Location is everything

What they do: Could your house be on TV? It doesn't have to be flash - think how many dramas you've seen set in two-up-two-downs, apartments and council estates. Admittedly, advertisements tend to go for penthouse apartments, and well-appointed family homes, particularly ones with smart looking kitchens.

As a location manager, it's Maria O'Connor's job to find houses and apartments for movies, dramas and advertisements. "The first thing I do is read the script, then I sit down with the production designer and director to find out what type of locations they're looking for," she says. She was location manager on The Clinic, the RTÉ drama made by Parallel Films and the drama involved several different locations around Dublin.

"For the clinic itself we wanted a three-storey, detached, double-fronted house with a basement," she says." They spotted one in Belgrave Square and it turned out that it had just been featured in the Pierce Brosnan movie shot here during the summer. The house even had it's own agent, a Dublin-based company, Blake Webb. Other locations included a featureless basement flat for the receptionist, a smart hotel room for the sleazy plastic surgeon and an old but interesting council-type house for the physiotherapist. "In the case of the flat it was important that it should be close to the house being used for the exterior of the clinic because of the shooting schedule so we wouldn't be hauling everything between locations." All the interiors were shot in a studio in Stillorgan.

It's not usual for a house to be on an agent's books, so O'Connor usually cold calls likely looking houses or drops letters asking the homeowner to contact her if they're interested. A couple of years ago it was difficult to get people to agree to having their houses used, says O'Connor, putting their reluctance down to the amount of money sloshing around. These days she finds home owners more amenable.

Suitable locations must have space nearby to park the crew's four or five 30 ft trucks and particular shoots have particular requirements. "Once you bring a camera into a room, the room shrinks. So if we needed to shoot in a kitchen we would often need it to have, say an arch leading into the dining room, so the camera could shoot into the kitchen from there." Open-plan houses and apartments are usually favoured.

"People are often surprised by the level of the fees involved," she says, adding that €500-€600 per day is an industry norm. The deal is that your house will be returned to you as you left it. Often a house is perfect, except for the colour of the hall door or the kitchen walls, and the production company would paint to suit the script and repaint again, depending on the homeowner's wishes.

The Irish Film Board are building a locations database with photographs of a broad variety of locations, including private houses, around the country.

Meanwhile O'Connor is off to hunt down a large bathroom with a roll-top bath.