer friends for any leads and – nothing! I mean, we did go scout a few locations that sounded perfect over the phone, but once we got to see them they were just not right; some were actually Victorian style, but had been remodeled.

After doing intensive online research on possible neighborhoods, I came across “Carroll Avenue”. I had no idea that this existed, but this is literally a block of Victorian-era houses in Angelino Heights. Each house is actually a “Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument” and the owners of those houses are required to preserve them, so no renovations are allowed, lucky us! Anyway, I couldn’t wait any longer, so I literally started knocking on doors.

This is your typical house on "Carroll Avenue."

This is actually a popular street and some of the houses have been featured in numerous films, TV shows and music videos like Michael Jackson’s Thriller! Therefore, most owners are industry savvy and told me off the bat that they couldn’t rent their house for less than 10k – 15k a day, yikes! There were many houses though, so I kept on knocking.  As I was ready to give up, I knocked on the door of one of the smallest houses and no response. I approached a group of gentlemen who were chatting close by and asked them if they knew who the owner of that house was and one of them said “I am.” We chatted briefly, I told him about the project and he was interested right away. The thing is, because his house was smaller than the other ones, it never got rented, so it worked out great for him and us! He was excited to have his house featured in a film and we were able to rent it for a fee that we could actually afford. Also, his house was fully decorated Victorian-era style and furnished with antiques, so we saved a lot of money by not having to rent/ buy props!

Here's a pic of the inside of the house that we rented!

The couch in the middle is over 100 years old!!!

This is the piano in our film I REMEMBER YOU! Not only is that piano an incredible antique, but we then didn't need to rent one!!!

So if you are looking for an unusual, very specific location and have a tiny budget, my advice to you is: invest time researching for the right areas/ neighborhoods and don’t be afraid to knock on the doors of the locations that you think would be perfect! You never know the circumstances of that location/ owner and you have nothing to lose! By the way, this has been true for other projects of mine as well. You could also leave notes under the doors with your info if no one's home, just make sure to follow up because people easily forget.

Stay tuned for my next post in which I’ll be sharing what to do when you can’t afford lighting equipment… And if you haven’t yet, check out I REMEMBER YOU free on Amazon Prime!