Now, while many of us know that external contracts for use of your sim space by outside healthcare agencies is possible – finding clients and securing interest in your facilities and/or your training program requires dedicated time and energy. Well, last week the Clinical Simulation Center of Las Vegas was contacted by a state agency asking if we wanted to join a list of locations available for high paying rental opportunities, and all I had to do was submit our contact information!
Click the “Learn more” link below to find out whose paying high prices for simulation lab space and how you can easily get their attention. Reading this short article could bring record breaking profits for your Simulation Lab!
While going through Fire Academy I worked at a restaurant bar in downtown Los Angeles. One day my boss told me to come in six hours late because he had rented out his space to a film shoot. I was astonished to learn the space had rented out that day for over $20,000!
Last month the Nevada State Film Office contacted me looking to add the Clinical Simulation Center of Las Vegas as a possible location for future big budget productions. The reason Advanced Simulation Labs and Centers are perfect for productions is that there are no real patients to worry about. Our labs look and feel like real life hospital environments without any of the issues production managers dread having to deal with for hospital scenes: renting out costly hospitals, redirecting heavy foot and bed traffic, and things like biohazard or medical issues.
Big budget productions always send out “location scouts” to find great settings for scenes in their movies. Here in the States, location scouts always check state film offices to help them locate ‘hard to find’ spots for filming. Getting signed up with your region’s film board is as easy as submitting some pictures and contact information to the appropriate departments. Here is a link to the Director’s Guild of America’s regional list of Film Boards, which is a great place to find your area’s representative. There are also private companies which help to connect locations to film projects such as www.reel-scout.com .
Considerations on the mind of every Film-Scout:
- Distance from major freeways
- Accessibility for big production trucks
- Parking – for cast, crew, and trucks. (But sometimes crew parking is miles away and shuttles move people back and forth as needed).
- Power – big lights need a lot of power and if your facility cannot handle the added voltage a generator will have to be brought in.
- Cost
- Overall convenience – my friend rented out his driveway to a production for $2,000 a day just for a generator to park for a production across the street!
My only recommendation is that any project coming to shoot at your facility must be able to fax you a copy of their “production insurance”. This insurance covers the cost of any accidental damage or crew injury that takes place at your facility during their production. And of course, some productions that contact you may be ‘low budget’ projects and will say they don’t have a lot of money to spend on locations. Productions are mostly ‘for-profit’ businesses so realize they may try to negotiate with your administration for a better rate. Just don’t sign up for a project that does not meet your criteria for finanical return of renting out your location since these situations are designed to be ‘win-win’. And it definately can be as providing your space for a day or two during off hours can literally bring tens of thousands of dollars – so the minimal effort in signing up your facility is more than worth it!
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