Gold Mountain

Gold Mountain

Chinese mining camp needed…

In search of the past…and we found it!

One spring day I got a very unusual call for a location. The client was out of New York City and they wanted me to scout and find some locations for a documentary on Chinese immigration. The request was for an old mining camp within an hour of San Francisco.

When I got the call I knew immediately that this was probably not possible. There was no mining camp in the Bay Area let alone large mountains and a river, all the things that instantly say mining camp. It did not exist within an hour drive of the city.

I explained the situation to the client but they wanted me to try. So I made some calls and then got in my car and did due diligence. I found a couple of caves, but they we not mining caves. I found an old west type of town but no mining camp. This location they wanted just didn’t exist in the parameters they were asking for.

So here I am on the top the Marin headland, sitting in my car, feeling discouraged and thinking there was a good chance that I’d lose this job. I’m about to call the client with the bad new but instead, as a last effort, I think to call the film commissioner (film commissions are all over the country) in San Mateo County. We have a brief conversation and because she is familiar up with all of the other film commissioners in the state she knows exactly where there’s an 1870’s mining camp with all of the buildings and props intact. I can’t believe it…”Where?” I ask…She tells me about 2 hours east and gives me the name of the film commissioner in Placer County. I am ecstatic! Like a treasure hunter who smells the ancient artifact in the jungle ahead…I couldn’t believe my luck.

Still, I know that this is not at all what the client was asking for. But now it was my turn to convince them that this was going to be the perfect location and yes, it would cost more. They would have to travel the cast and crew and put them up in hotels and feed them. But for this particular project we needed the real deal, there was no way to fake such a large set and we had a perfect mining camp…only two hours east of San Francisco. This is where my passion for doing my job helped the producers, 3000 miles away, make the right decisions for the project.

So I called my client and explained the situation. I was able to immediately send over photos of the mining camp that the Placer Film Commissioner had on file. It took some convincing to the producer, who had to ask for more money, but in the end that was exactly what we did. We filmed all over Auburn and the surrounding areas for one week.

The project was very successful and because of the circumstances and the difficulty of the location, I was awarded location professional of the year in documentaries for 2015 in California. Because I refused to believe that I couldn’t find the un-findable.

Lessons from the set:

Never let a potential client go. If you can’t help them find someone who can but always try to find a solution. They aren’t on the ground and can’t see the world you see so if you give them the opportunity to succeed in an area they couldn’t see before, you will be the hero.

It’s important to try and even if you don’t think you can, you keep trying. You never know what’s around the corner in this business and you can solve your problems in an instant with the right information. Tenacity.

Ask for help. If you don’t know the answer get on the phone and start dialing. You have more people than you know in your back pocket so use them!

Vocab:

Film Commissions - local film commissions are there to help anyone who is producing a project in their area. They help with permits and logistics and have a good understanding of their area.