Location, location, location." This mantra of savvy real estate investors—both residential and commercial—is now also reflected in a photo exhibition running for the next seven-and-a-half weeks at the Pacific Design Center, West Hollywood.
Free to the public, the exhibit consists of location photographs taken by 35 location scouts. The scenes are varied, ranging from Old West to urban America to sites that appear to be distant locales like China, India, the United Kingdom and France—but all 59 photographs were taken in "the zone," an invisible yet very real circle that radiates some 30 miles from the Pacific Design Center neighborhood, which is in the heart of Greater Los Angeles.
Industry labor contracts typically contain language about the zone in that shoots outside this radius require higher per diem compensation, commute expenses and/or overnight lodging. But this photography exhibition, aptly titled "In the Zone," serves purposes that fall under the province of both art and commerce.
In the latter, the big-picture issue is runaway production. This exhibition is an artful yet pointedly business-oriented reminder of the wide world that’s contained within the zone. Beth Tate, a location scout and one of the exhibit’s organizers, has three photos on display, including one of an Asian temple. In a Los Angeles Time story, she recalled that the temple was for a European commercial, which she worked on five winters ago. Recollecting that it was too cold or gloomy to shoot in many of the exotic locales that the spot required, Tate came up with multiple Southern California locations to serve as a global stand-in. She found the temple, which stood for India, in Malibu.
As chronicled in SHOOT, several prime economic factors have caused much production to exit Los Angeles—and for that matter, the United States. Exacerbating the runaway problem for commercials was the six-month Screen Actors Guild (SAG) strike against the advertising industry in 1990. That strike was settled by a three-year contract that expires at the end of October.
Now, in its own way, the Pacific Design Center exhibit makes an eloquent case for producers and ad agencies to stay in the zone. It also underscores the importance of cooler, wiser heads prevailing in upcoming negotiations for a new commercials labor agreement between SAG and the Joint Policy Committee of the Association of National Advertisers and the American Association of Advertising Agencies.
On an artistic scale, the photos are pieces of work unto themselves. They’re a far cry from the Polaroid shots associated with early scouts. The "In the Zone" photos passed muster from an accomplished jury that included director Tony Scott (of bicoastal RSA USA and London-based RSA Films), architectural photographer Julius Shulman, still photographer Kelvin Jones and production designer Jeannine Oppewall.
In the aforementioned Times piece, the exhibition’s producer, Dylan Kendall, director of the Open Museum of Los Angeles, related that "reframing" the images as art photographs was apropos. "There’s not one photograph in this show that doesn’t tell a story," Kendall said. Indeed, in their search for the perfect locations, scouts have documented the history, architecture and neighborhoods of Los Angeles with their photography.
The exhibit is open to the public Monday-Friday, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., through April 15. Visit www.inthezonela.org for more information.
