{"id":362144,"date":"2026-10-01T20:18:19","date_gmt":"2026-10-01T20:18:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/362144\/"},"modified":"2026-10-01T20:18:19","modified_gmt":"2026-10-01T20:18:19","slug":"new-yorks-location-scouting-secrets-from-the-scout-team","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/362144\/","title":{"rendered":"New York’s Location Scouting Secrets from ‘The Scout’ Team"},"content":{"rendered":"

Whenever the walkie on set pings for someone from the locations department, it\u2019s never for anything good. In fact, in Paula Gonz\u00e1lez-Nasser<\/a>\u2019s experience it\u2019s usually because an owner or tenant is upset with something the production is doing, or because something truly unhinged has happened that the locations team needs to deal with \u2014 like being trapped with an apartment owner who wants to share 9\/11 conspiracy theories, or the owner of a location being used on \u201cThe Last OG\u201d wanting to find Tracy Morgan<\/a> to give him a piece of their mind.<\/p>\n

Gonz\u00e1lez-Nasser<\/a> has stepped up the call sheet from a unit PA, locations scout, and locations coordinator all the way to a writer and director of her first feature, \u201cThe Scout<\/a>.\u201d But the job\u2019s strange trials, odd hours, endless parking tickets, and unscriptable personal interactions have stayed with her and shaped her creative process. \u201cThe Scout<\/a>\u201d follows a young location scout, Sofia (Mimi Davila), as she tries to find apartments suitable for a network TV pilot\u00a0while\u00a0keeping her own life in some sort of order, too.<\/p>\n

\"River\"<\/a> \"Gentle<\/a> <\/p>\n

\u201cScouting is the first seed for me. How I look at a space and what\u2019s there kicks the ideas off in my head,\u201d Gonz\u00e1lez-Nasser told IndieWire. \u201cIf anything,I have more appreciation for locations after directing this movie because we were so in it from the beginning, scouting spaces, but also seeing this character go through her day, you\u2019re reminded of how much work it is but also how special of a job it is.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"What<\/p>\n

Part of what makes the job special is the community of filmmakers in New York that Gonz\u00e1lez-Nasser is part of. In addition to the film<\/a>\u2019s producing team, Gonz\u00e1lez-Nasser has worked with some stalwart NYC-based locations managers and assistant locations managers throughout her career. These include Julie Sage and Hayden Dunham, who\u2019ve worked on the full gamut of New York City-based shows and films from \u201cHigh Maintenance\u201d and \u201cSearch Party,\u201d to \u201c\u2026And Just Like That\u201d and \u201cBillions,\u201d from \u201cOne Night Only\u201d to \u201cTransformers.\u201d Although they did not take part in the making of \u201cThe Scout,\u201d Sage and Dunham were on hand at Film Forum in advance of \u201cThe Scout\u2019s\u201d premiere to chat with IndieWire and Gonz\u00e1lez-Nasser about location scouting. <\/p>\n

Talking to the three of them together is a master class in the fine art (and sometimes crushing logistics) of scouting and doing locations work in general \u2013 and especially doing it in New York City and its surroundings, whether a project wants to stay true to the integrity of particular Brooklyn neighborhoods (\u201cHigh Maintenance\u201d) or wants to make New England look like Ohio (\u201cThe Chair Company\u201d).<\/p>\n

\u201cNew York really has a huge spectrum of high-end places and then much lower-end places,\u201d Sage told IndieWire. \u201cYou can be in a junkyard one day, and the next day you\u2019re scouting suites at The Plaza. So I think that\u2019s a really cool part of the job is seeing so much that New York has to offer on locations. You also get to see New York when no one\u2019s watching. Like I filmed on Ellis Island, and you can only film overnight, so you\u2019re there overnight, and you just get to see this private tour of the city when no one else is watching.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"THE\u2018The Scout\u2019 Courtesy Everett Collection<\/p>\n

But there are some standbys in the city that most locations teams know are film-friendly, too. \u201cAny courthouse scene filmed in New York, it\u2019s the Bronx Courthouse pretty much every time. It\u2019s the same courtroom for every single show or movie that\u2019s ever shot here,\u201d Dunham told IndieWire. \u201cIt comes down to places that will let you film during the week, during the day. For jails, it\u2019s the same two jails. The same hospital \u2014 Metropolitan Hospital.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThey have a wing they don\u2019t use, and it looks contemporary. They\u2019ll let you shoot there all the time,\u201d Sage added.<\/p>\n

Certain event spaces in and around the city \u2014 La Capitale on Bowery, Castle Gould at the Sands Point Preserve \u2014 are well known among locations teams for being film-friendly and versatile enough that they can stand in for anything and everything from a posh ballroom to a UFC area, once a production team is done with them. The logistics of bringing 100 to 200 crew into a place for a day are daunting enough to eliminate many options before the art of finding the right spaces can even begin.<\/p>\n

But finding those spaces \u2014 learning the ropes from scout to coordinator to manager \u2014 is an art that enables all the other artmaking on a film or TV project. \u201cA cinematographer can\u2019t do their job if they don\u2019t have a great location. A production designer can\u2019t do anything without a great location. It\u2019s such a pillar of the script coming to life,\u201d Gonz\u00e1lez-Nasser said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Scout\u201d is screening in select theaters.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Whenever the walkie on set pings for someone from the locations department, it\u2019s never for anything good. In…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":362145,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[749,9,24,55,54,56,134523,134524,103055],"class_list":["post-362144","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-film","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-city-headlines","tag-new-york-city-news","tag-ny","tag-paula-gonzu00e1lez-nasser","tag-the-scout","tag-top-of-the-line"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/362144","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=362144"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/362144\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/362145"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=362144"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=362144"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=362144"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}