Film and television work is a poor fit for a firm that only knows a Monday-to-Friday office spec. Cleanamotion has cleaned locations alongside the offices, warehouses and schools it has looked after since 1978, from the Leighton Buzzard base and across Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire and Milton Keynes. The skills are the same. The clock is not.

A location might be a house that has to be handed back cleaner than it was found, a unit base in an industrial unit, or a warehouse dressed as a set. The art department leaves marks. Catering leaves a kitchen that was never designed for eighty lunches. The unit leaves at wrap, and the owner wants the keys in the morning. That is the job.

What to tell the cleaning company before the shoot

– The address, the access, and who holds the keys. A village lane and a Milton Keynes estate are different arrivals, especially at 6am or after wrap.

– The dates of prep, shoot and strike, not just the filming days. Most of the heavy cleaning sits at the two ends.

– What must not be touched. A dressed set, a hired sofa, a polished floor the camera is using. A cleaner who has not been told will clean the thing you needed left alone.

– If there is a unit kitchen, it needs a commercial clean, not a wipe of the worktop.

– Hand-back standard. “As found” and “better than we found it” are different quotes. Photograph the rooms before prep if the owner is particular.

– Who is authorised to add a room. Runners add spaces. The invoice should not be a surprise to the production manager.

Windows, carpets and a one-off deep clean of a kitchen can sit on the same ticket as the daily tidy of the unit base. They should be named. A daily clean will not lift a carpet that has had a crew through it for a fortnight.

On a live day the clean is usually early, late, or both, and it stays out of the shot. Toilets, kitchens, floors in the unit base, and the location rooms that are not dressed. Waste goes off site, not into the owner’s bins, unless that was agreed. If the call time moves, the cleaning call time moves. That only works if someone on the production has the number and uses it.

Strike is when the location is judged. Tape residue, scuff marks, a carpet that needs a machine rather than a vacuum, windows the lighting department has had a hand in. Book the periodic work for the day after wrap, not for the morning the owner walks through. If the location is a client’s own building, the same firm can fold the shoot into the existing contract and then go back to the normal spec.

Call 01525 234113 or email sales@cleanamotion.co.uk with the dates, the address and whether it is a house, a unit base or a set. The office is at 15 Ropa Court, Friday Street, Leighton Buzzard, LU7 1DU. A production that books the clean when it books the location gets a crew. A production that rings at wrap gets whoever is free.