FilmFixer Launches AI-Powered 'LocationFinder'

Film and TV production continues to be an economic bright spot, with a record number of productions being filmed in the UK. A new AI-driven platform from FilmFixer and Image Data Systems (IDS) will keep the UK's location portfolio fresh, film friendly and accessible as never before.

Available here, it’s the first-ever visual search engine for locations, powered by machine learning. Blisteringly fast, the service delivers access to all the UK’s film friendly locations in one place.

And for the first time, LocationFinder overcomes the problem of having to rely on text-based keyword search, in a visual industry.

The launch event will take place at the FOCUS film production show in London on December 3rd. The ground-breaking tech behind LocationFinder means:

· Location managers can develop a full-suite of relevant locations instantly, getting rid of endless keyword searches on multiple websites.

· 30,000 UK locations – over half a million images – will be visually searchable and accessible through this single site.

Andrew Pavord, founder and chair of FilmFixer, explains: "Existing location websites rely on keywords. This is inherently flawed in a visual business such as ours. The brief location managers receive is usually a photo, accompanied by the request, ‘I need something that looks like this, but in Suffolk'. This might be a suburb in Istanbul, a Berlin street set in the 1940s, it might be Greenwich Village in the 1980s, or even a Moroccan Palace in the 1960s. It makes far more sense to drop that image into a search engine and add parameters such as, ‘inside the M25’ or ‘near Ipswich’, than to endlessly type in keywords to try and get a match. Locations are hard to describe, often you are looking for a mood or a feeling. This approach is far more intuitive."

Andrew Pavord continues: “LocationFinder will search locations represented by many locations agencies. That’s around half a million images, or 30,000 locations in total. It is essential for the UK, and London in particular, to support the requirements of our vital industry, which contributed to the largest GDP growth in any business sector in 2018. London has the world’s most unique mix of film friendly locations. By managing them effectively we can ensure they stay open for business and continue to attract the cream of the world’s big budget productions.”

For location agencies, LocationFinder offers an immediate uptick in business, as they will now be accessible to the vast FilmFixer network. Last year FilmFixer processed 8,000 location filming applications across the UK, working with its community of 20,000 film industry professionals.

We look forward to meeting producers and location managers at Focus when we introduce LocationFinder, and show how UK tech is making life easier for them “beyond words”.