Location, Location, Location: Choosing Settings for Fiction
Location - every writer's delight and every producer's bane:
ME: "I've written a thrilling chase scene set in Paddington Station at rush hour!"
PRODUCER: "Could it be Gunnersbury at 3am?"
In this blog post, I'm going to talk about the use of location in novels, low/no budget screenplays and stageplays - and how to make the right choices for your project.
First, what is a location? This may seem like a stupid question, but I want to emphasise that locations are not just externals - fields, castles, deserts, mountains. Locations are office buildings, hotel rooms, toilet cubicles. Anything you would put after EXT/INT in a screenplay.
Locations are also towns, countries - or planets. Space, The Final Frontier. A hotel room may look the same in London, Paris and Dubai, but the context of being in that country may determine the action of the scene - in fact, I would argue that it should.
Locations are not incidental. Setting your film in Australia for the...