Location International 2019 by Boutique Editions

LOCATION 2019 INTERNATIONAL

N ER A H TH H. T E NO AC R MOST A Y BE JU ETT PR

2019 INTERNATIONAL SHOWCASING THE GLOBAL PRODUCTION INDUSTRY

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Locations, Infrastructure & Incentives. It’s all available at www.filmusvi.com

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Locations, Infrastructure & Incentives. It’s all available at www.filmusvi.com

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GOLD COAST, QUEENSLAND AUSTRALIA’S TOP DESTINATION FOR FILM & TV

AUSTRALIA’S LARGEST SOUND STAGE AT VILLAGE ROADSHOW STUDIOS

AUSTRALIA’S LARGEST WATER TANK AT VILLAGE ROADSHOW STUDIOS

Nine sound stages totalling 156.736sq ft? 14,560m2 includes largest sound stage of 40,000 sq ft / 3,716m2

Three heated and filtered water tanks totalling 2.48 million gallons / 9.4 million litres including the huge outdoor tank of 1.85 million gallons /7 millions litres

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www.screenqueensland.com.au

DIVERSE FILM FRIENDLY LOCATIONS THROUGHOUT THE REGION

INCENTIVES AND SUPPORT FROM SCREEN QUEENSLAND AND CITY OF GOLD COAST

The Gold Coast offers city architecture, beautiful beaches, sub-tropical rainforests, scenic country roads and dusty quarries - all within 30 minutes of the Studios

Screen Queensland and City of Gold Coast offer film incentives and production attraction support, along with on-the-ground resources focused on supporting all aspects of your production www.villageroadshowstudios.com.au

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2019 INTERNATIONAL SHOWCASING THE GLOBAL PRODUCTION INDUSTRY

Published by Boutique Editions Ltd. Additional copies are available on request. EDITOR Julian Newby MANAGING EDITOR Debbie Lincoln CONTRIBUTORS Clive Bull, Andy Fry, Sandy George, Gary Smith PUBLISHER Richard Woolley

ART DIRECTOR Christian Zivojinovic www.anoir.fr

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MUSSO & FRANK GRILL, HOLLYWOOD BOULEVARD, LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA, US Waiters serve classic American fare and martinis to diners in red booths at Hollywood's oldest eatery. The restaurant's popularity with industry clientele continues with stars including Johnny Depp, George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Keith Richards and Harrison Ford patronising the restaurant. One of the bartenders, Sergio, is friends with The Rolling Stones and often tours with them to make their drinks. It’s a famous period, classic, beautiful old Hollywood restaurant. Many movies and TV shows have filmed here including: The Day Of The Locust (1975); Ed Wood (1994); Ocean’s Eleven (2001); Greenberg (2010); and Once Upon A Time In Hollywood (2019).

(Photo, courtesy Rick Schuler, LMGI)

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2019

INTERNATIONAL

CONTENTS

ESCAPE AT DANNEMORA

Ben Stiller talks to Location International about his TV series directorial debut

ICELAND

'We live in a massive film set', says Iceland film commissioner Einar Hansen Thomasson

VIKINGS

Michael Hirst tells of the challenges shooting the epic TV series Vikings

27 UK

The UK continues to be one of the world's most in-demand film and TV production hubs

IN PICTURES

Stunning images of locations around the world

VIENNA BLOOD

Hilary Bevan Jones on filming in the Austrian captital

IN PICTURES

More locations around the world

BELGIUM

Where the impossible is possible

A tour of this rich region ends in Spain when we meet the stars of The Mallorca Files

CALIFORNIA

MEDITERRANEAN

WORLD ON FIRE

Cast and crew of the BBC's WWII series speak about the task of re-creating wartime Europe

GEORGIA

The booming production industry of the Empire State of the South

103

Brie Larson, Sandra Bullock, Susanne Bier and others on filming in California

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CANADA

The arsenal of attractions that Canada has to offer packs a punch that is hard to beat

