Excerpt from Financial Times:
The other way to ensure that locations are secured smoothly is to use a broker. There are several operations, particularly in the industry’s hometown, that specialise in providing high-end homes that are pre-vetted for filming. They handle negotiations with a production company and take a cut, usually around 30 per cent, of any rental fees paid. Catherine Meyler runs one of them, Meyler & Co.
She’s an expat Briton who worked as a nanny in late-1980s Los Angeles; her employer was an architecture buff whose enthusiasm she quickly shared. She began traipsing around the city house-spotting as a hobby. Her knowledge of the town’s architectural infrastructure helped her stumble into a job finding locations, initially for fashion shoots, then for film.
Meyler’s roster of 2,000 or so properties includes mostly notable homes, such as those designed by Richard Neutra or Greene & Greene. A home by the latter in Pasadena had been painstakingly restored by its owners, and the producers of mini-series The Romanoffs were keen to use it.
“[The owners] found a huge, 2ft square chandelier during the restoration that had been custom-made for the house in a large hallway, and said it couldn’t be moved,” Meyler recalls. It was at risk of damage from the equipment so the location manager Chris Baugh suggested a solution: a chandelier babysitter, a crew member deployed to sit beneath it at all times. “The owner did agree to it,” Meyler says.
Read the full article: https://www.ft.com/content/327f3ee4-d3d4-44d3-8027-9b4db7eb512f