← How To · Producer · 7 min read

How to scout and secure shoot locations

Securing a location is more than finding a pretty room. You need the photos from the recce, the owner's contact, the permit status, the access window, the nearest hospital, the parking, the power, and a sense of how far it is from every other place you shoot that week. Scatter that across a phone, an inbox and a spreadsheet and something gets dropped on the day. /locations keeps every location as one record that the schedule, the breakdown and the call sheet all read from, so the recce notes you took weeks ago land on the call sheet automatically.

1

Pull locations from the breakdown

If you have already broken the script down, /locations pre-populates from the scene headings - every INT and EXT becomes a location record waiting to be filled in. Nothing is invented; every entry traces back to a scene that actually needs it.

2

Log the recce - photos, access and contacts

On the scout, attach photos to each location, record the owner or manager's contact, note the access window and any house rules, the parking and load-in, the available power, and the nearest hospital. This is the record the 1st AD and the call sheet will lean on, so capture it once and capture it properly.

3

Track permits and agreements to signed

Move each permit through its real status - pending, submitted, approved - and store the location agreement against the record. A 30-day expiry warning means a permit never lapses unnoticed before the shoot day it covers.

4

Check the travel matrix and sun times

The travel matrix shows the distance and drive time between every geocoded location, so you can group scenes by place and keep company moves off the schedule. The sun and golden-hour times per location and date tell you whether an exterior is even shootable in the window you have.

5

Carry it onto the schedule and call sheet

Because the location record is the single source of truth, scheduling a scene there puts the address, the parking, the nearest hospital and the access notes straight onto the call sheet for that day. No copying an address from one app into another the night before the shoot.

A secured location is a record, not a memory. Logged once on the recce, it rides through the breakdown, the schedule and the call sheet untouched, so the crew turns up to the right place with the right notes and the producer knows every permit is signed. See the 'use-a-stripboard' and 'build-a-call-sheet-from-script' guides for where these records land next.

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Open /locations and follow the steps

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