Location Scouting

Making movies seems like a lot of fun. I kept trying to tell myself that Saturday when I spent 6 hours driving around looking for locations. Since one of the green screen studios we'll be using is in Marietta I started out over there. I thought I remembered a bunch of skeezy motels along Hwy 41 and was pleased to see they haven't all burned down yet. These look perfect - the kind of place where ex-cons cook dinner over hot plates in the courtyard and the police just don't bother stopping unless they need to "confiscate" some more weed. Since our hero Bob will be taking his hooker friend here for a relaxing first date, the ambiance is just what I want.

This place wasn't actually the best I saw, but it was still great for what we needed. So I went into the office, a 4x8 white box, and rang the little bell for service. I tried to explain what I wanted, and he just kind of stood there. I asked if we could take a quick look at one of the rooms and he shrugged and handed me a key. The room was exactly what I was looking for as well - and we'd be able to do plenty of dressing to give it just the right tone. When we left the room the guy was waiting for us outside, but instead of talking there motioned us to go back in the claustrophobic little interrogation box.

He had the owner(?) come over to talk to me through the bullet-proof plastic and I explained again what we wanted to do.  I said we'd be happy to rent out two rooms, that the shoot would be about 4 hours and would that be cool.  He just stood there for a minute, shook his head and walked away.

At the next place a couple hundred yards down the road we didn't even get as far as looking at a room.  They said they didn't like it, but I could come back and talk to the owner Monday if I wanted.  I'm fairly certain they thought we wanted to shoot porn.


That left me a bit confused though - they didn't seem like the kind of places that would Mind us shooting porn.  Maybe I should have explained it wasn't porn - I don't know.  I'm not very good at talking to people.
I skipped the third place because I didn't want to jinx it with my bad karma, maybe I can get someone else to go talk to them.  Maybe I should look for motels that regularly Do have porn shoots, at least they'd be cool with the cameras.  On another note - it was only $35 a night for a room, which is nice.

On the other hand this convenience store is Exactly what I was looking for and the guy wokring seemed very positive about using it.  I've got a call into the owner there and hope to hear something very soon.  Unfortunately, I didn't find much else on that trip.  I still need to find the perfect alley and a restaraunt.  Hopefully tomorrow will be more fruitful.

Thanks for reading - and a detailed list of the locations we're looking for is linked over on the side bar - if you have any ideas please let me know.