💡 Scouting the location

Published about 4 hours ago • 2 min read

There’s a scene in One Battle After Another that takes place in a stretch of desert highway near the California/Arizona border.

**Mild spoiler: the movie is essentially a 2.5 hour chase, and the climax happens in this very distinct location — a “river of hills” in the desert of southern California.

The roving hills are so unique and integral to the conclusion of the film that they’re likely the iconic image that will stick in your mind weeks/months after you see it.

So it was a surprise to hear that the director, Paul Thomas Anderson, hadn’t yet figured out how the film was going to end when they started shooting.

From ‘The Director’s Cut’ podcast:

“I have to admit that we went into this movie without that as our ending.

We knew that all our participants were headed to the desert, and we knew we were going to [spoiler redacted] in some way, but exactly how it was all going to go down was unclear to us.”

But nonetheless, inspiration arrived for Paul and his team in a ‘you-know-it-when-you-see-it’ moment:

And it was one of those lucky moments where you’re sitting in a car for four hours going, God, next time maybe I’ll never go on a location scout again.

But then you come across this and you go, this is why you get in a van and you location scout, because these discoveries are there if you’re patient and the movie gods are on your side.

And we kind of mapped it all out and we designed it and ended up creating a scenario.

Aside from just loving these stories of serendipity, this behind-the-scenes reveal really echoed for me the kind of leap of faith we take as soloists shedding our corporate skins.

You know you have the pieces to something.

Something special and valuable to offer the market.

The expertise and uniquely earned skills to get a client through a thorny challenge.

But you don’t know exactly what it looks like.

What exact niche you’ll land on.

Or which service model the market is looking for.

Or what revenue goals you could actually reach.

Or how you’ll adapt to changing market dynamics.

Or build around new tech advances.

But none of that gets resolved on a whiteboard, or in an AI chat, or even with a business coach.

It takes getting out there, initiating conversations, asking questions, finding pockets of truly unmet, urgent need.

In other words, scouting the location.

Being open-eyed enough to be able to say, “Yep, there it is” even when it’s not what you expected.

And being patient and diligent enough to keep curious until you get there.

💡

-Wes

If you haven’t seen OBAA, it’s on HBO Max in the US, or still in a few theaters leading up to next month’s Oscars.

And if you have seen it and you’re interested in retracing the filming locations, NYT paid them a visit. (Free gift article)

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💡 The Lightbulb

💡 Scouting the location

💡 The Lightbulb