Prepare a Film-Pitch Packet for a Location Owner

You have a deck. It has a logline, a mood board, and a paragraph about tone. You send it to the owner of a small repair shop because her front counter and workbench are exactly right for a scene. She opens it on her phone during a slow afternoon, scrolls past the stills, and does not reply.

Nothing in that deck was dishonest. It answered a question she wasn't asking. A creative deck is built for people who decide whether a film is worth making: producers, funders, collaborators who already want to be in the film business. A location owner is deciding something much narrower — whether she is willing to have a conversation about her building. One document rarely serves both readers, because the two of them are being asked to trust different things.

The packet that works does four jobs in about two pages. It says who you are and what the finished piece is. It explains why this particular building matters to the story. It separates the film's version of the place from the activity you actually want to discuss on the real one. And it asks for a conversation, not a signature.

Write for the owner's first decision, not the film's evaluator

The owner's decision is small and immediate: talk to these people or not. Everything in the packet should be doing work toward that, which means three things belong near the top.

Identity. What is this production, and where does it end up? A short drama going to festivals, a commercial for a regional chain, a student project that will screen once on campus — all three are fine, and all three are different propositions for a person whose shop will be in the frame. Say which one you are. Vague grandeur ("a feature-length project currently in development") reads worse than a modest fact, because the owner can't picture what would actually happen at her address.

A short description of the story. A paragraph. Not a synopsis with a twist ending, not a tone manifesto, not a teaser. She is not evaluating the script, and a full plot summary asks her to. What she needs is enough to understand the mood of the scene being proposed and how her building sits inside it.

Why this building, specifically. This is the part most packets fake, and it's the part that decides whether you get a reply. "The space has incredible character and texture" is flattery, and every owner of an old building has read it before. A real reason sounds like staging: the scene turns on someone walking in the front door while the other person is working, so we need a counter facing the entrance and a bench behind it where someone stands half turned away and still knows who has arrived. That is a reason the owner can check against the room she is standing in. It also tells her you have actually looked, which is the thing that expensive paper cannot buy.

Leave out the sizzle reel. Leave out the twelve-page treatment. If the packet is longer than the conversation it is requesting, the ratio is wrong.

Put the screen scene beside the proposed real use

Here is where a location introduction either earns trust or quietly spends it. Take a fictional project to work with: a short drama called After Closing, two people, one repair shop, an argument neither of them wanted. The shop we are writing to is Halbrook's, a small appliance repair shop with a sales counter at the front and a workbench behind it. The shop in the film is Halbrook's as the script has it — the version the story needs, which is not the same thing as the room we would be asking to use.

The trick is to stop translating and start pairing. In one column, what happens in the film. In the next, what that could mean at the real address. In the third, where it currently stands.

Two things in that table are doing more than they look like.

The first is the jar. A screen event is not a proposal. "A jar breaks" is a sentence about a character's evening; it is not a statement that anyone intends to break anything of yours, and the packet has to say so out loud, because an owner reading a scene description will supply the worst version of it. The method is genuinely open — it might break, it might spill without breaking, it might not be seen at all — and each of those has a different cost for the person who owns the floor it lands on. A packet that presents the vivid version as a plan, then adds "we'll figure out the details later," has taught the owner that your documents improve after she says yes.

The second is the street. One fictional location is regularly assembled from several actual ones. A shop's interior may be one address, its exterior another, and the neon sign that makes the shot a third. Owners who have been through this before will ask which parts you want, and if the answer is "we'll see when we get there," they hear "everything." Naming the two areas you're asking about — the counter and its floor, the bench and the aisle behind it — and naming what you are not asking about, such as the upstairs rooms or the loading bay, is what turns a request into something a person can actually weigh.

There is also a clock hiding in the fiction. The scene takes place at night. That is a fact about the story, not about your schedule. The film's night could be photographed at four in the afternoon with the blinds down, or after the shop closes, and those are different requests with different consequences for a business that needs its doors open. Don't let the drama of the scene make the operational question for you.

And leave "minimal disruption" in the deck. It is a promise made on behalf of a crew that has not yet been planned, about a building no one has assessed, and owners have heard it before. Replace it with the description of what you want to do and an honest account of what's still open.

Name what is known, unassessed, and still requested

Distance between a scene and a plan isn't the only gap owners worry about. The other one is between what you've written and what you'll say on the day. Close it with consistent status labels, used the same way every time.

Settled means decided and not moving. Proposed means this is what the team is currently aiming at, and it could change. Not yet assessed means nobody has looked. Question for the person handling locations means the answer depends on something only your side can work out, and this packet is not pretending to have it.

The table above uses them, and the model packet below says the same things in ordinary words: what we would like to talk about is proposed, what we don't know yet is not yet assessed, what we are not asking about is settled. The labels are shorthand for the team. The owner should never have to decode one.

Then take seriously what you must not fill in. Do not state a crew size you have not fixed, hours you have not planned, a fee nobody has authorised, or availability you have not confirmed. Do not say the shop would definitely be closed, or that all equipment stays in place, or that the shoot takes one evening, if the method hasn't been chosen yet — in the example above, whether the jar breaks is exactly what changes how many evenings are needed. Anchoring an unknown to the activity it affects, rather than to a small caveat at the bottom of the page, is the difference between "they've thought about this" and "there's a footnote I should worry about."

Assembled, a packet for After Closing looks like this.

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AFTER CLOSING — a short film

From the producer, with a phone number a person answers.

The film. After Closing is a short drama about two people who end up in the same closed shop on the same evening. It's being made by a small team this winter, and we hope to submit it to festivals.

