Location Manager

What they do

Location managers break the script down, research and scout places that answer the creative brief, and photograph and note each one against the practical questions: hire fee, associated costs, permissions and licences, access, safety. Options go to the director and production designer, whose recce the manager arranges, followed by a tech recce pack and schedule built with the first assistant director, at which point every department's requirements land and have to be assessed against the location and the budget. They handle traffic management, environmental implications, and sites with special status such as sites of special scientific interest and historic properties. They agree terms with owners, help prepare contracts, and confirm insurance, risk assessments and signatures are in place before a unit arrives. Then the logistics: parking for technical vehicles, unit base, cast and crew, letters and meetings with residents and businesses, filming confirmed with the local authority and police, and parking suspensions or road closures obtained. They produce an intentions document scheduling all activity and equipment, feed detail to the second assistant director for call sheets, and warn the first assistant director of time restrictions before a schedule is locked. During shooting they run security, signage, barriers, access control and unit moves, and tell the line producer when overtime begins. On wrap they protect and clean the location, report damage honestly, and hand it back.

What they decide

The calls that belong to this role and no other.

• Which locations reach the director as real options, having been checked for cost, access and legality
• The terms negotiated with owners, and therefore what the production is contractually allowed to do there
• Permissions, licences, road closures and parking suspensions, and whether they are actually in place
• Where the unit base, technical parking and crew parking go
• Whether a location is safe and secure enough to bring a unit into
• Warns the first assistant director of restrictions that constrain the schedule; the first AD schedules

Principles of the craft

• A location is a package, not a photograph: the frame is one of roughly fifteen questions, alongside power, sound, access for a low-loader, unit parking, somewhere to put hair and make-up, toilets, and whether the neighbours will still tolerate you on day four. The best-looking option that fails any of those is not an option.
• The permission is the deliverable: hire fees are the visible cost, and the invisible ones are traffic management, road closures, parking suspensions and the constraints attached to protected sites and historic properties. Bring those constraints to the schedule before the schedule exists.
• Manage the neighbours as carefully as the owner: residents' letters, meetings and consultation are what buy the second and third day at the same address. Locations are lost between shooting days far more often than before them.
• The wrap is the reputation: a place handed back clean, with damage reported immediately and honestly, is why the next production gets in. This is a business of repeat access to the same buildings.
• Say no early and in writing: a location that cannot carry the shoot is cheap to refuse in pre-production and expensive to abandon at six in the morning. The department's credibility depends on those refusals being rare and correct.

Common mistakes

• Presenting a beautiful place without checking power, sound, access or parking
• Agreeing terms verbally, then discovering the limits when the crane arrives
• Underestimating the notice period and paperwork for a road closure or a protected site
• The experienced version: solving every problem quietly, so production never learns which locations are expensive to shoot in and keeps scheduling them
• Not telling the first assistant director about a curfew or access restriction until the schedule is locked
• Leaving damage unreported, which always costs more than the damage did

How to learn it

Exercises and routes in, not a reading list.

• Pick a scene and find three real places near you that could play it. Photograph each the way a location pack does: the frame, the approach, the parking, the power, the room you would give hair and make-up. Then price each one's problems.
• Walk a location with a phone and a sound level app at the hour you would shoot. Log aircraft, school runs, refuse collection and church bells, and compare that with your first impression.
• Find out what your own local authority requires to film on a public street, the form, the notice period, the fee, and fill the form in. That single exercise teaches more about this job than any showreel.
• Write a one-page movement order for a fictional unit move between two real addresses, with timings, parking and contacts, then have somebody try to follow it without asking you a question.
• Volunteer to wrap a location on a student shoot and photograph its condition before and after. List every mark you would have had to declare.