The Terror of Location Scouting

As someone who writes and also directs (to say nothing of producing!), I often find that my writing is tempered by the need to shoot the scene. I'm never going to write a scene where a kid opens a jar of killer bees on a school bus and the bus careens off a cliff. My writing nous might be attracted to the idea, but the directing side of my brain would lose the plot. "No, no, no! Too hard to shoot!"

But if you give in to this pragmatism, you end up writing films where all the action takes place on a park bench (ask me how I know). Directing films written by other people can be a real challenge, because of this. But also a great opportunity to think creatively and to push yourself to make it work.
Ken's script for Channel 31 was inventive and bold. There were scenes in a big country house, an undertakers and even a graveyard. I fretted initially over the house. Ken and I visited a warehouse in the middle of nowhere. We had permission to shoot there, but the acoustics were awful, I'd still need to recreate the "down-at-heel" sitting room, including furnishings, and there's an establishing shot as the taxi pulls up at the beginning.
That's even before you worry about the graveyard (at night, naturally!) or the "coffin scene."
But being challenged is exactly how you solve these problems. I heard about Castle Ellen House in Athenry and it seemed ideal. We met with the owner, and he agreed to let us use the house. The outside was perfect, the sitting room was ideal, and we even had other rooms to set up hair/makeup and the obligatory tea/coffee.
One down, two to go...
It turns out that the local undertaker near where we were shooting was quite happy to let us use his facility (on the condition it wasn't "in use" on the day). I remember wondering about whether we'd need to buy a coffin for Pat who played Felix. But it turns out, most coffins are a standard size and most if not all undertakers keep one in reserve. So we borrowed the coffin for the few hours of the shoot that day, and presumably the rightful owner claimed their eternal resting place, shortly after. I hope they don't mind...
We shot the scene on the day without a hitch, and one of the stills shows Pat giving a gleeful smile as he announces he's "ready for his close-up!"
Now there was just that pesky graveyard scene. I tried making headstones out of foam and out of plywood. They looked awful. Really fake. I watched numerous Youtube videos made by people who decorate their front gardens every halloween. It made no difference. The headstones looked cheap and cheesy.
But it turns out, there's also a (mostly) disused graveyard not that far away. A quick conversation with the parish priest, who wanted assurances we wouldn't actually "dig anything up" and we were away! What's more, there was a farmyard about one hundred yards away, and they had a sixteen amp socket. We ran a very long extension cable and powered our lighting rig. Nowadays, you'd just use battery-operated lights. Not back then. The farmer gave us permission to use the power, and refused all payment for the electricity. We ran the cable, set up some of the basic equipment, went for dinner, and came back when it was dark. I think we shot those scenes at around 2AM on July 4th, which if memory serves, was Ken's birthday. He later announced that it was probably the most unusual way he'd ever celebrated his birthday.
The film is all the better for using real locations. You can't fake those headstones. Personally, I need to work harder to stop being so production-focused when I write. I need to challenge myself more. No, I'm still not writing scenes that involve bees on school buses careening off cliffs, but it is possible to make your film way more cinematic, if you challenge yourself to open up the list of locations.