HOT SEAT: UNIT BASE INTERVIEW WITH LOCATION MANAGER TOM GOAD
We sat down with London location manager, Tom Goad, to discuss the ins and outs of unit bases and why they are an important aspect of film/TV production. If unit bases aren’t on your radar then read on to find out the basics, including what makes a good unit base, considerations and how to rent your space for unit base work. Tom Goad has been working in the locations industry for close to twenty years, working on projects such as, A Good Day To Die Hard (2013), The Aeronauts (2019), The Outlaws (2021) and Liaison (2023). He is an invaluable source of location information and it was our pleasure to spend time with him discussing this lesser thought of aspect of the film locations world.
“Every production that moves around has lots of vehicles, including trucks, articulated lorries, crew cars - because we are a small travelling army.”
SL: Hey Tom, thanks for sitting down with us, tell us a little bit about yourself and your work.
Tom Goad: Hello my name is Tom Goad and I am a location manager of nearly two decades. I’ve worked on all from big movies to small independents to commercials and everything in between. And I’m here to talk about unit bases.
SL: Perfect, cool. So what are unit bases and why are they important?
Tom Goad: Unit bases are a glorified car park for the production. Every production that moves around has lots of vehicles, including trucks, articulated lorries, crew cars - because we are a small travelling army. And we need to find somewhere for all of that to be stationed and based near the locations of the production offices that we’re filming in and so a unit base is that space that can accommodate all those technical vehicles, all the facility vehicles, all the crew cars, and additional kit that comes with it that a production will have. And it could be based anywhere. It could be in the centre of town or it could be in a field in the middle of the countryside and everything in between.
SL: Fantastic. So what do you look for when scouting a unit base?
Tom Goad: So when you are trying to find a unit base, obviously there are quite a few considerations. But the first one is, can it accommodate all the vehicles we have? And the next one, is it close enough for it to service the actual location? And then obviously it goes on into the secondary stuff, but just as important, like cost. Does it have water supplies? Can we get access in the middle of the night? Does it have 24 hour access? Does the unit base itself need servicing in the sense of, you know, has it got potholes in it? Is it a rough field or do we lay trackway down so it can accommodate big heavy trucks that don’t get stuck. Is it easily accessible for the team and the crew and those are main things that we are looking for and they all affect each other so if the cost is very very expensive you will be looking for a different unit base. If it is too far away from production you have to devise ideas to make it work or not make it work.
“A Unit which is the collective term for what goes into the unit base, all the vehicles”
SL: Great, thank you. What would you say are the challenges then when it comes to unit bases?
Tom Goad: So the challenges with unit bases are numerous. But one of the main issues is getting access. This is usually true if they are in town in residential areas because you’ve got to make sure there’s no disturbance. A unit which is the collective term for what goes into the unit base, all the vehicles, they usually travel quite late at night because they move at the end of each day’s filming or overnight to get to the location that we’re filming in the next day. And so access can be quite troublesome, because of curfews, but also access for the vehicles themselves. Can they accommodate these large articulated lorries and all the other technical vehicles that we bring? Can you actually get them into the carpark or can you get them into the field? And if you are in a field you’ve got to lay trackway. Trackway is a kind of metal plating that you lay on the floor. It’s common for all festivals. It’s not a particularly film industry unique thing .
Other issues you’ve got to consider are, does it have access to water? Does it have a power supply? If not, you’ve got to obviously bring that all with you, which we’re very used to doing and if the unit base is running 24/7 you’ve got to have lighting running over night so it’s safe.
Then if it is close enough to the production because the unit base is where a lot of the crew, the hair and make-up and the resources will be based. You don’t want a long travel time between the unit base and the location but it’s getting harder and harder especially in London to find unit bases that are close enough but when you are in the countryside you can usually find a farmer’s field that’s quite close. So actually, there it’s the opposite. But yeah those are some of the considerations.
“scouting a unit base or just finding a unit base is oddly a much simpler task in a location because you’re looking for a very standard brief, which is either a large car park or a large open space that can accommodate , you know, a large amount of vehicles and then it comes down to again the costs and accessibility.”
SL: So how does scouting for unit bases differ from creative locations?
Tom Goad: So the main difference. Well, scouting a unit base or just finding a unit base is oddly a much simpler task in a location because you’re looking for a very standard brief, which is either a large car park or a large open space that can accommodate , you know, a large amount of vehicles and then it comes down to again the costs and accessibility. And will it actually work as a unit base for servicing the location. There is a long list of well known unit bases in London and Bristol and Manchester and Liverpool and all the other kind of well established places that you can use but they are usually booked up quite quickly. So sometimes you have to think slightly laterally or try and split the unit.
Sometimes you will take the technical vehicles much, much closer to the location so you can actually accommodate the vehicles at all of your unit bases. Or if you’re in a field then it’s a question of approaching the farmer. Or the council is usually quite a good one that can provide unit bases. Um, and rarely, you can actually have unit bases that are on the street. This is something you would go through the film offices that work on behalf of the film boroughs.
A very famous one is in Lincoln in the fields where you can pretty much hire all of the parking in the square and that’s a well known closed off space where you park your unit up and it works. Another one is Waterloo Place where the council is happy to do it, but obviously from a production point of view you would much rather have your own controlled space rather than a public one.
SL: Nice. And then the last one, how can a location owner best prepare their place to be a unit base?
Tom Goad: So when you are preparing a unit base, this is something that a unit manager and their assistant will invariably check out and have a look at. In fact they may be the ones sourcing it as it is their specific job within the locations department. Again they’ll be looking for accessibility, pot holes? Because obviously with really old battered car parks they will have to see if it needs work. Do we need to drain lots and lots of water out of puddles? Do we need to get some services in there to level the playing field? Clean water? Can we dispose of water there? Invariably if that’s not the case we will need to bring in our own fresh water in bowsers and get rid of it. Then thinking of the lights. You’ve got to make sure the whole place has lots of lighting if not we’re hiring tower lights. But again, it does depend on the location. If your location is based in town then there will be some type of local lighting but we will always end up bringing in our own and then you know, is your place safe? What are your trip hazards? Any disposals things like that.
Another consideration for unit base owners are the extra things which may need to be accommodated. So you might have your unit, but the production might be doing work with cars, which would be called action vehicles. Or sometimes you may be working with period dramas, so from the 1920s. So they will be bought on low loaders. And you’ve got to know whether your unit base can accommodate a low loader or if there’s animals, you know, you might be doing horses, can it accommodate horse trailers? I mean the list goes on and on. It could be a vast list of what you need and things to put in place but those are the fundamentals that you need to get in for a well functioning unit base.
If you are looking to work with Tom on your next production, want to know more about location work and unit bases, or think you may have a space suitable for unit base representation then please reach out.
