A film-location service: crews, permits, fixers and locations, sold to the studios of India and Europe

A first step

Photograph 10 locations within a day's drive of you, a tea estate, a colonial building, a beach, a railway viewpoint, and write for each the access, how to reach the owner and what a crew would need. Send that pack to five production managers at film companies in India and Europe with a day rate for your fixing service. A reply asking about dates is your first lead.

Who pays first

A production company in India or Europe that needs a location fast and pays for someone who has already done the permits and the scouting.

What leaves today

The island's landscapes stand in for other places or are handled by foreign fixers; a local location service keeps the crew's spending here.

The idea and the mechanism are from the book. The first step was written for this site as a suggestion; if you know a better one, say so.

The test

Does it keep value that now leaves the island, or build the proof that lets somebody else do so?

The only test any idea on this site has to pass. The four rules that go with it are here.

In the book

• Ch. FiveThe Most Photographed Rock in the World
  Galle Fort, Venice and what heritage funnels do
• Ch. ThreeWhat We Have Already Built
  Geoffrey Bawa's tropical modernism and the Aman resorts

More from cluster 19

• 382Documentary production about the island's own stories, sold to the streaming platforms
• 383A museum shop worthy of the museum, at the National Museum, at Anuradhapura, at Galle
• 384Digitisation of the palm-leaf manuscripts and colonial archives as a paid service to the libraries of the world
• 385Architecture tours of Bawa's buildings with the houses opened by their owners
• 386Heritage-building restoration firms with the skills to work on the forts and the villas
• 387Galle Fort as a managed heritage site, run with the residents

All 15 ideas in this cluster