Why this building. The scene turns on someone walking in the front door while the other person is working at the bench. We need a counter facing the entrance and a workbench behind it — a room where a person standing at the bench is half turned away and still sees who has arrived. That arrangement is why we are writing to Halbrook's and not somewhere else.

What we would like to talk about. Two areas: the sales counter and the floor in front of it, and the workbench with the aisle behind it. Broadly: two people standing at the counter, one person at the bench, and a small jar of parts falling to the floor.

What we don't know yet. Whether the jar breaks on camera, and how — it may not. That decision would change how long we need the shop. We also don't yet know how many people would be on site, which evenings, or whether the shop would be open while we work. We are aiming at a weeknight in early November and have booked nothing.

What we are not asking about. The upstairs rooms, the loading bay, and anything outside the two areas above.

What we are asking for. Twenty minutes of your time, in the shop or on the phone, whenever suits you. If it seems worth continuing, we would ask to walk through the two areas with the person who handles locations, before anything is decided.

Nothing here is an agreement, a request for permission to film, or a promise about how the work would go. If you say no, that's a complete answer, and we won't ask twice.

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Close with a bounded production handoff

The last part of the packet is the part that decides whether the first conversation leads anywhere: who is going to answer, and what happens if the owner is interested.

Name a person, not a mailbox. The person who signs should be someone who can answer an operational question or find the answer, and who will still be reachable in three weeks. That is often a producer or a location manager rather than a director — not because directors are unwelcome, but because the owner's questions will be about evenings, floors, and who is responsible if something goes wrong, and a director's honest answer to all three is usually "the producer." Never list a role you haven't actually filled. If nobody on the team handles locations yet, say that a location person will be introduced before anything is discussed in detail. An owner who is told at the start that a name is coming will accept it. An owner who discovers the name was aspirational will not.

Be explicit that the introduction is not authorisation. Someone on your team may have bought a vacuum from this shop for years. Someone stopped in to look around last month. Neither is permission to film, and neither is a reason to skip asking. The same holds for a walkthrough: looking at a room with the owner standing next to you is not an agreement about the room. The paragraph above says this plainly, which is why it can sit at the end of a friendly letter without sounding cold.

The sequencing here is not just a matter of politeness. FilmLA, whose public guidance applies to its service jurisdictions in Greater Los Angeles, lists gathering information as an early step in its "Get a Film Permit" page and, in the version checked on 18 September 2026, advises discussing location plans before making agreements or verbal commitments. That page carries no publication date. It is a local film office's guidance for its own jurisdictions — not a national rule, not a template for this document, and it says nothing here about fees, deadlines, or insurance. What it supports is narrow and worth keeping: the introduction comes before commitments, not after them. Whatever the requirements actually are in your city, they belong to the production professionals who handle them, and this packet neither determines them nor stands in for them.

Finally, keep a second page that never goes to the owner. A list for whoever leads the production, holding the things the introduction deliberately leaves open: who the location contact is, whether there is any budget for a location fee at all, who is checking the permit situation, who assesses what the space can carry, when the team genuinely needs an answer, and what happens if the answer is no. Some of that list will be empty at the start. That is fine. It is far better to know your list is empty than to let a packet imply it isn't.

If a decision is needed by a certain date, say so once, plainly, and only if it's true. A deadline that turns out to be soft teaches the owner that your dates move.

The measure of the whole packet is what the owner can do with it. She should be able to read it in the time it takes to drink a coffee and come back with any of three answers: come by on Thursday, no thank you, or ask me again in the spring. "No" and "later" are both working results. The packet has failed only if she agrees to something she didn't understand — or declines because she understood something you never said.

Frequently asked questions

What four jobs should a location-owner packet do?

In about two pages, it should say who you are and what the finished piece is; explain why this particular building matters to the story; separate the film's version of the place from the activity you actually want to discuss on the real one; and ask for a conversation, not a signature. The packet is written for the owner's first decision: whether to talk to these people.

Why doesn't a creative deck serve a location owner well?

A creative deck is built for people deciding whether a film is worth making, such as producers, funders, and collaborators who already want to be in the film business. A location owner is deciding something narrower: whether she is willing to have a conversation about her building. The two readers are being asked to trust different things, so one document rarely serves both.

How should a packet pair screen events with possible real-world use?

Put what happens in the film beside what it might mean at the real address and where it currently stands. A screen event is not a proposal: a jar breaking on screen might not break on camera at all, and the method changes how long the shop would be needed. Name the areas you are asking about and what you are not asking about, and do not let a fictional night decide the operational schedule.

What do the status labels mean in the packet?

Settled means decided and not moving. Proposed means the team is currently aiming at it and it could change. Not yet assessed means nobody has looked. Question for the person handling locations means the answer depends on something only your side can work out. Use the labels consistently, but write in ordinary words so the owner never has to decode them.

What should happen at the close of the packet?

Name a person who can answer an operational question or find the answer, and who will still be reachable; never list a role you have not filled. Be explicit that an introduction or walkthrough is not authorisation. Guidance from FilmLA in its service jurisdictions lists gathering information early and advises discussing location plans before agreements or verbal commitments, but that guidance is local and limited. Keep a separate internal page for open items, say a deadline once only if it is true, and let the owner answer come by, no, or ask again later.

Further reading

• Use Your Own Location Photos to Test a Film Idea, Not Pretend It Is Shot — Use this when you want to test whether the room really supports the sightline you promise, and to caption what an image shows against what stays unverified.
• Write a Scout Brief That Tests the Commercial’s Action — Read this after an owner agrees to a walkthrough: it turns the two areas you named into questions and photographs a scout can check.