Thursday 26 August 2010

A Way To Shoot Anywhere With No Permission - For Free!

This always works! Whether you turn up with just a camera, or with an eight person crew. Here's what you do.

1) Shoot scenes ANYWHERE YOU WANT.

2) Cheerily begin conversation with the man who comes up to you demanding you stop filming.

3) Give him this PRECISE explanation. "This is actually a test shoot. We're thinking of filming here, and paying of course, so we just want to test how it looks."

Madly enough, this explanation works! The person thinks "oh, that makes sense; you need to check if the location is appropriate," and they let you carry on. I discovered this many years ago, and it has worked for me every time. If they say "So why do you have a make-up artist and sound guy?" you just tell them "Well we need to know if the sound here is viable, and we the make-up artist needs to get an idea of the lighting."

People always buy this! So when someone asks you what you're filming; tell them you're not, you're just location scouting with your crew. Perfect.

Care to share?

5 comments:

  1. LOL I was at the LA 48 Hour Film Fest screening last night - I'm pretty sure most of the filmmakers did EXACTLY that! After all, as a contestant, you have 48 hours to write, shoot, render and edit your film - it's not like you have a lot of time to get a location permit!

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  2. Brilliant. Just brilliant.

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  3. :D fantastic idea!However i am not quite sure it could work in the underground premises or in royal parks.

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  4. Wow, I never would have thought of that. Ballsy.

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