Heading to Milan for a week, and have a free day – make an AW shoot, right? 👍🏻
Making scenes for abbywinters.com while travelling is possible in theory, but it seldom works out to be viable in practise. The problems are not insurmountable, but they do bear consideration…
Travel of Shoot Producer
While we have in the past, and we may in the future, we generally do not pay for Shoot Producers to travel between cities to make shoots for us. That is, we do not pay for flights, baggage overages, transfers, accom, meals, or incidentals for Shoot Producers.
Recruiting models
It’s difficult for us to know if we should advertise for models in each city you frequent – or not. If we don’t advertise for models in one city, it’s unlikely we’d get many (if any) suitable models there.
If we do advertise for models, those models are going to want to be shot (and we want them shot!), but if your plans change we’re left “carrying the can” and dealing with unhappy models and broken promises.
If we’re already recruiting models in a certain city, it’s because we already have a Shoot Producer based there, and it’s not appropriate for you to visit and “cut their lunch”.
Schedule limitations
Depending on your schedule, if you’re only in town for a few days a month (say), that limits when we can make shoots. If it happens that those are the times a given model cannot shoot with you, we all miss out.
The more time you’re available to shoot in a given city, the less of an issue this is, of course. We’d need to know your schedule ~8 weeks in advance at all times, and require you to stick to it – even if some shoots fall through.
Related to this, it can sometimes take months to build up enough models in a city to make regular-shooting be possible, and in that build up time, there’s sure to be several misfires (relating to the next point).
Dealing with unreliable models
Models can be unreliable, and sometimes things happen that are outside our control that means the shoot day cannot go ahead (model grooming is the most likely issue here, but things always seem to come up – fight with boyf / car not working / mass transit strike / grandma sick, etc).
In your Home City, that’s usually less of an issue – reschedule the shoot to a few days in the future. Annoying, but not terrible. But in an “away” city, it’s more difficult, with your own flights and accom and equipment rental / transport to manage – plus the shooting location.
Transporting suitable equipment
Our shoots require some specific equipment that’s usually bulky and difficult to transit. Having multiple sets of equipment in different cities can work, but that’s expensive when it’ll be dormant most of the time. Renting equipment – even just half of the equipment necessary – is not financially viable, especially considering the risk of model-cancellations.
We worry the pressure to make money would encourage you to cut corners on equipment, and that’s not preferred. You can see the equipment we recommend.
Securing suitable locations when travelling
In our experience, Shoot Producers have difficulty finding suitable shoot locations in their Home City, finding locations in “away” cities is even harder (note that hotels are never acceptable for our shoots, but AirBNB’s can work).
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Perhaps not all of these issues would affect you? We definitely need more shoots, and we’d like for you to make them, but these issues can create some real problems. Let’s work on them together!