Location Scout + Location Manager R. Richard Hobbs
Jyte: HDRi is an abbreviated synonym for high dynamic range imaging
jyte - Newest claims about rrhobbs.myopenid.com
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Nassau County, NY Film Office (NCFO)
This is the first I have seen of the Nassau County, NY (Long Island) Film Commission page on the Nassau County website and I’ve really only noticed the Long Island Film & TV Foundation website in maybe the past year. ( I look for these things!)
Nassau County, NY Film Office (NCFO) | A Message From The County Executive Thomas R. Suozzi
“Film, television and commercial production continues to be a major part of Nassau County’s economic development. Because of our close proximity to New York City and the fact that the majority of our locations are in the zone, Nassau County is the ideal locale to film your projects”
Debra Markowitz is Director of the Nassau County Film Commission. Debra and her staff are a great resource for location scouts and other film production professionals.
Long Island Film & TV Foundation (LIFilm)
“The Long Island Film & TV Foundation is established to stimulate and encourage film and TV production on Long Island. Since film and activities on the Island account for over 40 million dollars in revenues per year, the foundation hopes to invite future projects to our area by working closely with industry executives, financiers, film producers, TV/Cable operators and government officials.”
In conjunction with the Nassau County Film Commission, The Long Island Film & TV Foundation organizes and presents the annual Long Island International Film Expo each July.
LIFilm’s Board includes two individuals I know personally, Debra Markowitz (NCFO) and Debbie Regan (Debbie Regan Locations) as well as a distinguished list of production and entertainment personalities.
Yahoo! Search: Nassau County NY Film Commission
Yahoo! Search: Long Island Film TV Foundation
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WFMU’s Beware of the Blog: Using Google Earth to find famous film locations | Using Google Earth to find famous film locations | Posted by Mark Allen on February 22, 2006 at 08:34 PM
“I captured these current satellite images of locations where eleven of my favorite movies were filmed. It took a little bit of detective work, and double-checking some addresses, but with a little bit of ‘zooming, flying and spinning’ over these places with a detailed-oriented eye (and a re-examining of my DVDs) I’m sure I have my information correct.”
“…I found current satellite captures of locations from the films Blow Up, Harold and Maude, Friday the 13th, La Dolce Vita, Heathers, Dog Day Afternoon, Back to the Future, The Birds, Fight Club, Logan’s Run and Psycho…”
WFMU’s Beware of the Blog
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# update 3/29/08 | added map, feed, general cleanup | original timestamp: March 08, 2006 @ 04:06
About Long Island International Film Expo 2008
“The Long Island Film/TV Foundation and the Nassau County Film Commission are proud to announce that the Long Island International Film Expo will be held at the Bellmore Movies from July 9 - 17, 2008. Cut off date for submissions will be April 1, 2008. Past festivals have hosted from 50 - 155 short and feature-length independent films from all over the globe during this weeklong film festival.”
Information
Links
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In case you didnt know, the Long Island International Film Expo is coming up this weekend… I received an email from director Marty Stano, whose short film Moon Cake I reviewed in an earlier post alerting me that his film had been chosen for inclusion in the Expo. Atta boy, Marty, go get ‘em!
The Long Island International Film Expo | July 11 - 19, 2007
Links
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NY Times | Gone With the Cash: Films Go for the Best Tax Breaks | By Lisa W. Foderaro | Published: March 29, 2008 | White Plains, NY
“Martin Scorsese’s crime drama The Departed may be a paean to the city of Boston, but a number of scenes featuring Leonardo DiCaprio were shot at the county courthouse and library here. It was a surprisingly apt title, since 2007, the year “The Departed” won the Academy Award for Best Picture, was also the year that many film and television shoots departed — for Connecticut.”
…read the rest…
New York State’s 10% vs. neighboring states’ production tax incentives comparison (…via Times article):
note: Pennsylvania offers a 25% max production tax incentive with a state-wide annual cap of $75m per PA Film Office’s Economic Incentives.
