One of the first steps in pre-production, after developing a treatment and writing the screenplay, is figuring out where you can shoot the script. Where can you get those beautiful establishing shots and find sets to bring the story to life? Where in the world can you find places that look like what’s described in the screenplay or novel it is based upon?
The answer is to find a great location scout and see what she can find. The trick is to find places that can stand in for what is required. It may not be the actual place. There are many films shot in alternate locations. Vancouver has stood in for many cities. New Zealand built its own version of Middle Earth. And Kauai (one of the Hawaiian islands) has stood in for Fantasy Island and Jurassic Park, and was home to King Kong and George of the Jungle. The point is not to find the exact match, but to find a plausible one.
Writers can learn from this trick to write better setting and description. If you can’t afford to go to the town featured in your novel, go somewhere that is similar and use that for inspiration. It will give you a deeper experience than using Google Earth.
Here are some tricks to use:
1. Know Your Script and Story
Choose sites that match your action, story, characters, and setting. Ideally, you will want find a location that lends itself to the story—waterfront settings, seaside villages, urban settings, desolate landscapes. The trick is to find something that either a) is an exact match, say Paris for a story in Paris or b) an approximate location with the look and feel you need. It may not be necessary to travel to Mars if you can visit Jordan’s Wadi Rum region, where The Martian was filmed. If Jordan is still too far for your budget, you could check out NASA’s HiRISE camera images from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, also available at uahirise.org/martian, which shows actual images of Mars itself. Or check out the seven places on Earth that are most like Mars, because that is the point of location scouting for film and writers—to approximate or simulate the environment for the story. Visiting places that are similar helps writers capture the spirit of a place with setting details. It may need to be enhanced with actual details from the location itself, but you can get the bare facts of a place through substitution. It’s why no one notices when a filmmaker swaps out a location in a movie (at least no one who doesn’t live there, and even then the audience can be fooled).
2. Keep Timing in Mind
If your story takes place in the summer, visit in summer. It won’t help you to be slogging through mountains of snow in Alaska if your story happens in June. The conditions are drastically different. It also changes the number of people present and the noise. Certain places in Alaska are overrun in the summer with tourists and fishing operations. The animals are awake and rummaging for food. The entire place wakes up and is active, as opposed to the hibernation of winter. If a key scene takes place at sunset, visit the site at that time of day to capture descriptive details as they happen. Write and take video, if possible. Set up a tripod or enlist a friend while you sit and write or, better yet, experience it all and then write. It’s tough to absorb what is happening if you are focused on your laptop or notepad. Live in the moment. Put down the phone and be present. Take it all in. Then capture every feeling and observation you can. Once you have those down, review your footage. This is when a good tripod is worth its weight in gold.
3. Decide Where Your Story Takes Place
If you find a town that feels like the town in your story, or is the city in your story, there is still room to change details. Say your book is set in New York City. That leaves a lot of details left to sort. What borough? Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, The Bronx, Staten Island? What neighborhood? Bedford-Stuyvesant, Bushwick, Crown Heights, Greenpoint? They all have their personalities and quirks. But within those specific locations, you can create a block or a building that is completely fictional. Or not. If you choose an existing place, research it carefully. Likewise, research the surrounding areas of your fictional place carefully too. If your story takes place in a a totally fictional world, find someplace on Earth that is similar and use that as a jumping off point. Remember that even fictional worlds have to adhere to some laws of physics, even if they are unique to that world.
4. Don’t Be Locked into What Is
It’s okay to take a cue from film crews and pick and choose the best locations. If you find the perfect house or apartment for your character, it shouldn’t matter if it isn’t in the right place. Write the interior scenes from that perspective and then switch to your fictional or actual setting. Films often shoot in multiple locations for a movie, even when the script happens in one place. The location scout finds houses, buildings, town squares, landmarks and other locations to stand in for the places in the script. Sometimes those stand-ins aren’t even in the same country, much less the same town. Don’t be locked in. Look far and wide for your setting. This is particularly true if you are creating a fictional world. Look to all sorts of inspiration, from art to travel photos. Find what inspires your new world and then make a location board with images for your main settings. Be sure to build your world carefully so it remains consistent throughout your story.
5. Tap into Your Senses
This is why visiting locations is the best—it makes it so much easier to capture what you hear, see, taste, smell and touch. You can imagine these elements, but they won’t be as immersive as experiencing it for yourself. While you are visiting, take note of noise, sounds, background, foreground, light, and movement. Write your observations as clearly as possible. If you can capture bits of setting to insert into your story, do it. Take photos and videos of the places you find to jog your memory.
6. Stop by Visitor Centers
They will have maps and brochures about the surrounding area, potentially leading you to new sites to check into. The brochures help give details. I always try to get two maps of a location so I can mark up one copy and leave one plain. This helps me create my setting board.
7. Talk to Locals
Listen to the stories, accent, turns of phrase used. Ask about the place, the legends, the folk lore, the history. Ask what it was like growing up there or moving there later in life. In some places, those quirks make all the difference. Ask what makes a place unique. What tourists never see or notice. What makes it home. Locals will have the answers you seek and can tell you what it’s like to live there. You can’t find that out during a short visit, unless you plan to move in while you write. Ask around. It’s amazing what you can find out through conversation.
8. Keep a List of Sites
If you come across an unusual place or one that captures your imagination, even if it won’t work in your current story, take pictures and notes anyway. Then you can come back to it in the future. I recommend setting up a location database where you can keep notes about places that inspire you or tag pictures of places that might be worth pursuing in the future. This is what film location scouts do because you never know what the next script might require. Of course, you won’t need to take as many notes as a location scout, but you should sit down and absorb the location and write as much as you can about how you feel there and what your senses tell you about the place. If you get a story idea, capture that too and then link the story idea to your location log. The same holds true of people. You should be capturing potential characters as you go about your day—logging physical descriptions, voice, demeanor, movement and more.
What do you do to find setting details?