bpc-screenplay
LOCATION FINDING
The selection of location scouts listed have been selected because their websites include galleries of images, which we found interesting.
Location Finders wishing to advertise with us, please contact the Berlin Picture Company. We expect to build country pages in due course.
Respect copyright and do not use any of these images for any purposes unless you have permission from the copyright holders. Similarly, we have no information about the professional competence, accuracy,or commercial reliability of any of these businesses and take no responsibility for any issues arising between yourselves and any third parties - caveat emptor:
ARCTIC
Arctic First cover the artic and near arctic. in particular Iceland and Greenland.
ARGENTINA
Location Hunters have an outstanding range of galleries and also cover Chile, Uruguay and Peru.
AUSTRALIA
The interior of Australia is daunting - Alice Springs Film TV are there.
AUSTRIA
Cine Tirol are a local film Commission.
BERMUDA
Lime are in Bermuda.
CARIBBEAN
A constrast with the arctic, Caribbean Production.
CHINA
Ginger Films cover Beijing, Shanghai, Tibet, Mongolia and Provincial China.
CROATIA
Croatia includes much of the coastline of the former Yugoslavia - Croatia Locations
CZECH REPUBLIC
Prague is always impressive - Cabiria Films
DENMARK
Like many location finders, access to CPH's galleries is restricted to clients.
EGYPT
Offering a wide range of production service - Very Production
ENGLAND, SCOTLAND AND WALES - see UK
FRANCE
An astonishingly wide ranging library of images: 20000 Lieux
Ask and Find has interestingly themed images.
GERMANY
Based in Berlin, Creative Locations cover the city and other regions.
KENYA
Interesting contrasts between rich and poor at Locations Kenya
MAURITIOUS
FAB Locations
NETHERLANDS
Remember Amsterdam and Utrecht are in the Netherlands, so is the Location Bank.
NEW ZEALAND
New Zealand Film Locations covers both Islands.
PORTUGAL
Portugal has a fine range of landscapes and interesting small towns, not just Porto and Lisbon - Locations Portugal
UNITED KINGDOM
Many people work on location scouting in the UK. Two excellent places to look first are Amazing Space and Locations-UK.
USA
These are a small sample of the people working on locations in the USA. We include a typical Film Commission site, alongside commercial services:
When producers see scripts referring to specific locations - countries and cities, or individual buildings, their first question is 'Why should we go there, rather than find somewhere closer to home?' Their polite phrase is to ask if it is really essential to shoot in a particular place and very often if the answer is yes, this can end the chances for your script getting into production, however much your screenplay is admired.
Quite different is the suggestion of a motif to establish the atmosphere of period, or place. In many parts of the world, similar styles of building and architecture can be found, Spanish inspired churches in Latin America, Georgian and 19th century British style housing and public buildings in former-colonies, Soviet architecture across Eastern Europe. Now, the most influential architects are likely to have prestige projects all over the world that carry their individual style, but the business of housebuilding has also become international, with companies building similar housing developments in countries thousands of miles away from their 'home markets'.
Interiors, especially of private houses, the places where people really live, are perhaps the most difficult motif of all. Everyone assumes that their expectations of what to expect in a home are somehow typical, though there is also the opposite, equally misleading assumption, that people in other cultures live in spaces dominated by traditional styles. The website Normal Room carries an eye-opening gallery of homes submitted by people all over the world. Apart from some very obvious contrasts, for example, the heights of tables and chairs, or the distinctive anonymity of the US suburb, it is revealing to see how similar the furniture and decoration has become everywhere. Understanding the character of a building is often revealed in detailing and that can be the distinction between success and failure in establishing a specific motif.
Location finders have quite different priorities. They want to know if your interest in contacting them is based on the real prospect of a production and work to be done. Offering potential locations to producers is only one half of their work, they also have to consider the interests of the people whose buildings will be used as locations. This is one of the reasons why websites give a limited information about specific places. There is little need for direct contact between writers and location finders, but any-one in the location finding business would no doubt be delighted if their contact with a production company stemmed from one of their properties being specified in the script.
