Location Research (Beyond the Shoot)

Google is your friend. If you're traveling to an unfamiliar location for your video shoot, familiarize yourself with important locations before you get there. That way, when you arrive you can spend more time making sure your rental equipment is in order and you can actually rest up before your first shoot.

Food & Coffee​

​Find some familiar, quick restaurants close to your shoot location. Do this in the comfort of your own home well before you leave for the shoot. This might sound silly, but I found that most days during my last out-of-town shoot I was in a hurry to grab some lunch and then get back to the shoot location to continue prepping for the next shoot. I ended up finding two familiar fast food restaurants side by side, which I alternated during the trip. Ideally, I would have had those locations already in my phone so I could quickly plot them in my GPS, get there, and get back as quickly as possible. You can certainly ask your client or others about some local favorites, then try those out for dinner when you have more time to relax (assuming your shoot is during normal business hours). But do make sure you have several quick, familiar places picked out for your quick grab-and-go lunch. And if you're a coffee person, find one of your favorite coffee shops or some promising local java joints as well. Do all of this in advance of your trip and you'll thank yourself later.

Equipment

If you rent some of your video equipment from a rental company who ships the gear directly to your location (like lensrentals.com or borrowlenses.com), be sure to also scout the local area for video equipment rental and retail businesses as well. Even if you're not renting anything, you might find you need something from a pro video shop that you either forgot, don't have, or didn't consider bringing. If you're shooting in a large enough city or area, you should be able to find at least one decent video production rental house and/or retail shop within driving distance. Who knows, you might get lucky and find several. In my case, I found two incredible businesses only ten to fifteen minutes away from the shoot location.

This worked out great because I had two equipment failures during my shoot. One was a video/photography shop. The other was a light bulb shop. I was lucky. Next time, I'm definitely researching these sorts of places ahead of time and putting their addresses and phone numbers in my phone for quick access. And that's my advice to you as well.

Attractions

Look up some local attractions, landmarks and entertainment. If you're going to have some free time in the evening, or if you book an extra day or two just for some sightseeing, look into the popular and obscure attractions in the area. Find out what their operating hours are and how close they are to your hotel or shoot location. Plan it out. And also, look for coupons! More often than not, those are available online these days. Who knows, you might even be able to use some video of local landmarks for your project. Or, shoot some footage and sell it as stock video. Or, you can just leave your camera at the hotel and enjoy some you-time.

Maps

Print maps. Or purchase a road map and mark the locations. I know, that's an old school suggestion. But you never know when you'll be caught with a dead or almost dead phone and you need to get somewhere. Part of the beauty of researching all of these places ahead of time is you'll be able to have the locations already saved in your phone. So if you're wise, you'll invest in a portable phone charger which you will keep juiced up for emergencies only. But if you don't trust yourself to keep both your phone and the back-up charger from dying on you, it won't hurt to have actual paper maps with you just in case. Keep them in your glove box or backpack and you'll have a back-up to your back-up.

These are all things I wish I thought about before my last shoot in a totally unfamiliar city. But next time, I'll be ready. And now, so will you!