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AUSTRALIA

When God was handing out locations Australia was at the front of the queue

Kevin Costner on 'a way of life that is not often explored'

ADVERTISERS INDEX

YELLOWSTONE

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MAKING A SCENE ESCAPE AT DANNEMORA

CAUGHT ON CAMERA ACTOR, WRITER, PRODUCER AND DIRECTOR BEN STILLER — ONE OF THE HIGHEST-GROSSING MOVIE STARS OF ALL TIME — HAS FINALLY CROSSED FROM FILM INTO SERIES TELEVISION, WITH PRISON-BREAK DRAMA ESCAPE AT DANNEMORA. STILLER TOLD JULIAN NEWBY HOW THE SERIES’ LOCATIONS HELPED HIM TO TELL THE STORY

SCAPE At Dannemora is based on the true story of a prison break-out in upstate New York in the summer of 2015, which led to a statewide manhunt for two convicted murderers. The man behind the escape was convicted murderer Richard Matt, played by Benicio del Toro. Patricia Arquette plays Tilly Mitchell, a wife and mother who supervises the prison tailor shop and becomes sexually involved with Matt and his fellow escapee, David Sweat, played by Paul Dano. Sweat, a convicted cop-killer, has genuine feelings for Mitchell and becomes a reluctant partner in Matt's plot — which involves Mitchell hiding hacksaw blades in frozen hamburger meat to help them escape. Stiller has come late to series television but he was certain from the outset that TV was the right medium with which to tell the story. “I think that right now television is the place where you can make the kind of movies that we’re not making anymore,” he says. “The movie business has changed so much in terms of what the major studios are putting out. This is the kind of thing that would have been made as a movie

30 or 40 years ago, probably. I still think there is an audience out there for this kind of thing cinematically, but the reality is that television now is the place where you have the freedom to tell these kinds of stories, and work in a way that is not just about bringing in a huge audience to the theatres. Nowadays the movies have to make such a huge profit that it’s very hard to find a producer who would take on a story like this.” He added: “Projects like this to me are a throwback to the kinds of movies I grew up watching.” Known for a string of hit comedies across three decades — as star, writer, producer and director — Escape At Dannemora is a departure in style for Stiller. It’s dark and brooding, he’s behind the camera throughout and while there is humour, it’s certainly not a comedy. So is it fair to say that it’s not what we might have expected from his first TV series as a director? “Yes I think that’s fair! In my mind, I’m a person who loves movies and has been doing it for a while and it’s the kind of story that I’ve wanted to tell, but I’ve never done it until now,” he says. “And I think, for me, the experience of directing it and not acting in it was really freeing in a lot of ways. Because when you just keep on doing what you do

you don’t really think about the preconceptions that people have about you. But when we went up to Plattsburgh, NY, where we shot a lot of it and where a lot of the events took place, when I met people from the area, I could tell that they were thinking that we might be trying to do some kind of comedy and in some way find the humour in the situation. I get that. I obviously haven’t directed anything in this genre before so that’s understandable.” Visiting the site of the Clinton Correctional Facility in the village of Dannemora, Clinton

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MAKING A SCENE ESCAPE AT DANNEMORA

Ben Stiller directs Benicio del Toro in Escape At Dannemora

“This is the kind of thing that would have been made as a movie 30 or 40 years ago” BEN STILLER

County, NY — where the real-life escape happened — was an inspiration for Stiller, who had originally turned down the offer to tell the story. Back in 2015 when the escape and the manhunt was all over the news in the US, Stiller was out of the country and so missed much of the coverage. On his return he was approached by writers Brett Johnson and Michael Tolkin while the story was still hot, but largely unaware of how it had gripped the nation, he turned it down. “We’ve all seen a lot of prison escape movies and they are always

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Patricia Arquette as Tilly Mitchell

