Screenwriting : Location, location, location by Annelies Morlion

Claustrophobic rooms. I push people into spaces that put them under pressure. Then give them a nudge.

Annelies Morlion sounds cool, and also in order to bring some fresh energy to story it can be exciting and challenging to set a piece in someplace either exotic, mundane, contradictory or relatively unknown, sometimes it can feel like LA, NYC, London, Berlin, are sort of easy choices and placeholders for a generic city (unless the story is truly connected to knowledge and local culture of the location).

Just my opinion, I've had great inspiration looking remotely via googlemaps at places like Algiers, Interlaken, Granada, Genoa, kind of known yet mid-sized cities where it's easy to discover distinctive locations within the area that can spark rich story material and provide a journey of discovery for readers and audience and characters and writer.

I am often scouting locations even prior to really outlining a story, the arena and settings of scenes and story are fundamental and influential to the unfolding and movement of the character web.

My current screenplay in progress is set in Los Angeles, Osa Peninsula of Costa Rica, Sarasota Florida, Seabrook Texas, Ventura Harbor and Cortez Bank (yes it is a budget-buster lol).

Unless the specific setting is a character of its own, for example "Night At The Museum", any setting will work. Making up a whole new city like Gotham, Metropolis, or even your own small town like Haven works well if you can breathe life into it. People will follow you easily enough if you present them with a fictitious art museum that you prompt is a major well known place within your character's world.

Annelies, all the scripts I've thus far put here on Stage 32 (and on Script Revolution and Network ISA) have been set in American cities of various sizes...from Ames, IA ("Golden Oldies") all the way to New York City, NY ("Jingle Belles" and "Tin Mine").

"Tin Mine" and "Jingle Belles" (both period pieces) were set in the Big Apple because for most of the Twentieth Century, NYC was THE place to go if you wanted to make it as a pop songwriter here in the US. Until rock became the mainstream music, New York's Tin Pan Alley was the goal for anyone who had That Dynamite Pop Song in mind.

"Golden Oldies" was set in the city where I went to college...while three of my screenplays were set in cities I've lived in. "Rivertown Rock!" was based in Sioux City, IA, the place I called home from 1988-97, and "Really Old School" and "Bleeding Gums" focused on the city I currently live in: Omaha, NE.

Just wanted to put stories in places where I've hung my hat.

I thought Minneapolis-St. Paul, MN made sense as the "Pixie Dust" setting due to the area's liberal political bent, the area being the home of the U of Minnesota-Twin Cities (one of America's largest schools), the weather ("Frozen"), and the whole logline. It all just made it easy to give characters names like Cinderella, Fairy, and Tinkerbelle.

Would've been easy to set "The Nutcrackers," a script about a blues band started by two ballerinas, in Chicago, IL...but I went with Kansas City, MO due to its own strong blues-and-jazz heritage (and because Conny and Sydney were also sports fans living in a city that's got one of the best National Football League teams).

Well, that's enough of me. Annelies, I wish you all the VERY BEST, and I'm glad you're here on Stage 32!

If you're an unknown trying to market a spec script, your best bet is to use locations that will be cheap to film but still tell the story. If you're an action writer and like car chases, an empty rural highway is cheap, a busy city street like in the Bourne movies is EXPENSIVE. If it's a Rom Com and you write a fancy dress ball in a fabulous mansion, that's BIG dollars to film. Consider a cramped, smoky dive bar with a small dance floor.

One of the first things any reader or producer will use to decide on your project is the budget. If your script is intertwined with big budget locations, they'll very likely pass rather than try to rewrite it to lower the cost.

I had a TV pilot I'd written that was CGI heavy, location heavy and would have been expensive as hell to shoot. Not Game Of Thrones expensive, but you get the idea. I pitched that script for two years. Got great feedback. Everyone really liked it, but no one bit. Finally, a producer was candid with me and gave the advice I wrote above.

I sat down and tore it apart and kept the core story and characters and tone, but did it in cheap to film locations and eliminated 90% of the CGI. A fight scene leading to a bomb blast on a ferry became a fight scene in a parking lot. An assassination was moved from a busy street in Chicago to a forest. An airplane crashing into a moving train became a solo car crashing into a tree. A running shootout through downtown Denver became a static shootout in a dark alley.

These changes hurt because I'd really tried to make this script "cinematic". Probably went a little overboard, to tell the truth. But I held on to what mattered, cut the budget by probably 70% and the pilot was optioned three weeks later.

