Istanbul Location Scout

We had a successful location scout today.  We drove all over Istanbul from the European side, to the Asian side, and back again.  We were looking for locations that were distinctly Istanbul, while at the same time were not typical tourism marketing photos.  We were in search of the “real Istanbul”

Along the way we found neighborhoods, mosques, roadways, and signposts.  Some are perfect for our purposes; and some, while interesting, are not appropriate for the spots we are creating.

We had a delicious lunch at Vira Vira Balik Restaurant (at a fish restaurant) overlooking the Bosphorus Sea.  There we mapped out our production day, and in the process determined the areas where will will shoot, and the areas that we simply won’t have time to shoot.  Our time here is limited, in many ways as much as it was in Sweden.  There we were limited by the short daylight hours.  Here, although the sun is up for longer, there is not the volume of traffic that we want during this holiday until later in the day.

We will begin on Friday shooting an interview, followed by an interview while driving.  After that, we will shoot two cameras for most of the rest of the day.  In a few locations we will shoot together, but at other times Doug and I will split up to cover different action simultaneously.  Then we will join together again at the end of our day to finish our shoot of our hero driving at a snails pace making his way through the heavy traffic at a weekly occurring bazaar.

Tomorrow we will finalize the production details, and with luck, do a bit more exploring of the city, before our whirlwind Friday.  Friday we will shoot, then get to the airport to fly to Cairo.