“It was important to talk to people who had experienced it and try to get a feeling of the reality” BEN STILLER

fun to watch but what I was more interested in was the detail of how it happened. At the time they didn’t have that information.” But a year later a full report of the events surrounding the escape was published and Stiller and his team revisited the idea. “I felt a responsibility to tell the truth as much as possible but, you know, the truth isn’t always true and people have different versions of the same story. That’s why when we did finally decided to do it, it was really important to go up there and talk to people who experienced it.” Stiller also felt something of a responsibility portraying people and a part of the country that actually existed, something he hadn’t done before. “That’s why it was really important to talk to people who had experienced it and try to get a feeling of the reality,” he says. ”I thought it was important to try and tell the whole story, so that if you lived up there and had gone through it yourself, you’d think ‘Well at least they really tried to portray this in as a honest a way as possible’. I felt responsibility to the people up there.” Filming the series on-location, where all the action happened, was also important to Stiller. “I thought, rather than trying to recreate somewhere else, if the real place is there let’s try and get access

to it, because that’s what’s interesting about the challenge,” he says. “It’s something that happened in the recent past so some people are still going to be connected to it or have feelings about it — and the trade-off is you get real people there who are telling you what they saw. Literally every day you’d meet people who were saying ‘Yeah when it happened I was doing this,’ or ‘I knew that person,’ or ‘I worked at the prison,’ you know? We got so much information from being up there. And the visual aspect of it was important too, because that prison has such a unique look to it. The story requires a prison in the middle of a mountain and there are very few prisons like that — in the middle of this very beautiful bucolic wilderness. Just recreating that would have been very challenging.” Key to the series' authenticity was getting access to the Clinton Correctional Facility. But it took a meeting with governor of New York Andrew Cuomo before that access was granted as the New York State Department of Corrections had been unsure about opening the facility up to a film crew. “We didn’t have access to the prison until about a month before we were shooting so we where in a little bit of a bind. We didn’t know how we were going to recreate it, but luckily we were able to get in touch with the governor of New York who I sat

down with and started talking about the story. He was very helpful and he felt, I think, that opening up the prison to us, and having the co-operation of the prison, would help us tell the story in a real way. So that was a key element in making the whole thing happen.” Defending his decision against some criticism, Cuomo said: "From our point of view, doing a movie in the North Country is great," adding: "It's economic activity. It brings people to the North Country. Everything I've heard is that from an economic point of view, purely selfishly, it was great for the economy." For Stiller, this move into series television doesn’t necessarily mean his future lies here. Other directors in his position might not have taken on eight episodes, but he decided to direct them all. “I still think of it as a movie, like a long movie,” he says. “I really enjoyed the process but I don’t think I could do it that regularly. However I like the idea of telling a story over this period of time and to have the space to get into these specifics and the nuances of the characters and allowing them develop — which I think is what an audience loves to watch in a TV series. You have a history with the characters and that informs so much. That part was really interesting and I like that a lot. I’ll definitely do it again; I just don’t know if I could do it like this again. It was a little bit overwhelming in terms of what else is going on in your life.” Produced by CBS-owned Showtime, Escape At Dannemora is written and executive produced by Brett Johnson (Mad Men) and Michael Tolkin (The Player); Stiller directs, and with Johnson and Tolkin is among the series’ executive producers.

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FEATURE ICELAND

THE WORLD'S LARGEST

FILM SET

Think Iceland, think a glorious natural symphony of glaciers, waterfalls, mountains, volcanic geysers, lagoons, dramatic cliffs, wind-sculpted rocks and exotic lava formations. According to the locals — and they're only half joking — Iceland was God's testing ground. GARY SMITH reports The King Of Blaze combines a surreal manga story with Iceland's surreal landscapes

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FEATURE ICELAND

Tom Cruise on the edge of Earl's Rock in a scene from Oblivion EINAR HANSEN TOMASSON “WE’RE A NATION OF FISHERMEN, SO WE’RE USED TO WORKING LONG HOURS — OUR HIGHLY SKILLED CREWS WORK 12-HOUR DAYS, SEVEN DAYS A WEEK AS STANDARD”

