Location Scout Seeks Out Magical in the Mundane

GLENDALE —  The frozen-food section of a local grocery store isn’t exactly the first place that leaps to mind when it comes to artistic inspiration.

But amid the Haagen-Dazs and TV dinners at Jons Supermarket on Glenoaks Boulevard, Tim Hillman is taking his best shot.

He aims his Pentax 35-millimeter camera at the drab linoleum aisle shadowed on either side by massive glass display coolers.

Reeling off a few frames at the intended target, Hillman snaps away from every corner of the store before pausing briefly to capture the image of smoked meats dangling from above the deli counter.

If all goes as planned, the store and its freezer aisle will provide the ideal backdrop for a three-minute scene in an upcoming New Line Cinema drama starring Al Pacino. Then again, maybe not.

Filmmakers can be as finicky as they are creative. And when scouting a location, experience teaches it pays to cover all your bases.

“The director is looking for that one shot,” said Hillman, who will visit 15 or more grocery stores before making a final selection for the three-minute scene. “I try and shoot everything because the director can see things other people can’t.”

Hillman, 44, knows all about it. For the past decade, he has been a Hollywood location manager and scout for such films as “Scream 2,” “Feeling Minnesota,” and 1999’s “Magnolia.”

For every hour of images that flicker across the silver screen, it’s a good bet Hillman and his assistants have spent hundreds of hours on the ground working to make it all come together.

Keeping His Eyes Wide Open

A native of Sandwich, Mass., Hillman often can be found in his Blue Ford Explorer with his essentials: a camera, cellular phone, day planner and the first weathered Thomas Guide he bought when he moved to Los Angeles in 1990.

To choose the 18 to 50 locations for a typical feature film, creative thinking is required as a matter of course, he says. And as he cruises local streets and freeways--his eyes are always peeled for the next cinematographic gem.

“In Los Angeles, it’s very, very hard to find a spot that hasn’t been filmed at least once,” Hillman says. That means taking the standard location and turning it into something completely different.

In the 1996 film “Most Wanted,” for example, Hillman needed to come up with the location for a library.

After scouting the downtown Central Library, the main library at USC, and the Pasadena library, he said a light went off in his head.

“I just looked at the rooms and eliminated the books and thought of other spaces those books could be in,” said Hillman. “The first thing I thought of was the old ticketing area at Union Station.” The crew filled the area with books and presto, they had a library.

Later, for the same film, Hillman needed water-filled tunnels for a scene depicting the sewers underneath the streets of Los Angeles.

During a trip to the Donald C. Tillman Water Reclamation Center in Van Nuys for its Japanese Garden, he noticed tunnels that were perfect for the sewer scene.

Indeed, a star can be born in the most ordinary locations.

Want the feel of New England with Cape Cod-style houses and deciduous trees without jumping on a plane? Plenty of houses in neighborhoods south of Ventura Boulevard in Studio City fit the bill.

A cheap alternative to transplanting cast and crew to the Serengeti? Put a few huts and lions among the tall grasses and trees in the sandy flood-control basin at Hansen Dam in Lake View Terrace.

In fact, before filming begins on his latest project, Hillman will have scouted hundreds of potential sites across the Valley and Los Angeles, working 12 to 14 hours a day, shooting 12 to 14 rolls of film.

The images are collected and assembled in a book of photos that, depending on the number of locations, can be up to 15-20 pages thick.

And that’s just for starters.

Hillman helps coordinate the “field trips” to set locations with the director, the set designer and others, including grips and electricians.

When filming finally begins, he goes from being a location scout to a location manager--getting permits from local police, fire, traffic and parking officials; crafting a budget for each film site; and making sure the necessities are there for the crew, including phone lines, catering, parking and restrooms.

Delicate Negotiations

For one film’s opening sequence, in which the film crew set a small blaze in San Bernardino National Forest near Big Bear, Hillman had to appear at a special hearing before the South Coast Air Quality Management District.

“I’ve been in a maximum-security prison, a nuclear power plant, the bowels of a ship, the back of a strip club and in gorgeous mansions and churches all over the country,” says Hillman.

Since 1990, he has worked on more than 30 projects, including feature films, movies of the week, television series and pilots. Most of his work is done in the Los Angeles area, but he has gone as far afield as Georgia, Minnesota, Iowa, Tennessee and Texas.

Hillman is a member of Studio Transportation Drivers Teamsters Local 399. Though he won’t say how much he makes, he notes that union scale for feature film location managers is about $2,111 per week.

His assistants--he usually works with two--are also, in effect, freelancers, but he tries to work with the same people if schedules permit.

Supporting a movie on the street costs $18,000-$22,000 a day, including location fees, support staff, portable toilets and phone lines, he says. That amount goes up if filming takes place at night or in expensive neighborhoods.

Things can also be complicated by the delicate matter of negotiating with homeowners, who typically charge $500 to $5,000 a day to use their homes for filming.

Ironically, he says, some of the strongest resistance to filming comes in the kinds of affluent neighborhoods favored by entertainment industry insiders.

Sometimes the demands are outrageous, he says.

During one shoot, one of his crews was forced to wear surgical booties and charged $15,000 to film inside a Holmby Hills mansion.

When a scene required rearranging the furniture, only movers with white cotton gloves were allowed to handle household objects.

Another time, an executive for a company that issues insurance for movies tried to stop crews from filming a movie of the week in his neighborhood, trying to enlist government officials to shut down the production. That effort failed and filming went ahead.

“This guy put up the biggest resistance,” Hillman said. “Yet everything he had came from this business and what we try to do every day.”

Still, he has empathy for residents displaced by filming. “I bring the circus to town,” Hillman said of the 18-20 production vehicles and 100 crew members that can descend on a quiet neighborhood like a conquering army.

Among the most memorable and challenging experiences was his work on “Magnolia,” director Paul Thomas Anderson’s 1999 film set and filmed in the San Fernando Valley.

“He knew what he wanted and he knew what his shots were,” Hillman said of the 43 locations he helped scout for “Magnolia.” Most were shot here in the Valley.

Before getting into the movie business, Hillman spent 15 years playing in rock ‘n’ roll bands along the East Coast. After several moves, he wound up in Chicago, where he sold real estate before his sister-in-law told him about location scouting.

Moving Closer to the Action

He started out with a $50-a-day job as a production assistant for the 1990 film “Music Box,” starring Jessica Lange. “I got introduced to the whole magic of the business, creating fantasy amid reality,” Hillman said.

Two years later, he worked his way up to location manager but realized producers called him only if they couldn’t get the veteran scouts already working in the Chicago area.

To achieve success, he had to move where the action was--Los Angeles. Now, it’s a full-time job, even when he’s taking time off.

“We’ll be on a vacation and my wife will say, ‘You’re scouting again, aren’t you?’ Hillman laughs. “She finds it enormously entertaining that I get excited about a large parking lot.”