The first time it happened, Afi Lowery was unprepared.
“I want to say there were 50 people here. Cars lined up and down the block. It was a pretty chaotic scene,” she says.
Sounds like Lowery’s an unlucky mom whose children threw an out-of-hand party. But nope — she’s not even a parent.
Instead, she’s one of a growing number of people in the neighborhood whose home has been used as a film location. That’s partly because location scouts Francis McIntyre and Kim Davis, among only a handful of people who do this type of work in
But also, McIntyre says, it’s because of
“We have great diversity of architecture coupled with great convenience,” he says. “The ability to move easily around town is something unique to
When McIntyre first knocked on the Lowerys’ door, Afi says, he was lucky her husband answered.
“He said he was looking for a certain type of house, and from the outside our house fit the profile,” says Lowery, who wasn’t home at the time. “I was very skeptical. I could not believe that my husband had had this long conversation with a stranger, and that he was coming back. I really didn’t think it was legitimate.”
But legitimate it was, and McIntyre’s professional demeanor soon had her convinced to give it a try.
“He just made me feel comfortable,” she says now.
Still, she felt anything but comfortable during that first shoot, when dozens of people showed up to film a Spanish-language Blockbuster Video commercial.
“It was very invasive,” she says. “They’re everywhere. There are people everywhere. The day starts at about 5 a.m., and for that commercial it was huge. They went around to tell everyone on the street that a commercial was going on. They had a cop for traffic. There was a trailer outside. They use all your power. There’s a chef who makes breakfast, lunch and dinner in your driveway.”
Lowery confined herself to her bedroom to watch TV, and had to eventually put a sign on the door asking people to knock after being walked in on a couple of times.
Still, she admits the experience was interesting.
“They took everything out and put it in a storage van outside the house and hired someone to guard it. And it was very interesting to see the transformation [of the house] in such a short space of time. They took pictures of the house the way it was set up, and they put everything back the way they found it.”
When Ann and John Buser moved into their
house 13 years ago, they soon found out it already had been used as a location when the scouting company approached them for permission to continue using it.
“I guess I did it the first time out of curiosity,” Buser says. “Now, it’s pretty good money.”
Which is the main reason homeowners such as Lowery, who found the experience less than glamorous at first, continue to allow McIntyre and his clients into their homes. On average, homeowners who let their homes be used as film locations are paid about $1,000 a day. If more prep or wrap work is involved the day before or after the shoot, that number can climb higher.
“It involves no work for me,” Buser says. “I just try to get out of the way.”
Since they moved in, Buser guesses about 30 commercials have been filmed at her house, including spots for RadioShack, Owens Country Sausage, Pizza Inn and a Proctor & Gamble vegetable cleaning product. And she agrees with Lowery’s assessment of how chaotic a scene it can be, recalling that first experience as being “like a whirlwind.”
But now that she’s accustomed to the process, Buser says she has found time to make some new friends.
“Now, I hang around to visit with people I’ve met before,” she says. “But then I go do my own thing and try to be back here when they’re just about done.”
And one thing all the homeowners agree upon is the professionalism of the film crews.
“They’re very nice — just such nice people,” Buser says. “And they are very good at putting everything back the way it’s supposed to be. I’ve never had anything broken or damaged. And they’re well-insured if anything should happen.”
Still, says Shannon Jamison, who has had three commercials filmed at her house: “It may not be for everybody.”
Buser points out there can be inconveniences.
“When they’re shooting, they can’t have other sounds, so we’d have to keep the kids quiet. And we have an old house with creaky floors and stairs, so when they say “rolling,” we’d have to stand there and wait.”
Floors are taped up, curtains are taken down, furniture is moved out and, as both the Busers and the Lowerys can attest to, lawns are altered. Both families have had their grass tinted green for shoots.
“They shot a water conservation commercial out in the front yard in maybe January or February, when our grass was brown,” Buser says. “So they came in and painted the grass green so this guy could be sitting in little swimming pool pretending to be wasting water.”
For these reasons alone, people should think twice before offering up their home, McIntyre says.
“I make a point of trying to be really frank about the sort of circus-like nature of the arrival of an entire film company. There can be 35-40 people, or there might even be as many as 70 people in your house.”
Still, Jamison says, much of the headache can be alleviated the first time you recognize your house on TV. A spot for Partnership For a Drug-Free America was filmed at her house in the Munger Historic District.
“I saw that one all the time. It ran almost daily on Channel 5, and I even saw it on E!”
And there can be other perks, she says.
“During one shoot, they hung some very nice drapery hardware, about $500 worth,” she says. “And they left it here for us. They’ll bring in plants and sometimes drapes, and if you kind of let them know early on, ‘Hey, I kind of like that,’ sometimes you’ll end up with it.”
The final perk? Remember that chef, cooking for all those dozens of people, that Lowery described? Nearly everyone interviewed for this story affectionately mentioned the fruits of his labor.
“My son loves craft services, the food table,” Buser says, laughing. “He has a nice hot breakfast when they’re here, and he has munchies when he gets home.”
