Echoes of Silence: Securing Locations Like a Pro!

As I have already blogged before, throughout the entire production module and in addition to our production of 'A Good One' and 'Broken Planets', I was also working on a production for the Level6: 'Echoes of Silence'.

In this production, I was taken on as a co-producer and possibly also a runner in order to be able to learn quicker and more efficiently than I did before. As I am a person that generally does like challenges and personal growth, I accepted the task and set about sitting down with the director Brad to talk about his ideas for the project and for my tasks.

Thus, I was asked to contact individuals and councils to secure a couple of locations for the production. Initially, he also wanted me to be on set and help out, but due to multiple cross-overs in our shooting schedules, we were unable to manage more than one occasion.

However, I was still able to learn a lot as this production required me to plan ahead and efficiently and to be extremely quick while doing so. In the beginning, this proved to be a struggle for me. Not because I did not manage to get myself organised, but rather because I needed to find out whom to contact for which location and what to prepare in regards to relevant paperwork. This is a recollection of the work that I have done over the past couple of weeks:

As I did not want to jeopardise a FMP just by starting too late, I immediately started researching and booking locations when they came up. Already in February, Brad had given me a list of locations he wanted and when he roughly wanted to film where. This gave me at least a month in advance to get them sorted out. And it was a wise decision to do so.

The first location I needed to secure was Ward Jackson Park in Hartlepool. This turned actually out to be one of the more uncomplicated tasks, as I sent out a request by email and received permission the next morning immediately.

As actor schedules and other parameters were not definitely settled, Brad could often only give me a rough idea of when he would need the location, so in case of Ward Jackson Park, I played it safe and requested permission to film there for two weeks in a row. This, however, was considered a backup location, as Brad's first priority was Winter Gardens in Sunderland.

This proved to be far more difficult as it was, for the longest time, not clear who was responsible for giving permission to film. I had found two different sets of contact details doing research, and received a third set by Brad who knew people that, again, knew people.

And whilst I sent out a request for Winter Gardens at the same evening I requested Ward Jackson Park, it took the relevant authorities two weeks to come back to me with a positive answer, as firstly, no one reacted to my mail, and secondly, the lovely lady on the phone could not tell me who would be responsible for giving filming permissions. But she offered forwarding the email to someone who would know.

Thus, it turned into a waiting game.

As Brad's script contains a dream sequence at a beach, the production would naturally need to film at one, so my task was to secure it. This took quite a while as well as Brad had two options and could at first not decide which he liked best.

As I hadn't yet heard back from Winter Gardens but knew that at least one of the beaches was in the administrative area of Sunderland Council, I decided to send another application for Winter Gardens directly to the council in tandem with the application for the beach to exploit all options available. This I did because I was used to German and Swedish museums often falling under the directive of a council instead of being self-governed. Since I had found conflicting information in that regard about Winter Gardens, I decided that another go could not hurt.

When Brad came to a decision in favour of Seaton Carew Beach, I thus started preparing the paperwork for it, when I finally received the long-awaited answer: Winter Garden's was available for student filming as long as it was not used for commercial purposes and would be arranged in advance.

I informed Brad about the great news. Promising that he wanted to come back to me as soon as he knew what dates and times would be possible for our actors, I prepared the forms as much as I could and send out the application for Seaton Carew Beach to Sunderland Council.

Which was a nice idea, but did not immediately reap fruits. The next morning, I received an email being informed that Seaton Carew would not fall under the administrative diction of Sunderland Council. So I did a bit of research and took a good lesson in North Eastern geography: For Seaton Carew is part of Hartlepool Council.

Thus, I again prepared all the paperwork and send out a request to the licensing department of Hartlepool. It happened to land on the desk of a very quick and diligent licensing officer.

However, as the coordination of actor schedules posed to be a task of Sisyphean proportion and the production did not hear back from one actress for the longest time, we ended up having less than three days for securing the beach.

This was further complicated by the fact that the beach, in part, was a nature reserve, and by the fact that our scene required the use of an axe. Thus, our licensing officer and I constantly exchanged pieces of information, ensuring that we did not film in the nature reserve and that the authorities would be informed. However, within only half a day, everything was settled.

Or so I thought.

For while we were in the process of receiving permission, our actress had called in and informed Brad that she could not meet the schedule for either Winter Gardens or Seaton Carew Beach. Less than a day before the actual date.

Thus, we shifted around a couple of days, I informed our licensing officer of the change and shot an email to the administrative office of Winter Gardens to do the same. Everything was set and done, when I received new, unexpected information.

Our director has managed to find another actress filling in for the dates we initially had. So with a lot of apologies, I rescheduled the old date with Winter Gardens again and hoped that this would not pose too much of an inconvenience for them.

After lots of back-and-forths, everything was - again - settled and our crew was able to film with the new actress. Until we realised today that an additional shooting day at Seaton Carew Beach would be needed coming Tuesday.

As Monday is bank holiday, I knew that I had only today to update the paperwork and send another email to our Hartlepoolian licensing officer to give her enough time tomorrow to add another day to our request.

Seeing how quickly she was able to react and help us out throughout the entire process, I hope that this will still be enough time. If I have learned one thing as a co-producer on that project, it's that you need to plan and prepare well in advance and to still be attentive and quick on your feet to accommodate any last-minute changes before it is too late.

Being a (co-)producer really is a handful!

References:

Anonymous (n.d.) In Omnia Paratus. Ready for Anything. Quote [online] Image taken from: https://bit.ly/2HYehMA [Accessed on 3 May 2018]