This video was made possible by Curiosity
Stream. When you sign up at the link in the description
you’ll also get access to Nebula—the streaming video platform that Wendover is a part of. As you reach the end of a movie’s credit
sequence, usually long after everyone has left the theatre, you start to get to some
of the names of people that might not have written the script, might not have played
the characters, and might not have operated the camera, but were crucial to the success
of that film. Quite a few of the names might not have dealt
with filming at all, but rather dealt with getting those who did housed, fed, and transported
to where they need to be. As much of a challenge getting the story and
picture right in a movie is, another distinct challenge that only escalates as budget does
is the logistics. While most movies will film quite a few of
their scenes in a studio using sets, green screens, and other tactics to portray the
supposed location, still most film a number of scenes on location, all around the world. Filming on-location is an enormously complex,
multi-month or sometimes multi-year process that all typically starts with one person—the
location scout. We’ll use the example of what is now the
most financially successful movie of all time—Avengers: Endgame. As one of the biggest-budget films of all-time,
this movie had a whole location department that wrapped many of the location-based functions
into one. For smaller films, though, locations scouts
tend to be more separate, freelance roles working temporarily for a given production. Essentially what they do is take the wishes
of the writer or director of a given movie and do their very best to fulfill them. If a scout is asked to find a sunny yet run-down
street in a small coastal Mediterranean town, they do their best to find a location that
looks like that, but it doesn’t necessarily need to be sunny, run-down, coastal, Mediterranean,
or even a small town. Some of that can be fixed in post, some can
be fixed with decoration, and some doesn’t show up on film at all. There are a lot of reasons a film might use
a stand-in for the real location they’re trying to depict—cost, time, practicality,
availability, bureaucracy, logistics, even down to tiny reasons like weather, lighting,
noise-level, and more. A film set in a small Greenlandic town might
choose to film in Iceland just because it’s easier to get to, has better infrastructure,
and has a larger and perhaps most experienced local labor force. At the same time, a film set in Antarctica
might choose to film in Greenland for the same reasons. Once the location scout finds the perfect
location, they then have to make sure filming is actually possible there. If it’s a privately owned location, they
have to figure out who the owner is and negotiate with them, which isn’t always easy, while
if it’s public space they have to work with the government, which also isn’t always
easy. In the case of Endgame, some location scout
at some point was asked to find a location to serve as New Asgard—the fishing village
home of Thor. For this, they settled on the Scottish village
of St Abbs. Now, there are a few reasons why this was
a smart choice. One was that it’s in a country with an upstart
film industry promoted by its government so government approval was likely easy, two was
that this village was small enough that they could essentially entirely take it over, and
three was that it was relatively near Edinburgh. The proximity to Edinburgh served two important
roles. One was that it meant there was a big city
nearby with the facilities to host a large production and two was that, for the previous
Avengers movie, Infinity War, they spent months filming a complex action sequence in Edinburgh. The two films were shot back-to-back and,
in some cases, simultaneously, so this way, the production could easily move from Edinburgh
to St Abbs for a few days after rather than completely moving to a new country to film
this relatively simple scene in New Asgard. In practice, a location scout typically presents
the movie’s director a variety of options for where to shoot—for New Asgard, there
almost certainly were quite a few locations on a short-list before they settled on St
Abbs. Once a location is selected, though, the job
is then handed over to a location manager. Now, sometimes the location scout and location
manager are the same person and sometimes they are different people, but they are always
distinct roles. The location manager is in charge of navigating
all the legal and logistical aspects of organizing an on-location shoot once the location is
selected. One huge aspect of this is getting permits
to film from the local government. A lot of cities, states, regions, or countries
that are in high demand for filming, such as New York, have government agencies dedicated
to both promoting and organizing filming activities in their location. In New York’s case, for example, the Mayor's
Office of Film, Theatre & Broadcasting fills this role and handles the permitting process. An agency like this wants to balance its role
of promoting the industry, which can be a fantastic boost economically to a city, and
serving its city’s population. Filming, especially when part of a big production,
is a burden on local residents so any government that wants to stay popular with its constituents
wants to manage this burden. For this, New York’s agency has a rotating
list of locations where filming is prohibited simply because these locations have had too
much filming recently. That way even the most popular spots won’t
have their residents disturbed too much. Negotiating a filming permit in places less
experienced in this matter can be more difficult, though, as that will require a bespoke deal. That’s only the tip of the iceberg of the
planning a location manager has to deal with. One other huge complexity can be just simply
getting equipment to the location, especially if that location is in a different country
than where the production company is based. You see, when Avengers came to Scotland to
film, they needed all the same cameras and equipment as in the US so the film stayed
consistent in quality. With big budget-productions such as this,
that means they need to bring hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of equipment into
a foreign country. The difficulty then is that, typically, when
goods originate from outside of a country and are brought inside that country, one has
to pay import tariffs on them. As an individual entering a country through
an airport one has certain duty free allowances and typically there’s a provision that personal
articles can be brought in tax-free, but when traveling as a business, like a Hollywood
production company, if they were to bring equipment into a country and keep it there,
for example if they were setting up a studio there, then an import tariff would be assessed. Avengers likely travelled with hundreds of
thousands of even millions of dollars worth of equipment so you can imagine the kind of
financial damage a 20% import tariff would have. Of course, though, there are a few ways to