Everywhere from NYC, to Suriname, to Cyprus.

Dont think locations matter in spec scripts. Unless location is a major character, or the characters are physically/emotionally tied to a specific location.

As far as writing for production or budget, thats another conversation with or without writer’s take. I sold a spec that takes place in east los angeles hood, scouted locations believing I could direct and the company who bought script professionally fired me, hired their own ppl, filmed it in Florida.

Also wrote a big budget spec with lots of vfxs, blowing up buildings, 1000s of extras and soldiers. I sent spec to UTA agency; the agent didn't care about budget; she just wanted to read and check me out. The same script got me an agent at another agency; then our next conversation was , “write something cheap that we can actually sell.”

I just finished a script for hire for a streaming service that takes place in a hotel... and only one hotel room and a handful of public rooms at the hotel (the more locations, the higher the cost; the more locations with extras - the more insanely higher the cost). The location and idea was theirs.

Doesn't really matter when writing a spec as Dan mentioned above. Let it be all over the place if it contributes to the story. Wanna contained piece? Have few of those in a treatment stadium just in case there is a specific need. My next one is stranded outpost located in place called Gol Vrv, C.O.R.P. Bitola...yes it's a domestic story, but Godspeed it reaches international fame, US version can be easily located in Bagram AFB, Afghanistan or wherever...

We're writing a feature that takes place in rural Michigan, which we started doing specifically because it's something that we have access to and could shoot in even more inexpensively than most people typically could. (Resources!!!)

But! The more we write it, the more we've become obsessed with that landscape and atmosphere, and that environment has become a pretty big character all on its own.

Yes, locations are very important, especially live ones. They elevate the action to another level, giving the impression you spent big bucks on your film, whether that's true or not. I've shot scenes in bars, hospital rooms, scenic parks, restaurants, downtown bus stations, busy city streets, and some of the most beautiful beaches in Newport or Hawaii, usually without paying a dime. My secret? I've found it helps to be likable, friendly, and appear that you "belong there" and know what you're doing. You'd be amazed how many cops and life guards go out of their way to help when they realize you're a genuinely nice person. BE WARNED: Not for the shy, timid, faint of heart or those totally dependent on permits prior to every camera setup.

In truth the answer to your question is both yes and no. I've watched scenes in French restaurants, English pubs, New York streets, Chicago stock yards and others that were all shot in Vancouver BC - it's all done with set dressing and camera placement. Except for some 'B' roll in Alaska almost all of the location shots were in WA state for Northwest Passage. Where else could you shoot the Best Marigold Hotel? And remember too that there budget constraints and tax incentives to consider. Just use a little common sense when you are writing.

I set my story in the Blue Ridge Mountains, partially because the setting is so beautiful, and partially because those were the kinds of people I was writing about (since the opioid crisis had a large impact there). I think it just depends on the story you're trying to tell - sometimes the setting can be a character of sorts by itself, breathing life into the script.

This is so interesting. Thank you Dirk Patton, Dan Maxxx and Michael LaVoie for making me think about budget. Your comments also caused me to question the "why" behind my location choice and if it really is that important to the story. The answer was no and so I'm going to keep writing but without the story being tied to an actual physical location.

Dan Guardino, Doug Nelson, thanks for your input. I realised that the actual location for my story isn't that essential. Set dressing and camera placement can indeed do a lot to create the impression we are in a certain place without it actually having been shot in that location. I also realised that this sort of "restricted" thinking (again, the location isn't crucial to the story) was limiting to my writing.

I think settings are important but I'm often told the more important the setting, assuming it's not some common shooting location like NYC or LA, the less likely it is to get made. I wrote a pandemic script set in Taiwan that was much more about Taiwan than the pandemic but as such it's a hard sell for anyone not able to shoot a production in Taiwan.

Many of my stories are set in the West Midlands or North West of the UK. There are a few reasons for this. The primary reason is that I know these areas better than anywhere else, which means I know which areas best suit my stories. Many of my stories are set in places of low wealth, low social mobility, urban decay, etc. and sadly, there are many towns and cities in the north of England that fit the bill.

That said, I generally don't name the cities, or use real-life street names. While I might have Tameside or Acocks Green in mind when writing, the setting is only important insofar as its effect on the characters, their motivations, their outlooks, their prospects (or lack thereof), etc. It's about the 'feel' of the place, rather than the place itself.