CELANDIC film commissioner Einar Hansen Tomasson happily admits that Iceland is film-friendly in pretty much every way. “It’s true that we live in a massive film set,” he says. “But more than that, Iceland’s also very compact. It offers a range of looks, from black or white sand through green valleys to lava sculptures and glacial lagoons, within a three-hour radius of Reykjavik. So you save a lot of time and money here. On top of that, we have no unions and, historically, we’re a nation of fishermen, so we’re used to working long hours — our highly skilled crews work 12-hour days, seven days a week as standard. So when you put it all together, there are solid creative and financial reasons to shoot in Iceland.” It probably comes as no surprise that Iceland’s otherworldly looks often sell themselves. “We carried out a survey of why people choose to shoot here and many said it was due to seeing images of the country on TV, or in films and music videos,” Tomasson says. “We’ve always had a lot of US films — that started back in the 1980s when Holly-wood projects started coming to Iceland. But more recently, film and TV projects from India, Russia, China and, of course, the Nordic region have also shot here.” Tomasson’s role is a mixture of marketing and customer relations: “If a project is considering shooting in Iceland, I’m usually the first person they talk to. I then make introductions to our service sector and, most of the time, I connect them with at least three different companies in order to make sure the chemistry is right — especially on film projects — you don’t want to be spending several weeks with a crew you don’t get along with. Added to that, our incentive system is fast and reimbursements are paid within three months. And quite often, it’s much quicker than that — around one month.” Iceland was used to double for Svalbard, an island in the far north of Norway, in the film 22 July, directed by Paul Greengrass. The film tells the story of the horrific terrorist attacks in Oslo and on the island

of Utoya, where Anders Behring Breivik murdered 77 young people attending a Labour Party youth camp. Part of the film follows a character back to his home on the Norwegian island. “The place we filmed at in Iceland is called Siglufjordur, a village in the far north of the country,” says Leifur B Dagfinnsson, chairman and founding partner of Icelandic production-service company Truenorth. "We shot there because during the time of filming — January — Svalbard is completely in darkness, it's night 24-hours-a-day. Parts of Iceland look very much like Svalbard so it's a perfect double." Dagfinnsson adds: “We also doubled for Russia on Fast & Furious in 2016, including the sequence on the frozen lake, and we are currently working on a local series called The Valhalla Murders, which was sold to several territories by the commercial division of DR and then picked up for the rest of the world by Netflix.” The Valhalla Murders is 100% Icelandic. The eight-part crime series is created and directed by Thordur Palsson and produced by Truenorth and Mystery Productions for Icelandic public broadcaster RUV. The drama is produced by Truenorth’s Kristinn Thordarson and Leifur Dagfinnsson for Truenoth, with Mystery Productions’ David Oskar Olafsson for RUV. Dagfinnsson says that the series sold to around 15 countries on the basis of the first two scripts. “We are all very proud of how The Valhalla Murders is turning out,” he says. Other new Icelandic projects include a series based on the Norse sagas, which will be produced in a mixture of English and Icelandic.

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Film Tax Rebate

film-fiji.com facebook.com/filmfiji/ twitter.com/filmandfiji

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FEATURE ICELAND

Shooting HBO’s medieval fantasy Game Of Thrones FINNI HARDARSON “WE TRULY BELIEVE THE ONLY REASON NOT TO SHOOT IN ICELAND IS IF YOU ONLY WANT INTERIORS, FORESTS, BUGS, AFRICA OR ANIMALS THAT DO NOT LIVE IN THE OCEAN OR CANNOT FLY”

