First time I've had my credit appear over a location I scouted, so that final shot in Euphoria was pretty special.
But I get uneasy revealing the locations I've found for shows, because people take that to mean you were "responsible" for them. Which couldn't be less true!
Filmmaking is a collaborative art, and NONE of this would have been possible without the talent and effort of every single member of the locations department credited above, let alone the entire rest of the cast and crew. Here's a glimpse of what I mean with regard to the farm...
The locations department is hired very, very early in the prep process for any shoot, because you can't do much if you don't know where you're filming.
Head of the dept is the location manager (my boss).
In turn, a location manager works for the production designer, who is responsible for the overall look/aesthetic of a shoot; production designer in turn works for the director/showrunner to help them achieve their vision.
By the time I'm hired as one of several scouts, many evolving conversations will have taken place between these higher-ups regarding the fictional locations we're now to find in reality, with notes on the most important creative/logistic notes to hit when possible.
We divvy up the list. Read the scene(s). And then set out to clear and photograph as many options as possible. You want to try very hard to hit all the exact requirements, but you also want to go a few deviations outside the ask, just to show some variation and inspire new ideas.
With the farm location, I'll start by turning to options I have on file. But computer scouting taps out pretty quickly, and it's also boring and makes me feel lazy, so I'm always anxious to hit the road to "cold scout" (lol a silly term to mean looking somewhere new).
So I scout farms. Some options in Santa Clarita, in Lancaster, in Palmdale, and beyond. I upload the pictures. I get notes back: we like this, look for more of that, etc.
And then, one day I'm told they have enough, and to move on to something else.
Sometimes I hear which location gets chosen; often, I forget to ask, and only find out when I watch the finished work. So that's where my role ends.
But my part is only the start to a LONG process.
From the cleared locations, the production designer and location manager will re-scout their top selects in person to assess both creative possibilities and logistical feasibility.
Also weighing into the conversation is the director of photography; where the production designer can speak to the look of a location, the DP will offer expertise and insight into how it will shoot.
At some point, the top top selects are chosen, and a director/showrunner scout will follow. Hopefully, a final location is chosen; but often, we'll be asked for more rounds of options.
Once a "hero" location is finally chosen, a member of the locations department is assigned as the main point person to handle EVERYTHING there, from logistics to contracts to neighbor complaints and so forth.
Meanwhile, the production designer/art department start drawing up plans for how the location will be dressed/altered. Because EVERYTHING is likely to change in some way. Walls painted or wallpapered. Furniture removed. Appliances swapped out. New artwork on the walls.
Similarly, other depts have to work out their logistics, from generator placement to cable runs, condor locations, and so forth. Much of this takes place during the all-hands-on-deck tech scout, where all departments visit the hero locations and download their needs to locations.
I haven't even mentioned anything about departments like casting, which are so far outside my purview that I never hear how things work; yet they clearly have to take a location into consideration to figure out who should be in the scene.
And of course leading the charge on all of this are the ADs, who work out the exact schedules of all this insanity, background counts, arrival times, and so on, and so on, and so on.
Prep begins. All the various crews descend on a location to ready it for the shoot in the days leading up to the shoot. The locations person assigned to the location makes sure everything goes smoothly and puts out fires as they occur.
Then the big shoot. Crew of 100+ descend on the location. Much goes exactly according to plan; much changes as sudden inspiration takes place. Then it's time to clean up and restore like we were never there.
This is an extremely, EXTREMELY superficial summary of the various contributors to a film shoot. But my point is simply this.
Who is responsible for a location?
Literally. Fucking. EVERYONE.
Yes, I found the farm...but I also found dozens of other farms too.
Choosing THIS location, to look the way it did, to shoot it the way it was shot, with actors playing off their environment as they did, directed as they were, and so on...
The collaboration in filmmaking is unlike anything I've ever experienced in life, a ridiculously intense, passionate group effort of professionals from a thousand hyper-focused disciplines gathering together in the creation of art...
It's a really beautiful and unique thing in filmmaking that I think is rarely acknowledged, and in 20+ years of location scouting, Euphoria was one of the most talented group I've had the pleasure to work with. Hope you enjoyed our work.