Location scouting checklist

What this is about

A room looks different at 8 a.m. than at 5 p.m., and it sounds different on a workday than on the weekend you scouted it. The checklist forces the boring questions that decide shooting days: where the sun actually stands during your slot, what the fuse box supports, whether the freight elevator fits a dolly case, which neighbor runs machinery. Photos and a one-minute sound recording turn impressions into evidence you can compare across candidates — and defend when someone falls in love with the wrong space.

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:

• Power: fuse capacity, socket positions and the distance to them, plus whether the building can take your lighting load without a generator
• Sound: traffic patterns, flight paths, ventilation and neighbors, recorded for one minute at the planned shooting hour
• Light: sun path relative to the windows during the actual time slot, not during the scout
• Logistics: parking, load-in route, elevator dimensions, toilets, a warm room for cast and a lockable space for gear
• Paper: who owns the space, what permits apply, and which fallback location takes over if this one collapses

Step by step

This order gets you there fastest:

1. Schedule the scout at the hour you plan to shoot, because light and noise keep office hours of their own.
2. Photograph systematically: a panorama from each corner, every window with its orientation, the fuse box, the load-in route.
3. Record one minute of room tone and exterior sound, and note recurring noises with their apparent schedule.
4. Measure access: door widths, elevator size, stair turns, distance from truck to set — gear moves through all of it.
5. Talk to the owner about alterations, prep days and quiet hours, and collect contact details for the person with the keys.
6. Score the location against your alternatives on the same criteria, and name the fallback before anyone signs anything.

Common pitfalls

What most often goes wrong in practice:

• Scouting at the wrong time of day and meeting a different room on the shoot
• Ignoring sound because the space looked right — the microphone does not care how it looked
• No fallback named, so a burst pipe two days out becomes a crisis instead of a phone call

With TillyGen

Scouting results feed the plan in TillyGen: locations carry their constraints into the schedule, so sun windows and access times shape shooting order instead of surprising it.

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.