Perfect Settings : The Right Location for Shooting a Film Is More Than Just a Pretty Place

It’s true that Los Angeles no longer has the corner on location filming, that film companies are forsaking Hollywood in favor of other cities. The film industry blames the exodus on convoluted government regulations, on mounting location fees and a market in which mansions typically rent for $5,000 a day, as well as on shortsighted residents who love movies as long as the cameras aren’t in their neighborhood. Yet there’s still plenty of action here. On an average day, 20 to 30 locations are filmed in the city, according to Dirk Beving, director of the city of Los Angeles’ Motion Picture Coordination Office, and that figure doesn’t include cities such as Beverly Hills, Santa Monica or Pasadena. Filming is heavy in those towns, too, though they often charge sizably higher fees ($480 a day in Pasadena, contrasted with Los Angeles’ one-time permit fee, which can be as low as $115 for several weeks of shooting) and impose stricter regulations on the hours and days a crew may film and on the stunts they may do.

The job of finding the seven to 10 settings required for an hourlong television serial falls to the location manager, who, if possible, must also locate them within the 30-mile-radius “studio zone,” the center of which is the intersection of Beverly and La Cienega boulevards. Film companies are required to provide transportation and often lodging for cast and crew working outside this area. In just seven working days, the location manager must also sound out the owners of the prospective locations; get the director to approve the selections; hunt up alternatives when what was found failed to please; negotiate the deals; file for the necessary city, county, state and / or federal permits, and hire the appropriate fire and police personnel (who are different for each city). Occasionally, just when everything seems set, he or she must also deal with an unexpected hitch that could threaten the whole million-dollar undertaking.

On the morning of the first day of preparation for an episode of “Stingray”--Stephen J. Cannell Productions’ high-tech adventure drama that aired last spring and is currently scheduled as a mid-season replacement--Peter Robarts, a husky 39-year-old Canadian, has the first two acts in hand; acts III and IV, which he also should have, are still being written. He is in an informal meeting with the show’s production-unit manager. The two stand by one of the drawing boards and discuss finding, securing and getting permits for the locations the writer has invented. “We shouldn’t be hampered by reality on the first run-through,” jokes the unit production manager when he comes across a scene that both know will be impossible to set up.

“That’s the difference between writers and location managers,” Robarts says. “The writer will always want the car to burn inside the living room.” The location manager is the one who has to tell him that it can’t be done.

After the meeting, Robarts returns to his desk in the location wing of the Cannell offices on Hollywood Boulevard and begins to break down the script, color-coding the locations required for the 183 scenes, noting with a red marker those involving stunts. The list of locations grows: a canyon road, a Malibu house (where a car will be exploded), a recording studio, a coffee shop, a government building (with an executive office and a gated outdoor parking lot), an autopsy room, a locker room, a science lab, a condo, a gas station with a diner close by, and finally, a reservoir. By this time tomorrow, Robarts must be ready to take the director, the first A.D. (short for assistant director) and the producer on a scout. That means he has the rest of the day and the early hours of the following morning to come up with options and then to double-check them by telephone or in person.

“You don’t want to diddle the director,” he says as he glances at one of the 3x4-foot picture boards that are kept in the department files for reference. C. Robert Holloway, founder and head of Holloway’s Eagle Scouts, a location-scouting company, explains the challenge somewhat differently. “The curse of our business is that the kitchen that we filmed in last Wednesday got sold on Thursday, repainted gilt on Friday, stripped down to a parking lot on Saturday and totally blown away on Sunday. So we constantly have to call up, even though we filmed there last week, to make sure it’s still there and hasn’t changed color, shape, size or ownership.”

The first of the several official scouts begins promptly at 11:45 a.m. the next day. In the reconnaissance van, director Gary Winter has settled in beside transportation captain and driver Bob Ellis. Producer Ed Vaughn and first A.D. Jeff Kibbee take up the second row. Robarts climbs in behind them. The arrangement does not change throughout the five-hour scout. “It all has to do with pecking order,” says the irreverent Holloway. “The director sits up front, even though he hasn’t a clue of where we’re going or a shred of an idea of why we’re going there. (The location manager) is all the way in the back, although he’s the one showing the place.”

Robarts is quick with directions to the Group IV Recording studio in Hollywood. When they arrive, the team splits up. The producer and director peek into the studio where jazz pianist Herbie Hancock is recording. Robarts and the driver head to the back to check the parking facilities, a crucial consideration when about 60 cars and 800 to 900 feet of trucks are involved. “Great loading dock,” says Ellis, who’s responsible for anything on wheels connected with the shoot.

Ten minutes later, they’re back in the van and on the way to stop No. 2: Devonshire Sound in North Hollywood. The stop seems pointless; though the producer, Vaughn, is enthusiastic about Devonshire because it would probably cost one-third the price of the first option, the director has already made up his mind. Whether it’s the look or the fact that he’s worked at Group IV before, Winter is clearly determined to shoot scenes 28 through 35 there. How is the cost difference justified? “This director has power,” is the quiet answer.