Given Iceland’s uniquely rugged looks, it comes as no surprise that the country was a favourite shooting destination for Game Of Thrones. Pegasus Pictures serviced the many scenes shot there, as producer Einar Sveinn Thordarson says: “We were working up north around Lake Myvatn with three different directors, shooting in locations that have snow and ice in summer. As a result, the scenes were shot out of sequence and it was a challenge to keep track of where we were in the overall scheme. And these were big shoots, with 80 to 100 crew and extras from our side, and roughly the same number coming in from abroad.” To accommodate this influx into the area where there are few hotels, many crew members and actors were lodged with locals in the picturesque fishing village of Husavik. Over the last few years, Thordarson has seen fewer commercials being shot in Iceland, reflecting a global trend, but a rise in TV and film work has compensated for that drop-off. “Generally, the majority of our work is from the UK and the US,” he says, citing the UK sci-fi thriller Fortitude, which is set in the Arctic Circle, and the Chinese epic The Legend Of Kun Lun. “We also serviced several scenes on the coast and around waterfalls for [US sci-fi TV series] Lost In Space.” Living and working in one of the world’s harshest environments, Icelandic crews are used to challenges. So when Hero Productions line producer Finni Hardarson describes a shoot as an “enormous challenge”, it’s safe to assume he is not being melodramatic. “It was a photo and video shoot for American Eagle Outfitters, involving six clients, 24 mostly American crew, 39 Icelandic crew and eight American models,” he says. “Clients are notorious for being a challenge but that wasn’t the case on this project — they were exceptionally nice to work with and the budget matched their needs. But those needs were, to say the least, enormous.”

To begin with, a 10-person pyro crew had to light fireworks for four nights. Hardarson says: “Working in darkness is always a challenge, not being able to hear anything because of constant explosions and earplugs is a challenge, keeping eight models safe in a glacier lagoon is a challenge, finding hotel rooms for 77 people in the same hotel during the summer season is a challenge — actually, in this case, it was impossible — and last but not least, co-ordinating pick-ups at five different hotels with at least an hour between each of them for 77 people with three different call times was also a challenge. Any of these by themselves aren’t big things but, combined, they added up.” It was, Hardarson admits, a relief to get out of the project “alive and with no injuries, and no scheduling disasters”. Even better, the result was “a beautiful campaign that everyone is proud of”. He concludes: “We truly believe the only reason not to shoot in Iceland is if you only want interiors, forests, bugs, Africa or animals that do not live in the ocean or cannot fly.” Another complex shoot for Hero Productions was live-action TV series The King Of Blaze, based on the famous manga books of the same name. “There were 80 Chinese and 40 Icelandic crew members on set, each country had their own translator and only about four people could speak to each other without the translators,” Hardarson says. “This is going to sound corny but, despite the language barrier, everyone managed to work together without major difficulties through the universal language of filmmaking.”

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MAKING A SCENE VIKINGS

IRELAND’S SECOND VIKING INVASION THE HIT TV SERIES VIKINGS, NOW IN ITS SEVENTH AND FINAL SEASON ON HISTORY CHANNEL, HAS BECOME ONE OF THE WORLD’S MOST-WATCHED DRAMAS. FILMED IN IRELAND — INVADED FOR REAL BY THE VIKINGS BACK IN THE EIGHTH CENTURY — IT HAS ALSO THROWN THE SPOTLIGHT ON THE EMERALD ISLE’S PRISTINE LOCATIONS AND WORLD-CLASS CREWS, INFRASTRUCTURE AND TALENT. CLIVE BULL REPORTS

OR MORE than two centuries, the seafaring Vikings sought out treasure and territory as they extended their reach beyond their Scandinavian roots, first to Britain and later as far as Russia and North America. Depicted often as barbarians, the History channel series Vikings — developed and produced by Ireland's Octagon Films and Canada's Take 5 Productions — paints a more complex picture. International distributor outside Ireland and Canada is MGM Television. Creator Michael Hirst was determined to show the Vikings in a sympathetic light and reflect their family-orientated nature, as well as their prowess as warriors. He had no idea that the initially small-budget show would turn into a global phenomenon.

