Writing a riveting movie that all takes place in one room is every second time filmmakers dream. No company moves, no travel worries and no lighting changes eliminate three of the biggest filmmaking headaches. Unfortunately this holy grail of filmmaking is extremely rare and so using cool locations instead of none is often necessary. How do you find cool locations? Well, basically you just drive around after you do some Internet research and ask everyone you know where they think is neat. See a cool street? Drive down it.
Let’s assume you’re in southern California and your budget is limited. If you’re doing everything by the book you’re going to have to know about THE ZONE. Basically if you get 30 miles out of Los Angeles everything gets complicated and expensive. You also have to deal with crazy permitting processes that are drastically different in every municipality. It’s a giant mess and a great reason to have a wiz of a line producer to do all that for you.
So. Like I said here shooting outside can really help with production values. And boy do we have outside. Swimming in the morning and skiing in the evening is an old California cliché that was probably actually possible before traffic, but you can absolutely get from home to one of those and back again for a quick shoot, no problem.
Keep in mind that the further you get from LA proper the less likely people are to bother you. Don’t start any fires or leave any trash and stay off private property and nobody cares.
I’ve been doing a ton of location scouting lately. These are mostly desert locations but they’re all within a couple hours of LA. It’s been wonderful to get out of town so often and it seems like every place I go makes me want to make a movie there. (Biopic of the guy who blew himself up under the Giant Rock please).
So go! If you’ve been stagnating shooting things inside take a drive. This place has really good vegetarian burritos for $1.99 and this place has the best burritos in the world so even if you don’t find a good location you’ll come out ahead.
About Etta Devine
Etta Devine is an actor, filmmaker, and writer with a script on the 2017 Blacklist and one of 2017's Movie Maker Magazine's 25 Screenwriters to watch. With partner Gabriel Diani she directed, wrote, produced and starred in the feature film “Diani & Devine Meet the Apocalypse” which premiered at the 2016 Austin film festival and won awards from the Mill Valley Film Festival, Spokane International Film Festival, Omaha Film Festival, San Luis Obispo Film Festival, and many others. She co-produced and starred in the horror comedy “The Selling,” ruined classic literature by creating “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: Robotic Edition” and is a member of the Antaeus Classical Theatre Company in Los Angeles and the Film Fatales. She recently recorded voices for the popular Frederator cartoon “Bee and Puppycat“ and wrote multiple episodes of its upcoming second season.