The great news is that We Are Find is now a Production Guild of Great Britain affiliate company! The PGGB helps bring film and TV drama professionals together. It is the UK’s leading membership organisation for those working in production. This brings We Are Find even closer to production professionals and production companies throughout the industry. It will also mean that our owners can look forward to even more opportunities to hire out their properties.
Take a look at this new empty hospital (3013). A production can have free range here as it is completely empty and due for demolition. It’s got great hospital corridors, private rooms, industrial kitchen, large events hall, workshop. There is also an empty house on site.
Filming in hotels is often a tricky business. The production will, of course, want to control whole areas to execute the script. But balancing that with regular guests is often difficult. The great news is that we have just taken on another really film friendly hotel chain. (click on the image to read more..)
This week, for the third year running, we gave a talk at the APA (Advertising Producers Association) Producers Masterclass. It was great to talk about the ins and outs of location management, discuss and answer the many questions about how it feeds into the production process. (Click on the image to read more)
Turning your home into a film set can be an extremely lucrative business. And it's not only homes that we look for, in fact, any type or real estate has the potential to become a film location. It doesn't have to be big and shiny!
The next time you watch TV, just think of all the locations that are being use, which have not been built in a studio. Alleyways, barns, warehouses, flats, houses, stately homes, coffee shops, garages etc etc etc. From the dated to the modern. From the boring to the unique. They can all be used, it just depends on the script.
(Click on the image to read more)
We love Harriet Lawrence. Not only is she a fantastic Location Manager, she's also a great friend. So when we saw this article about her we thought it deserved to be published on our blog.
(Click on the image to read more)
We often get asked about our job. Where do we start? How do we start looking for a location? Who do we speak to? Well, it's a very long list of people and organisations. Years of building contacts. And in some cases, who you know, not necessarily what you know.
Below is a pretty good list showing some of the best or most important contacts that we frequently liaise with, in order to get the ball rolling as either a UK wide or London location manager.
(Click on the image to see more)
Directing due US (Chris Barrett and Luke Taylor), Academy Films, are due to released their short film "Cautionary Tales", produced by Medb Riordan (academyfilms.com/us) at the Foyle Film Festival, November 2016.
Shot back in May, 2016, this project was a particular challenge for find, not only due to the typically tight short film budget, but also the specific variety of locations that all needed to be close to each other. Not to mention fitting in with a beautiful yet quirky brief.
(Click on the image to read more).
Business is booming, well...... it seems that way from where we're sitting. Figuratively speaking of course, as we've not actually been sitting much recently. I cannot remember the last time there were so many features being shot in the UK. Not to mention TV dramas and of course TV commercials.
(Click on the image above to read more).
The recently aired confused.com commercial staring James Corden was shot early July 2016. Directed by Fredrik Bond from Sonny London, Produced by Alicia Richards and shot by Crille Forsberg.
This project was a real challenge. The question posed to find in our initial meeting was "how do we film dozens of cars, in various scenes, driving throughout London, with only 4 weeks till we shoot?". The key point here is only 4 weeks till we shoot, meaning only 2 weeks prep!!! It's the single biggest problem we always face, people often forget that the dead lines for permissions are, in most cases, at least a couple of weeks before the shoot date.
(Click on the image above to read more).
Recently, we filmed a tv commercial in central London using a Russian Arm. For those that don't know what it is, that's it in the picture above. It is essentially a Mercedes 4x4 with a thumping great big automated crane arm attached to the roof. It all comes as one piece, on the back of a large lorry, and it's fast!
It's also dangerous. Well..... you wouldn't want to be knocked on the head by the arm as the Merc races past at 60mph..... or even at 5mph for that matter! To that end, as a location manager planning a shoot on the public highway, there are many more constraints to take into consideration.
(Click on the image above to read more).
Some of the best places to film in London, or even simply visit, are often right under our nose. Blythe Hill Fields in SE23 has one of the very best view of the city. At night.... it's incredible!
We recently shot there for part of an SSE commercial. The city back drop features in of various scenes, but even just being there in the mid summer, lying on the grass beneath the stars and looking at that view... wow! I really cannot recommend enough to walk up to the top of the hill sometime if you're passing late at night.
(Click on the title to read more).
If you ever get the chance to speak to a location manager, or two, about how they got into the industry, I'm sure that no two stories would be the same. These days there are courses you can go on in various colleges, but, speaking as someone who's been in the industry well over a decade I fall into the camp of "there's nothing better than experience". It's just one of those jobs. This is obviously just my opinion - I'm sure plenty would disagree.
(Click on the title to read more).
Only a few weeks since the official launch of find, and we are already getting busy. Thank you to everyone who's checked us out and made enquiries already. Exciting times!
We have a huge amount of experience working across London and the South of England. Personally, after 12+ years experience as a Location Manager in London there are few places I haven't been to. And, whenever I get that initial phone call from a production team, it's always nice to be able to pull locations out of our location library and save our clients time and money. Well..... we are here to help after all.
(Click on the title to read more).
There has been much publication about what one can or can not do when filming with drones. For a while it was such a grey area that, depending on who you spoke to, you always get a different answer.
However, over the last couple of years, various authorities have gone through great lengths to outline some foundations on which film crews can safely operate from. Whilst this push has been led by the industry in America, the UK film industry has quickly followed suit.
This article from Variety reports the Federal Aviation Administration's announcement regarding the final set of rules for the use of unmanned aircraft, or drones, on the sets of movies and TV shows (in the USA).
(Click on the title to read more).
The two most common questions we face as location managers are "How do I have filming in my home?" and "Should I allow filming in my home?".
It does't matter where we're shooting in the country, rarely a day goes by when we've not been approached and asked one, if not both, of those questions. Filming seems to be shrouded in mystery. After all, the phrase "smoke and mirrors" comes directly from our industry and alludes to the various tricks of the trade we play with and magic that's produced. So it's no wonder why plenty of people who might be interested in having filming, don't really know how to go about it!
(Click on the image to read more).
Our latest commercial to hit the TV is the public awareness commercial for the upcoming EU Referendum. The spot was directed by Nadia from Academy Films, produced by Stephen Overs, the DoP was Ben Todd and the location manager was Paul Manwaring.
(Click on the image to read more).
Hello, and welcome to the find website and our first ever blog.
It seems strange that it's finally here after so many months of planning and trying to get the website ready. But if you've ever been involved with a start-up, or even just trying to get a website off the ground, you'll know that it comes with many hurdles and always takes longer than you initially realise.
That all aside, we'd would like to take this opportunity to mention a few things about ourselves. Who we we? What we do? And how we can help you?
(Click on the image to read more).