Spoiler:
Flip side:
Links of likely further resource value:
Yahoo! Search: film production tax incentives
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Update 3/26/08 - This is a general cleanup of an article I originally posted timestamped December 04, 2006 @ 09:07. At the time I wrote the original post, geotagged map solutions which could include photos were really just starting to come of their own (from what I could find myself and / or was able to wrap my head around at the time 
…
I am normally approaching investigation of new technologies from a point of view as a location scout or location manager with regard to how same might be applied usefully toward doing a better job as a location scout or location manager, more efficiently.
That said, it has become pretty easy as of late to build a simple, general purpose location map, i.e. placemarks of all the locations to be used in a production - with the address / other contact info / thumbnail(s) of the location(s) included), on a Google Map:
Still, every shoot is different, with different problems for the location department to solve and the solutions below are still very much alive at this writing, so scroll on thru on check em out… -RH
…via WheresSpot Blog…via New York Times. (requires free registration)
NY Times: Pictures, With Map and Pushpin Included | By IAN AUSTEN | Published: November 2, 2006
“KATHLEEN BENNETT recently bought a device that keeps track of her location with help from the satellites of the Global Positioning System. But unlike many other people in Seattle, Ms. Bennett is not, by her own description, “an outdoor person” and will not be using it to find her way through the wilderness.”
“Geotagging, sometimes referred to as Geocoding, is the process of adding geographical identification metadata to various media such as websites, RSS feeds, or images and is a form of geospatial metadata.” …read the rest…
…which, broadly speaking, is the practice of embedding geographic data in media of one type or another (i.e. “geotag” a …blog post …photo).
There are MANY uses for geotagging, i.e creating a waypoint in a map or perhaps embedding data in a photo to let that photo be associated with a waypoint on a map… then posting that photo online and linking it and the embedded geographic data to a map, showing just where in the world the shutter was pressed.
There are file formats (i.e. GeoRSS, GPX and KML) that “speak” in geographic terms. Much of this type of data is intended to be primarily machine readable, altho, ultimately, the end purpose is usually toward output which is “human readable”, or comprehensible and presumably, of some use to a person.
Geotagging and online mapping are parts of a field coming to be known as neogeography, or “new geography”.
“Tracking news, views, and conversations in 11,860* towns and neighborhoods” * …and counting…
From Outside.in’s FAQ:
“Q: What is outside.in?
A: Outside.in is the best way to discover the people, places and conversations in your community. Enter your city, neighborhood, or zip code in the field below the map (on the home page), and start exploring your community. We’ve designed outside.in to be the best resource online for:
Keeping up with news and opinions in your neighborhood Finding out the inside scoop on local places or events: schools, new real estate developments, playgrounds, bars Meeting interesting new neighbors, and sharing your local knowledge with them
Here are ways to geotag blog posts so that Outside.in can index them. Note: - you need to register your blog with Outside.in as it may be appropriate for inclusion on outside.in.
Map Examples:
The first map below utilizes geotagging, Google Maps and Flickr. It is a Widget published by Mapsack.
Next is another Mapsack mashup - it does not integrate the photos from Flickr, however, it does display a nice hybrid map and location of my office location in NJ <- ...this is a link to a Google Map...
note: the map above uses an iframe tag … in case you were curious what that might be…
This my Frappr Map (or “friend” map) - you can see an example of it embedded in a blog post here. It is interactive - you can add yourself to it- be my guest.
Finally, below is a map created using GeoPress, a WordPress plugin, which shows where I am located in Clifton, NJ.
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updated 3/26/08 | original timestamp: December 04, 2006 @ 09:07
Dependent Films | Tools & Utilities for filmmakers
“You’ve now entered the Dependent Films Download Center. It’s unbelievable 1) how much these files can help, and 2) how hard all of these tools are to find on the net.”
Location Release Form Location Scouting SheetIts true, especially when you are going about a hundred miles an hour trying to 20 other things and you need it NOW. That never happens to you, huh?
Yahoo! Search: tools utilities filmmakers
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Aprilbaby’s California Life: De Soto Pharmacy’s Ice Cream Fountain
“There’s a part in Nicholas Cage’s movie “Matchstick Men” where his character dashes into a pharmacy to shake down the pharmacist for his prescription. That scene was filmed at the De Soto Pharmacy - right here in the San Fernando Valley’s Canoga Park, 20914 Roscoe Blvd (Corner of De Soto and Roscoe).”
