Location shooting

Location shooting is the shooting of a film or television production in a real-world setting rather than a sound stage or backlot. The location may be interior or exterior.

When filmmaking professionals refer to shooting "on location", they are usually referring to a "practical location", which is any location that already exists in the real world.

The filming location may be the same in which the story is set (for example, scenes in the film The Interpreter were set and shot inside the United Nations Headquarters in Manhattan), or it may stand in for a different locale (the films Amadeus and The Illusionist were primarily set in Vienna, but were filmed in Prague). Location shooting includes any practical location which resembles the location of a scene in the script; for example, students in the film school of the University of Southern California traditionally use a specific location in the basement of Doheny Library as a stand in for the corridors of Grand Central Terminal which lead to the rail platforms.

Most films feature a combination of location and studio shoots; often, interior scenes will be shot on a sound stage while exterior scenes will be shot on location. Second unit photography is not generally considered a location shoot.

Before filming, the locations are generally surveyed in pre-production, a process known as location scouting and recce.

Location shooting has several advantages over filming on a studio set. First and foremost is that real-world locations often offer rich "authenticity" which would be very expensive to duplicate elsewhere. Unless the actual location "has fallen into disrepair", it will always look better than a set.

If the events depicted in the screenplay occur at real locations on Earth and it is feasible to shoot the film at those locations as scripted—rather than an alternate location where one part merely resembles (or can be dressed to resemble) the desired location—then this opens up "unlimited camera angles". The cinematographer does not need to "crop or cheat" on camera angles "to avoid showing the artifice". On a set, it is hard to replicate real-world wear and tear, as well as architectural details, and the sheer size of rural areas, large cities, and large architectural landmarks is difficult to recreate on a backlot. The failure of Camelot (1967) caused American filmmakers to shift exterior shots from studio backlots to authentic locations. The film was widely criticized for its cheap look because it was obviously filmed on an architecturally ambiguous set against the chaparral-covered hills of Burbank.

Shooting outside of the home country is sometimes used to bypass union rules, labor regulations, or work stoppages. It can also allow "frozen" currency to be used: the 1968 movie Kelly's Heroes was filmed in Yugoslavia using profits that had been made on movie exhibitions in that country but could not be exported.^{[citation needed]}