The second tour is over in less than four minutes. After a quick lunch, the group heads for a house in Calabasas. The script calls for a Malibu house, but since no scenes are actually set at the ocean, a mansion in the hills could do just as well. After a short intercom chat, the gate swings open and the van drives over the bridge that spans the small creek and around the circular driveway. Two life-size stone lions lie to the left and right of the front door. Inside is the decor one expects in a mansion. A high-ceilinged entry with a staircase sweeps up to a second-story balcony. The kitchen overlooks a 30-foot pool. “The house is great, but the exterior isn’t right,” Winter says. “I want a more remote place for the drive-up.”

But Winter begins to reconsider before they’ve even arrived at the second house, a more contemporary dwelling off Mulholland Highway, with a spiky peak behind it and a valley in front. Beyond the Saddlerock Ranch sign lie avocado groves; a long, narrow driveway stretches past ostriches, llamas, longhorns and Arabian horses. The inside is just as impressive, with open beams, a circular stairway winding up to a skylight, a hexagonal dining nook that’s 80% glass, a huge kitchen with a tiled island. Yet within minutes the decision is made to go with the first house--for its easier access, the wide balcony on which lights can be set, the expansive and more impressive entry.

By 3:20 they’ve hit Westlake Reservoir, the last destination of the day. The problem with the scene they’re scouting for, however, is that the requirements in the script may be impossible to meet in Southern California. “I think to be able to shoot this script we’re going to have to get God to change some of the landscape,” Winter says. “I called Larry (Lawrence Hertzog, executive producer of the show, and writer of the script) and said, ‘How am I going to find a road with a reservoir at one end, sheer cliffs on one side, mountains on the other, so narrow that a helicopter can’t land, so that the guy has to rappel down?’ Scene 59 Impossible, Take 400.” On the way up the dirt road, tree limbs brush the top of the van. Winter is irritated. “This doesn’t have a paved road leading up to it. So why are we here?” he demands. No one answers. His tone changes when they reach the top.

“This is not too bad,” he says on viewing the large reservoir with its bare rock and rounded hills that drop to the waterline. “There is a place to land, but you could do a hell of an air to land chase. We could change the script.”

Vaughan, the producer, is less enthusiastic. “I’d really advise against this,” he warns, and proceeds to enumerate the problems. Getting the trucks up the unpaved road and under the branches tops the list. Winter all but brushes him off. “We’ll know more after tomorrow,” he says, when they’ll have seen an alternative reservoir.

Vaughan’s worries prove unnecessary. Winter is ecstatic about the San Gabriel Dam, which he sees the following day. He takes photographs back to Hertzog, the writer, and together they rework Act IV, changing the helicopter-truck chase scene to a chase on foot that better taps the area’s dramatic potential.

During the next four days, the rest of the locations fall into place on schedule. There is a last-minute search for an office setup that would more exactly fit with what Winter has envisioned. According to Robarts, what the director wants sounds a lot like Stephen Cannell’s private office. But because few, including Cannell, are willing to tolerate the disruption from 40 cast and crew members, working offices are among the toughest locations to nail down. Despite Robarts’ efforts, the perfect office proves unfindable; Winter compromises and agrees to use the one they’d come up with initially and held onto as a reserve.

By the seventh and last day of preparation, everything seems to be set. At the production meeting in the Cannell building conference room, the directors, writer and producer huddle at the far end of the table, while the first A.D. begins to review the script, scene by scene, going over the particulars--extras, stunts, props--with each department head. Midway through the hour-and-a-half meeting, the telephone rings. It’s the county permit office. The news is not good. The dam won’t be available for filming because the Army Corps of Engineers and flood-control administrators have planned a 20-day water-release program that’s due to start the day before Cannell is to shoot there. They’re really sorry, but nothing can be done to stop or delay it.

Robarts stays cool. He thanks the county permit officer, assures her that although she’s probably right, he will try to do everything he can from his end to change the situation. He finds out who she has talked to and the names of the people in charge of flood control. He excuses himself from the meeting, heads to the office of supervising location manager Ralph Alderman, his boss, and asks him to use his political influence to help sway the decision. While Alderman places calls, Robarts finds phone numbers for two other county dams that might work as replacements and starts dialing.

Winter has lost his composure. He reminds Alderman and Robarts that shooting begins in one day. “We wrote the script around this location. Everything’s been planned around that dam.”

Alderman can’t reach the men in charge. They’re at a retirement lunch, he’s told. Then a call comes in from flood control for Alderman. “We’d be disturbing 600 acres of water,” he announces after hanging up. “But they think they can accommodate us.”

It’s 4:54 in the morning. The sky has just begun to lighten. The San Gabriel Dam operators have cranked the water valves shut during the night, just one day into the water-release program. The slow-moving line of 10-ton trucks, vans, trailers and cars, which has wound its way up California 39, now stands still. Engines are cut and headlights turned off as the movie folk settle back to wait while the morning brightens. One of the van drivers is halfheartedly trying to find out what’s causing the delay in getting to the shoot site. A new set of headlights attempts to get around the waiting vehicles, gives up and parks. Robarts, dressed in jeans, sneakers and a down vest, appears. “The gate is open,” he says. “They’re just taking them down one by one. I’m going back to check the cast and crew parking lot and make sure that it’s all set up.”

The line begins to move as he starts up the hill. His words from the previous week seem to hover in the air. “I’m too old for this show,” he’d said. “I’m going back to do ‘The A-Team’ next season.”