Chinese Mining Camp Needed…
Some jobs start with a simple ask. This was not one of them.
I get a call from a client out of New York. They’re doing a documentary on Chinese immigration and need an old mining camp.
Within an hour of San Francisco. I knew the answer before they finished the sentence: that doesn’t exist. No mountains like that. No river setups. No preserved mining camps just casually sitting in the Bay Area waiting for a film crew to roll in. Not even close.
I told them. They said, “Try anyway.” Alright…game on.
I made calls. Got in the car. Did the work. Found caves—wrong kind. Found an old west-style town—close, but no mining camp. Every lead got me almost there, but not what they needed.
Translation: the location didn’t exist within their parameters.
Now I’m sitting up on the Marin Headlands, in my car, doing the math. This is the part of the job no one talks about—the moment where you realize you might lose it. I’m about to make the call and tell them we struck out. But before I do…one more move.
I call a film commissioner down in San Mateo County. Quick conversation. And here’s where experience—and relationships—pay off.
She says, “I know exactly what you need.”
Turns out, she knows the entire network of film commissioners across the state. And just like that—boom—she points me to a fully intact 1870s mining camp.
Two hours east.
I’m sitting there thinking…you’ve got to be kidding me.
She connects me with Placer County. Photos come through. It’s perfect. Not “kind of works”—perfect.
Now the real job begins. Because this is not what the client asked for. This means travel. Hotels. Crew costs. Feeding people. More money. More logistics. More everything.
So now I have to sell it. This is where you earn your keep.
I call them, walk them through it, send the photos immediately. I don’t pitch it as an option—I pitch it as the solution. Because it is. You can’t fake something at that scale. Not convincingly. Not for this story.
It took some convincing. It took the producer going back for more budget. But they said yes. We filmed in Auburn and the surrounding areas for a week.
And it worked.
The project landed. And that job ended up earning me Location Professional of the Year for documentaries in California in 2015. A COLA Award!
All because I didn’t accept “it doesn’t exist.”
Lessons from the Set
Don’t let a job die on your watch. If you can’t solve it, find someone who can—but don’t stop at “no.”
What the client sees and what actually exists are two very different things. Your job is to bridge that gap.
Tenacity beats talent more often than people want to admit. Keep going.
Use your network. If you’re stuck, pick up the phone. Someone out there has the answer—you just haven’t called them yet.
