A couple of friends and I have a WhatsApp group called ‘Observations’ where we share, on a daily basis, things that catch our attention in today’s world, which titillate us and more often than not, completely blow us away.

One subject that came up last week is the utter proliferation of signs attached to lampposts around Cape Town guiding film production companies to their ‘shoot’ location. It’s one of those things that one always notices and registers but not necessarily ‘unpacks’ metaphorically speaking. The matter having been raised, we then started to discuss our opinions on it and, to a man, we are completely incredulous.

A number of points have been raised.

Why on earth are film production companies the only businesses where one is guided into one’s place of work? In literally every single other line of business or daily life, everyone operates on a system utilising directions, Google maps, GPS etc. But for these people, they must be guided and directed with lamppost signs?

It’s absolutely ridiculous. Fact.

Imagine, for a second, if everyone in any line of work was guided by lamppost signs in order to get to where they need to go. Imagine if one were to book a doctor’s appointment and expect to be guided from one’s house to the doctor’s surgery by signs on lampposts? Or if there was a beach touch rugby tournament on Camps Bay beach, with signs starting outside the Waterfront as players arrived on the N2.

To that end, it’s not as if these signs only appear close to the location. The signs that really got us going this week and which triggered this post, were for a film company called “Cyclone” (the names are always perfectly stupid and irritating – “Mushroom”, “Pineapple” , “The Farm” etc. etc.) who were guided with signs on lampposts from the M3, onto Ou Kaapse Weg, all the way down Silvermine Road and into Noordhoek.

Is this really completely necessary?

Let’s accept for one minute that you really need to have signs.. Why not tell them to get to Noordhoek and then follow signs? Or even better – and I know this is going to sound absolutely mental – give them the address of where the job is and don’t utilise any signs.

Imagine.

It’s not as if, that when one arrives at the destination, that film companies are hard to spot or are known to carry a light footprint. Trucks, lights, cameras and an army of people (wardrobe, ‘craft table’, blah blah blah) all indicate a ‘shoot’ location. You’d have to be a starfish not to find such a location.

I know this is possibly a rather petty gripe, but judging by the number of signs we feel like it’s getting out of hand. We simply must go public with this. With your help we can put a stop to it.

Can anyone suggest a good hashtag to accompany Tweets and Instagrams to do with this crusade?

One 2OV reader seems to think that these are just downright illegal…thoughts?

ps. I’m aware this isn’t technically an ‘open letter’ but I thought that would be fun – just saying that. Open letters are almost as annoying as film production signs and we should probably discuss them during a future observation post.