I recently spoke to Nick Carr, a film location scout in New York City, who also runs one of my favorite blogs, ScoutingNY.com.
On Scouting NY, Nick documents where some of the city’s most famous scenes were filmed, as well as many of the amazing locations around the city he’s scouted himself. He’s also got some great stories about the city, like this one about the Decapitation at the Ziegfeld.
I often hear from people who say they’d love to do what I do, but I’d actually love to be doing what Nick does, so this was my chance to live vicariously!
Check out a bit of our interview below:
How did you become a location scout?
In order to get a job in the film industry, its all about who you know. You don’t necessarily have to be great at your job, but if you know someone who needs to hire someone on a movie, there’s a good chance you’ll get a call before they put out a job ad on Craig’s List or something. A person from [an] independent movie [I worked on] that tanked went on the work on the Steven Spielberg movie War of the Worlds and when they needed someone to work as a PA, he gave me a call. He said, ‘Nick, do you want a job?” And I said “yes”, and I ended up getting involved with the locations department on that. At the time I had absolutely no idea what a locations department even did and I didn’t know anything about scouting and I just sort of fell into it.
What has been your favorite/least favorite location?
I don’t’ think I have a favorite location. My favorite thing about location scouting in general is the fact that I get to sort of live in every single neighborhood in NYC and beyond. If we’re shooting in the Financial District then that’s my home for about a week. If we’re shooting on the Upper West Side, than that’s my home and I get to try out all of the different restaurants, I get a sense of what it’s like to live in the neighborhood. And then, just about the time that I have had my share of it, it’s time to move on to a new location. So the best thing about location scouting is just that you get to see all of NY and experience it pretty closely, which I think few jobs allow you to do.
The locations I hate shooting in [are] impoverished neighborhoods, or just down and out areas, because what inevitably happens is -you end up paying a lot of very sketchy people for the use of their property. To shoot in a building that’s owned by a slumlord, you end up paying a few thousand dollars to shoot there and you start seeing how this guy, who seems like a nice guy, then you see how he treats his tenants and its just absolutely sicking. And there’s nothing that sucks more than giving these people money, so personally I hate shooting in areas like that.
What TV/Film projects have you worked on? (i.e. Where would we have seen some of your locations?)
In Spider- Man 3 one of my jobs was finding the buildings that Spider-Man jumped off of. That was a great scouting gig because I got to go up to some of the greatest rooftops in NYC, many of which are just completely closed off to the public.
My locations started showing up in movies that weren’t necessarily well received, such as The Taking of Pelham 123, Sorcerer’s Apprentice had a few locations. It takes a while of scouting before you start seeing your locations show up in films. You can scout hundreds of locations for a movie, and just the way it goes, the director might not pick them. Its nothing personal, its just where you were assigned to scout for a particular day. So far I haven’t had an iconic location like Katz’s Delicatessen in When Harry Met SallyGhostbusters or the Firehouse, hopefully something like that will come along.
What’s the coolest (abandoned) property you’ve scouted?
I could say in general my favorite abandoned property that I ever found is 5 Beckman St. Its this insane nine story building built in the late 1800’s and inside is this atrium that stretches up nine floors. It’s like each floor has a balcony and you can just look from the very bottom floor all the way to the ceiling where there’s this beautiful glass skylight. I got an email about the place randomly from the owner who said you’ve got to come by and check this place out and I went in and its just unbelievable. This place has been abandoned for about ten years in the heart of downtown Manhattan and I was really glad that I helped to put it back on the map. That place just blew me away.
For those that don’t know, how exactly does the process work?
When a movie comes to NY from L.A., the first department that gets hired is accounting, to pay for everything. The second department that gets hired is locations, because you can’t do anything in NY without a bunch of locals who know how to do thing here. We’re given an early copy of the script, then the location manager (the head of my department) will go through the script and find all the locations we need to find and then assign them to different scouts.
We work off of leads, we work off of tips, we work from past experience, and then when we run out of options we literally go door to door knocking. We try to provide the director with as many options as we can. There’s no one great location- you can show [the director] 50 options and then it’s the 51st one he really takes a liking to. Once he chooses locations, we then secure the location, we sign a contract, we make a deal, we pay the location owner, we deal with the surrounding properties, making sure that if there’s a disruption in business or if there will be tenants disturbed by the filming, we have to deal with all those logistics, and then we stick around for the actual shoot.
We’re on set with walkie talkies helping to put fires out. They say if you’re a good location scout, if you’ve taken care of everything ahead of time, then there’s nothing to do on the film day, but in NYC problems always happen, and you just try to deal with them as they come up, and the one thing that always seem to solve problems is money.
What’s the best part of your job? The worst?
The best part of my job is that I get to go to locations that no one else gets to go to. Like I said on Spider-Man 3 there were rooftops that they literally don’t let people in their own building visit and I got to go up there and check it out. I’ve been to castles, on the movie The Smurfs I had to scout a bunch of castles and you think ‘where are you going to find castles’? Turns out, at the turn of the century, a bunch of railroad barons and steal magnates built castles along the Hudson River which was chic at the time. A lot a these places are now abandoned so y’know, nothing’s cooler than when your boss is like, ‘Hey Nick, go find some castles’, and you go find it.
The downside of my job is everything else. We work really long hours. We work like 14-16 hour days, especially when we’re shooting. There’s no overtime for those 14-16 hour days, you’re just expected to put in the time. And you deal with a lot of silly, silly problems. I was on a job recently and a guy who owned a little muffin shop came out and said that we were interrupting his business and said he makes hundreds of thousands of dollars selling muffins. Now look, I am sure we’re disrupting his business and I’m happy to compensate him for the loss of business, but I’m sorry, he’s not making hundreds of thousands of dollars in muffin business. So you sort of have to deal with this bullshit- to be perfectly blunt- you have to cut through it and figure out what the guy is actually losing out on and then help him out.
Can you tell us a little about your personal film project and how people can get involved?
The reason I’m a location scout is because I want to be a filmmaker and for any aspiring filmmakers out there, location scouting is an excellent way to find out all about how big budget filmmaking works. The greatest thing about it is that our job is done during the actual scouting phase. Once filming begins we certainly stick around and we’re there to help with the contracts and sign up the neighbors and handle logistics, but if you’ve done your job then most of the time you’re on set just making sure things don’t go wrong, and assuming everything goes OK you can just watch the filmmaking process happen. You learn everything about how directors treat actors, how they frame shots and all this sort of stuff.
The film that I’m writing is a scary movie. It s a ghost story and I like to describe it as if Michael Crichton worte a haunted house story. I’m ideally going to produce it myself and I’m certainly going to direct it and if you’re a fan of my work, if you’re a fan of my website. it would be great- a $5, 10 donation- would certainly help. I’d be happy to send along a Scouting NY sticker or button or both if you give a donation. You can donate on my website, ScoutingNY.com.
Its really nice that here in Brooklyn, we get to see all of you work and maybe have a chance to see a star. However, all your big trucks, cars and equipment really interfere with everyone’s routines. We have a film/shoot EVERY WEEK on Berry Street, Williamsburg and all THE PARKING IS TAKEN BY ALL OF YOU! At our local school, all of our teachers are either late and have to pay for parking. I personally had to wake my newborn up in the early am so I could move my car because you don’t consider the fact that we have ALTERNATE SIDE PARKING always in effect. Our cars are either towed or ticketed because of you.
So, I know you don’t care but consider the fact that we too hard working middle class folks who have to be at work on time. Give us a break and find somewhere else to do your work so we could do ours.