TECHNES Encyclopedia Database

Cinema decors create meaning: they underscore the psychological or sociological qualities of the characters, establish an ambience or foretell an action.^[1] Scouting strategies and the choice of shooting locations are guided by the kind of film (a film whose narrative is rooted in the present, or a so-called “period” film) and the filmmaker’s artistic choices (seeking realism or not), but also the available budget. When for artistic or economic reasons a film studio is not leased for building sets and shooting, the search for “natural decors” – meaning real places – is a major question for everyone working on the film’s production.

Public or private places; sites used or unused, urban or rural; a showy château or an everyday hospital: there are many places which might be used as decors in a film’s shooting phase – and also for the image’s digital treatment in the post-production phase. But not every place is suited to being used as a film decor.

Depending on the quantity and narrative importance of the decors and the film’s budget, the actual search for locations is carried out by the filmmaker or his or her assistant, with the production designer, or increasingly by specialists for whom this work is a profession: location scouts. How are searching for and choosing shooting locations carried out in order for them to become a film decor?

Rendering

Stage directions, descriptions of the characters and the narrative ambience function as indications in the script out of which a “profile” of the site can be established. The filmmaker’s intention, which the decor is tasked with rendering, is sometimes very precisely set out (especially when the filmmaker drew on certain places with which he or she is intimately familiar while writing the script). But this intention can also be relatively indefinite, and take shape gradually over the course of numerous professional discussions between the director and his or her artistic collaborators (the production designer, director of photography, assistant director and location scout in particular). In the film’s preparatory phase, discussions accompanied by photographs, films, architectural references and paintings make it possible to clarify expectations and to envision particular artistic avenues. This sharing of references facilitates the elucidation of the envisioned ambiences, materials and colours, and spaces in which the actors will move about. The qualities expected of a site thus take shape gradually out of a repetitive process and will guide the scouting work.

As with actors, the importance of locations can vary, and choosing them is a true form of “casting.” Sites which distinguish the main characters or those central to the story are subjected to great attention. The approximate nature of some descriptions in the script offers a large margin of interpretation. Very precisely described places, on the other hand, appear to fix the possible locations of the decor. But just because a really existing place is wanted by a director does not mean it will necessarily be available or accessible without conditions. Compromises must then take place: one must picture equivalents, anticipate possible transformations, take into account different options in the framing and the matching possibilities in the editing. Searching for locations anticipates these spheres of activity found throughout the film production phase.

Exploring

The range of locations suitable for a film shoot is established gradually, through the attentive exploration of the highways and byways of a given area (a search area which may also be limited because of budgetary constraints, or preferred because regional subsidies may be in play). But not all locations are equal.

Although in the digital age the Internet and Google Maps have made it much easier to establish a database of possible decors, real investigation on site is necessary in order not to settle for previously seen places, and because the availability and configuration of a site can change very rapidly. Some have closed down, others transformed. One must thus be attentive to spatial and architectural revamping, especially when historical recreations are involved. Here is how the film director Régis Roinsard chose the town of Lisieux, in the Calvados department, for a street scene in his film Populaire:

At first we looked in Eure because it is close to Paris. For many reasons, it is always simpler to be close to Paris. Because there are things to fetch, actors to bring to the location, etc. And also because it is the region in Normandy I know the best, because my father was the head of an insurance company in Louviers, and he often went to Évreux... When we went to Évreux, I saw that we could not shoot on any of the streets, especially those I really liked, without making immense changes to the decor, so great was the “pollution” by new things, from street lamps to signage to storefronts, everything. It was impossible to shoot there. Even the sidewalks, the railings, nothing worked any more. When I saw that, I said to myself: we’ll look everywhere in Normandy for a post-war reconstruction style... That took us to Saint-Lô and all over. And we ended up in Lisieux and discovered this street. At first I wasn’t that thrilled. The production designer showed it to me. She said to me: “Look, when you shoot there, it will be super, people will think they’re really in the period. I’m going to do that, I’m going to do such-and-such a store, etc.” We took some pictures and it was true, I realized that it was the ideal street for depicting an average provincial town.^[2]