While the Vikings spent two hundred years seeking out numerous territories, for Hirst and the makers of Vikings, there was always going to be one leading destination: Ireland. “We chose Ireland for many reasons,” Hirst tells Location International. “One of the principle reasons was that Dublin is a Viking town. The Vikings had a profound influence on the culture here and we knew we’d be shooting within a few hundred yards of where Vikings had actually stood and fought. And we were close to the sea where Viking ships would ply their trade and carry out raids.” Another of Hirst’s shows, Emmy award-winning The Tudors, was also shot in Ireland. “We knew from experience that the crew was particularly good — in fact, this is the best crew in the world, I think,” he says. “And that’s very important, because you want to know that these are people

who can rise to the challenges you set them. And, as a writer, I set them huge challenges. Like hoisting Viking ships up mountains!” Recreating the journeys of the Viking longboats was indeed one of the many challenges of a series that started out small and became an epic saga on a grand scale. The seafaring scenes are frequently shot on Lough Tay and Lough Dan, two of County Wicklow’s hidden gems. These are lakes with limited access and surrounded by hills and mountains. So how do the ships get there? “That’s a very good question,” says location manager Manus Hingerty. “We bring them in on a lowloader down to the far end of the lake and then crane them in.” Lough Tay is often known as the Guinness Lake, partly because, seen from above, it can resemble a pint of the famous Irish stout beer, but also because it forms part of the 5,000-acre (2,023 ha)

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MAKING A SCENE VIKINGS

“As a writer, I set the crew huge challenges. Like hoisting Viking ships up mountains!” MICHAEL HIRST

Luggala Estate, which is owned by the Guinness family, and where much of the series was shot. To make life more complicated, there’s a middle lodge and a gate in the private estate that is too narrow for the boats to pass through. “We had to invent a bespoke hydraulic trailer, so that we could come to the pathway, raise the boat up to six foot over the gate, then drop it back down and drive on,” Hingerty says. Numerous waterborne scenes have been shot, and as many as seven Viking ships have sailed on Lough Dan. Not

surprisingly, Hingerty says, “once a boat is on the water, we’re inclined to stay on the water and shoot for a couple of days”. The only public access to the estate is via a footpath high above the lake, which is visited during shoots by sightseers taking photos of the events unfolding below. “But once you’re in, it’s entirely under your control, so it makes it very fluid when you’re filming. We take out the protective guards for the trees, but otherwise it’s perfect.”

It is here that Kattegat village — the spiritual home of the series’ hero Ragnar Lothbrok and his family — has been constructed. “It worked from the point of view that we could have the boats sail up the fjord, dock at the jetty and then walk through on to the back lot [at Ashford Studios],” Hingerty says. “The front row of all the buildings was here and the others were in the backlot. It’s a lake, but the mouth of the lake is round the corner, so it can look like the open sea.” The surrounding woods, meanwhile, provide opportunities for all kinds of shots and sequences. Mainly, it plays Scandinavia, with the hut of series favourite, Floki, nestled in the trees. But why choose this as the chief location? Hingerty has two main reasons: “The water, of course, plus you can film anything here — you can come in for a couple of days and end up staying for a few weeks, because there are always other parts of the estate where you can film.”

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Filming in Ireland

32% – 37%* Tax Credit *5% Regional Uplift – Subject to EU Commission Approval

www.screenireland.ie

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MAKING A SCENE VIKINGS

Two Viking ships in the lake on the extensive backlot at Ashford Studios

He adds: “We have to manage the estate very carefully. It’s been here since 1787, so it needs a lot of care and attention. But ultimately, the good thing for us is that, because we look after the place, we’re allowed to go pretty much anywhere. So we can shoot a sequence at Lough Tay in the morning, over in another part of the estate in the afternoon and at another spot in the evening, and it all looks different.” Because of Luggala Estate’s isolated and private setting, you can also shoot 360 degrees. “North, south, east and west, it’s in a valley, so you don’t have to avoid shooting in any direction,” Hingerty says. “Nothing modern to intrude.” The surrounding countryside requires only a little adaptation to make it appear 10 centuries older. “The major difference between agricultural habits then and now is that we have subdivisions

with walls and ditches and fences. The Vikings never had that — it was all communal land. That’s a small problem, but we can fix it in postproduction. Apart from a small area of fields, the rest of the estate is perfect.” Vikings is not the first production to take advantage of this perfection. The Tudors, Camelot and, going back further, Excalibur have all used County Wicklow. “You’ll find coniferous and deciduous [woods], you’ll find cliffs, you’ll find a river and open fields — lots of different elements,” Hingerty adds. “As a package, it's really good. When you move in with 15 trucks and 250 extras and 200 crew, you’ve 500 people on site and you don’t want to move every day. You can shoot one way on Monday, another way on Tuesday and over there on Wednesday.” Executive producer Morgan O’Sullivan was

