Renting a Back Lot: Anchange Style
By Dan Engelhardt producer
This entire film has been shot on location in Palo Alto. No sound stages, standing sets, or back lots. The reason for this is twofold – we are hoping to hold true to the feel of Palo Alto, and it is for the most part cheaper to shoot on location.
Yesterday, however we need a fairly controlled and empty environment. It was a car scene in which the actors needed to stop in the middle of the street – so El Camino didn’t seem like a good idea. In order to light the scene properly we needed as much available light as possible – street lamps, store fronts etc. Unfortunately for us most streets with lots of lights are busy. The solution we came up with was downtown Los Altos, which empties out at 7pm. You have to love small town, USA. By 8pm we had Main Street to ourselves. We used one of the large parking lots for staging our equipment, and craft services. Our picture car was on a trailer stationed on Main. We used one of crew members Golf’s to transport actors from set our staging area, and essentially had a back lot for free. The city allowed us to use the street throughout the night, and a restaurant left its exterior bathroom open for us. Who says you need millions in overhead to have control of your filming environment?
This entire film has been shot on location in Palo Alto. No sound stages, standing sets, or back lots. The reason for this is twofold – we are hoping to hold true to the feel of Palo Alto, and it is for the most part cheaper to shoot on location.
Yesterday, however we need a fairly controlled and empty environment. It was a car scene in which the actors needed to stop in the middle of the street – so El Camino didn’t seem like a good idea. In order to light the scene properly we needed as much available light as possible – street lamps, store fronts etc. Unfortunately for us most streets with lots of lights are busy. The solution we came up with was downtown Los Altos, which empties out at 7pm. You have to love small town, USA. By 8pm we had Main Street to ourselves. We used one of the large parking lots for staging our equipment, and craft services. Our picture car was on a trailer stationed on Main. We used one of crew members Golf’s to transport actors from set our staging area, and essentially had a back lot for free. The city allowed us to use the street throughout the night, and a restaurant left its exterior bathroom open for us. Who says you need millions in overhead to have control of your filming environment?
Labels: Week_5
posted by Tony Vallone at
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