Location release form

What this is about

Owners rarely refuse to sign because of the fee — they refuse because the document is vague about their property. A release that names the exact rooms, the exact hours including rigging and restoration, and what may be moved or attached, feels safe to sign. It also protects the production: the right to show the recognizable property in the film and its advertising must be granted in writing, and the difference between a private owner's release and a public authority's filming permit decides which paper you even need.

A template is the starting point, not the goal: once it has been filled in by hand twice, it is worth asking whether the document should come out of the plan instead.

What runs differently here

In planning terms, that means:

• Exact identification of the premises — which rooms, which outdoor areas, which access routes — instead of the address alone
• Dates and hours covering prep, shoot and restoration separately, because rigging days are the ones owners forget they agreed to
• Permitted alterations and the restoration duty, with the state of handover documented in photos on both ends
• The usage grant: recognizable property may appear in the film and its promotion, across the media and duration the production needs
• Fee, cancellation terms and the owner's emergency contact for the shooting days

Step by step

This order gets you there fastest:

1. Transfer the scouting facts into the contract: rooms, access routes and parking exactly as agreed on site.
2. Enter all dates including prep and restoration, and add the option of an overrun day with its price already fixed.
3. List planned alterations concretely — what gets moved, taped, mounted — and agree the restoration standard.
4. Photograph the handover state together with the owner before rigging starts, and reference the photos in the contract.
5. Fix fee, payment date and cancellation terms, including what happens if weather moves the shooting day.
6. Collect the signature before the first case rolls in, and hand a countersigned copy back to the owner.

Common pitfalls

What most often goes wrong in practice:

• A handshake instead of a signature, discovered the morning the owner's partner disagrees
• Prep and restoration days missing from the contract, so rigging happens on goodwill
• No usage clause for the recognizable property, which surfaces when the film becomes an ad

With TillyGen

TillyGen's schedule shows exactly which location is needed on which dates including prep, so the contract covers the real footprint of the shoot rather than an optimistic subset.

Change one constraint and the consequences travel through the whole plan: affected shots are flagged, the call sheet is regenerated, and nobody keeps working from yesterday's version.