Hi there,
I'm currently in pre-production on a project and am wondering what is the best way to go about location scouting.
I'm intending to shoot the film in the area in which I live, across all four seasons, and over the last few years (since I got the idea for the project) I have taken a lot of stills of potential places to shoot.
As the only cameras I have at present are the one on my smartphone (fairly cheap) and a heavy cinema camera -- a lot of the shots I have taken have been with the phone. I'm wondering if stills for pre-prod/locations should at least be taken with a similar lens to what will be used in production/various scenes or if using a phone is enough to get a sense of the right spots to shoot in?
Also, some locations are large, such as wooded areas. Is it enough to roughly know where each shot was taken, or do I really need things like GPS coordinates for each potential sub-location?
Also, I am wondering if I should be doing as much of this kind of work as possible before I get other people on board, like a DP, or if I should wait until the production team/crew is secured? (I presume that getting a location scout might not be necessary as I know the area very well). I'm guessing that the seasonal considerations might make things more tricky (e.g. if we need "early winter" for a forest scene, it probably doesn't make sense to visit the location with the DP in the summer, so we'd have to do it as the right time approaches, which could potentially present problems...and I could do some or all of this work beforehand myself when the time is exactly right).
FYI this project has very little dialogue, so taking things like the noise levels in various locations into account is not the highest priority.
Any thoughts or tips in general are greatly appreciated.
Thanks!
I'm currently in pre-production on a project and am wondering what is the best way to go about location scouting.
I'm intending to shoot the film in the area in which I live, across all four seasons, and over the last few years (since I got the idea for the project) I have taken a lot of stills of potential places to shoot.
As the only cameras I have at present are the one on my smartphone (fairly cheap) and a heavy cinema camera -- a lot of the shots I have taken have been with the phone. I'm wondering if stills for pre-prod/locations should at least be taken with a similar lens to what will be used in production/various scenes or if using a phone is enough to get a sense of the right spots to shoot in?
Also, some locations are large, such as wooded areas. Is it enough to roughly know where each shot was taken, or do I really need things like GPS coordinates for each potential sub-location?
Also, I am wondering if I should be doing as much of this kind of work as possible before I get other people on board, like a DP, or if I should wait until the production team/crew is secured? (I presume that getting a location scout might not be necessary as I know the area very well). I'm guessing that the seasonal considerations might make things more tricky (e.g. if we need "early winter" for a forest scene, it probably doesn't make sense to visit the location with the DP in the summer, so we'd have to do it as the right time approaches, which could potentially present problems...and I could do some or all of this work beforehand myself when the time is exactly right).
FYI this project has very little dialogue, so taking things like the noise levels in various locations into account is not the highest priority.
Any thoughts or tips in general are greatly appreciated.
Thanks!
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