get around this. The first would be to get an ATA carnet. This is essentially a passport for goods. For a fee and security deposit, these work
as a customs mechanism for many countries in which one can import goods temporarily
without paying any taxes. These are complicated, though, because once
issued there’s little flexibility as one has to list exact travel dates and destinations
and must also list all equipment including its exact serial number. Since the security deposit scales to the value
of the goods, it can also tie up a lot of money. The other option is to just rent equipment
within the location country. While this is only an option when filming
in countries with top quality rental companies, even Hollywood productions will quite often
rent their equipment. Another thing the location manager has to
think about is staffing. While the top positions in a production will
obviously need to travel to each filming location, many of the rank and file members just do
not. If you can get a lighting technician in the
destination country rather than flying one out from the US, it would obviously make sense
to hire the one in-country since that would lower cost. In the case of Avengers: Endgame, the film
shot in four main locations. The film’s studio was outside Atlanta, Georgia
so many scenes were filmed in there and many that weren’t took place in the greater Atlanta
area. That’s where everyone here, the bulk of
the names in the credit sequence, were based. There was then a partially distinct production
group for the film’s scenes in New York. You’ll notice that there are a not a whole
lot of names in this group and they mostly correspond to location management roles and
some other production management roles. Many of the bigger roles, such as director
of photography, director, producer, and more would be filled by those working back in Atlanta
traveling out. The far larger and more distinct unit was
the one dedicated to filming in England and Scotland. The movie had two major scenes filmed in the
UK. One was in that small, Scottish village of
St Abbs, playing New Asgard, and the other was in Durham Cathedral which played the role
of a part of Asgard—Thor’s home. Now, these two locations were not insignificant
in the film—they involved some of the film’s lead characters and accounted for about 12.5
total minutes of screen-time which, in a movie as big-budget as this, is a decent amount. Therefore, the on-location productions were
sizable. The UK unit therefore had quite a number of
specialized staff—it had its own graphic designers, set decorators, costume supervisor,
sculptors, prop-master, sound effect technicians, it even had its own administrative staff like
a network and IT technician and payroll accountant. Sometimes, though, those in charge of a movie
don’t need to be involved with filming at all. All of the logistics mess can be avoided if
they just don’t travel. Further down in the credits, you get to the
section titled, “plate units.” These are distinct production units that are
in charge of gathering footage that will end up being used by the movie’s visual effects
department, often as background in green screen sequences. When Marvel needed footage from a Brazilian
national park to act as the landscape of the planet Vormir, they just hired a company called
Brazil Production Services to go and film that for them. For the most part this company was just left
to get this footage on their own. When Marvel needed shots of the Philippines
to serve as the landscape around Thanos’ hut in the final movie, they once again just
hired a local production company, Indochina Productions, to do the work for them since
the character was added in post. Even for the biggest productions like this,
when actors aren’t involved, they can usually reduce complexity and cost by hiring outside
production companies to do the work for them rather than flying one of their production
units all the way out to Brazil or the Philippines or wherever to get that one shot. In addition to those two, Marvel also hired
production companies in Tokyo, Iceland, Chile, and San Francisco to each capture footage
that would end up as assets used by the visual effects department. When it actually comes time to film a scene
on-location, all the planning is finally put into practice. One important aspect of the implementation
is making sure that the community where one films walks away from the experience feeling
like it was fun and cool, rather than a burden. This is also crucial for the government of
a given area which will typically want the economic boost from a film production coming
while also wanting to keep public favor. Again using the example of St Abbs, Scotland,
such a big production coming meant the town was basically completely shut down for two
days. They cordoned off essentially the whole town
so only residents and workers could come in. Marvel made a lot of smart decisions to win
over the residents of St Abbs. For one, many of the residents were used as
extras which certainly turned it into an experience for them. In addition, for feeding the crew, rather
than bring in some catering company they hired a local cafe to serve food. That way they’re seen as supporting local
businesses. In addition, the stars were reportedly generous
with their time, meeting many of the locals, and Marvel made a financial donation to the
St Abbs lifeboat crew. In all, this made for a win for both the town
and Marvel as Marvel got a location with a supporting public and good press and the town
got a cool experience and economic benefit. That economic benefit has even kept coming
after the shoot as St Abbs has apparently experienced a tourism boom since the film’s
release. No matter where a film shoots, a huge part
of the location manager’s job is to try to keep the production as low impact as possible. They have roles as minute as parking managers
just to be sure that a given production can get in and out of their location as cleanly
and efficiently as possible. With tightly packed schedules, films just
don’t have time for a dispute with the local population and a local government will often
be quick to side with their constituents if they get too burdened by Hollywood coming
to town. When successfully pulled off, though, big-budget
Hollywood productions can bring jobs to an area, bring attention to an area—they can
really transform a place so the focus that many cities and countries put on attracting
them is truly well placed. Any long-time Wendover viewer by this point
knows about Curiosity Stream. They’re the streaming video site home to
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deals out there at just $19.99 a year, but now this deal has gotten even better. When you sign up for a yearly subscription
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Should rename Half as Interesting/Wendover Productions meal-time videos. His stuff is the perfect format to eat a short lunch watching.
Yet again another awesome video from wendover
Keep up the good work
wendover perfectly encapsulates this subreddit
When people ask me why I'm listening to a video while eating food instead of watching it, I tell them "its like a more interesting podcast with visuals"