The Power of Community: How to Find the Ideal Filming Location

We’ve filmed in some really great spots around Edmonton over the years. If you’re trying to find good locations for a film project, this is what’s helped me find the perfect spot.

Start by just looking into the area a bit. See what’s around, what stands out, what feels different. Sometimes a place has a story or history that actually adds to your shoot without you even planning it. We would do this by exploring. Not deep into the river valley. I would have loved to do that. But by going to Edmonton’s favourite places.

Talking to local organizations helps a lot more than you’d think. Some places really want to help and will give you the location for free or help you access an off-limit areas. Cultural centres and community groups can point you to spots you wouldn’t find on your own. We filmed at a cultural centre in season 2 of Voices and had never been there before. They even let us do b-roll in the theatre — all by ourselves. We took a couple of minutes to pretend we were on stage and then shared it with our daughter later as a joke.

Honestly, just asking people is one of the best things you can do. Shop owners, people walking around, anyone who knows the area, they’ll often tell you about places you’d never think to look.

Community events are great too. Festivals, fairs, things like that. You get to experience the space properly and see how it feels with people in it. Plus, you might find a location you want to come back to later. Just make sure you get permission if you plan to film there.

And just be respectful. It sounds obvious, but it really matters. Make sure you’re allowed to film, try not to disrupt people too much, and leave things the way you found them (or better). That goes a long way.

While talking to people in my community it’s challenging to listen to the amount of people who never got to do that they want and put off their passions. People tell us these stories at the booth and I hold every one of them in my heart. Then something like disability comes and they can’t. That leads me to:

My see what happens year.

I have a lot of notebooks. They’re everywhere. They’re filled with stories, drawings, ideas for new products, photoshoots, and plans for the future.

My daughter likes to open them to random pages and ask me why I never made what’s on them.

Today I found one with an idea I wrote back in 2013, in my terrible handwriting, printing and cursive all mashed together. It was a story.

Around that time, I had taken writing courses through the U of A Extension with Candas Dorsey and one from her partner Timothy, and I was writing a lot. I had even sent short stories to a few online magazines. I got some positive feedback, but they said I needed to revise them before they would consider publishing. At the time, I couldn’t figure out what needed fixing or how to fix it. I also didn’t have the “spoons,” I think is the word everyone uses to figure it out.

I also remember that was when my pain was really out of control from doing too many physical things with my business. So I set writing aside, thinking I would come back to it when things were more manageable. My goal was that no matter what I would start when I was 50, because I wouldn’t be able to do any more physical artwork and that would be my reward. Well I had to start around a decade earlier…

Fast forward to now. Things are getting better, I’m dropping all the things my doctors told me to stop, so I’m going to start writing again when I’m not editing my documentaries.

This has been my year of “let’s see what happens,” so that’s what I’m going to do.

Tanner has been fully supportive of me writing more, especially after I worked on the script and short story for my partially funded short film. He’s taken on making more pieces for the booth on his own while I figure out how to balance everything and make space for writing again. I’m going to bury this down here to hold myself accountable. I have a couple of people who read this and I know they will ask me how far along I’ve got every time I see them. I hope they do anyways.