Aprilbaby’s California Life
southern+California+film+locations+blogs - Google Blog Search
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Dummies::Picking Locations for Your Film
Yep, there HAD to be one The ubiquitous “…For Dummies” page- for location scouting…
“After you’ve locked down your script - meaning there are no more changes - comb through it and determine where you want to shoot your scenes. Some software programs, like Screenwriter 2000, actually break down your script for you by pulling out all your scene headings and generating a list of settings from your screenplay.”
Ok, ok, I have poked fun at ‘em, but Dummies (Wiley Publishing) is HUGE - the rest of us are a bunch of Dummies for not coming up with the Dummies idea! Dummies is worldwide, offices all over the planet, baby! Oh, man their North American office is right in Hoboken!
Yahoo! Search: Filmmaking for Dummies
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If you are a location professional, there are a number of ways to interact with peers and other production people online.
Below are some free resources I know of (and have initiated, in some cases) and probably belong to myself; if anyone knows of others I would be interested to find out about them:
There may be regional groups appropriate to your locale; here in the New York City area , the yahoo group known as lifilm is popular.
There are also many professional organizations with close ties to production, such as AICP and APA to name but a very few.
…more networking content on this website…
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updated 3/25/08 | original timestamp: May 24, 2006 @ 23:50
“WheresSpot.com is The Internet Community for Prisoners of Advertising. Using email and the Web, it connects an enormous gang of talented people to one another.”
In addition to its website presence, WhereSpot used to be a free Yahoo Group discussion list*, with somewhere in the neighborhood of 8,000 members at one time. Sometime around May 2007, Wheresspot moved its discussions off Yahoo Groups on-site to its self-hosted website, having added many other features to the self-hosted site such as a member map, resource directories, classifieds and blog and became a paid-subscription portal. (visit WhereSpot if you are interested in joining as a paid member)
WheresSpot Website Menu (you must be a paid subscriber and logged in to access all features)
*(IF you were a member of the old Yahoo Group, at this writing, archives prior to Thu May 3, 2007 2:14 pm can be accessed at the old Yahoo url but new posting is not allowed)
In a number of posts on the old list, as well as continuing on the new list, the moderators explained (in as many words) that in order to move the discussion list and add the other features to a self-hosted site as well as create self-motivation to continue putting the effort into maintaining an active community as diverse as WhereSpot, they needed to change to a paid-subscription model. At one point I remember reading that they felt the community had actually grown a little too big and the content of discussions had become all too redundant at times - I can personally remember receiving somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 posts (or more) over the period of a day and feeling annoyed at a lot of what was asked and discussed as the content often involved subject matter that had been visited multiple times before or seeming like people were simply too lazy to use a search engine (i.e Google or Yahoo) to find the answers to their questions; the moderators further defended the changes (in as many words) saying the community was smaller, yet comprised *only* of serious professionals, which I take to mean the people willing to pony up the subscription fee were really serious about wanting to be there.
WheresSpot is relevant for location professionals (i.e. location scouts, location managers) as the diverse scope WheresSpot’s community and discussions covers pre-production and locations with a focus on tv commercials and productions as might be used in other areas of advertising such as print ads, trade videos, marketing events and other types of media production.
Yahoo! Search: Wheresspot
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update 3/25/08 | general cleanup | original timestamp: February 10, 2006 @ 11:30
Locationtalk | Discrepancies between what prod co says and what actually happens
Anonymous wrote:
“I’m getting more and more frustrated with production companies who are less than forthright about what they actually intend to do on a shoot as opposed to what they tell me will happen when I need to apply for the filming permit.”
…read the rest… (be sure and read the responses…)
Food for thought? yes, I think!
Be-all, end-all solutions? not likely - every shoot / client / production company / producer / production team (including the location manager / location scout(s) / town / film office(s) / property owner(s) are different and all these factors of circumstances and personalities combine to create a different dynamic each time. One can only control the things one CAN control. The best summations I can think of are:
The thread ago started some time back, the original post is d