“Locations for Vikings is not just finding the pretty pictures — it is a huge logistical job. You need to have all the facilities if you have 500 people on site” MANUS HINGERTY

A shot of the Ashford Studios lake in daylight with the crane that lifts the boats into the water

instrumental is bringing Vikings to County Wicklow as he had already fallen in love with the location. “We did Braveheart here and used a lot of Irish talent — we even used the army,” O’Sullivan says. “That was a great signature for what we would later do in television, and I felt we should be in television. I met Michael Hirst and we did The Tudors and it all grew from there. He’s really special — he’s written all 89 episodes [of Vikings]. Not only that, but he does the rewrites, so that’s fantastic from a production point of view, because he can do the rewrites so quickly. We tell him, ‘We can’t make this…’ and he’ll always find another way to tell the story. We’ve built a great talent base over seven years.”

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A COMPLETE RESOURCE FOR FILM, TELEVISION, COMMERCIAL AND LIVE EVENT PRODUCTION.

STUDIO FACILITIES EXTERIOR SETS & SOUND STAGES

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MAKING A SCENE VIKINGS

For a series like Vikings, where fight sequences and bloody battles often take centre stage, the location challenges go way beyond finding the right backdrop. “Locations for Vikings is not just finding the pretty pictures — it is a huge logistical job,” Hingerty says. His primary focus is on trying to find the ideal locale to make the story work. But on the day of shooting, particularly for the kind of large-scale battle scenes featured in Vikings, the location becomes an event in its own right. “You need to have all the facilities there if you have 500 people on site,” Hingerty says. “You’ve got to feed 500 people; you’ve got to have toilet facilities for 500 people; you might need car parking for 500 people. If you’re in a city centre, it can sometimes be easier — not always — but if you’re out in a green-field site, you have to be very smart as to how you do it.” Though they benefit from their proximity to Dublin, the secluded locations of County Wicklow present a number of logistical challenges, not least transport. “You’ve got to put a lot of track mat in,” Hingerty says. “We’ve got to make roads, we have to provide facilities and, because we’re shooting in period, it has to look right. We don’t have hard standing and we don’t have electricity — we have to bring our own generators and make our own hard standing. So we find ourselves in the middle of a forest and then again have to provide facilities for 500 people. On top of that, you have lots of gear — 15 truckloads: lights, cameras, sound, all types of props… Plus we have horses. We’ve had as many as 40-50 horses on site.” With horses, hundreds of extras, and weapons being wielded, albeit rubberised, accidents can happen, so it is also essential that a full ambulance and medical service is on site whenever battle sequences are being shot. Hirst says that key to the decision to take Vikings to Ireland was the huge variety of settings available just a short trip away from Dublin city centre: “What we have in Ireland, which is almost unique, is every kind of landscape. So we have the sea, we have volcanic lakes, we have different kinds of forests and we can reproduce different worlds inside this one area. Just at the moment, we’re in ‘North America’ and we have a giant redwood forest… Who knew we have a giant redwood forest here in Ireland! We have been away for a few days here and there but, essentially, we found we were able to shoot the Viking world and the Viking’s travels within 30 miles (48 kms) of the studio in Dublin.” While Ireland has been great for Vikings, the international success of the series has been equally beneficial for the Irish film sector. “It’s changed the industry in Ireland,” says Steven Davenport, inward production manager at Screen Ireland. “We’ve always had feature films and we’ve had our indigenous films, but what Vikings has done is give us a consistent TV series — and one of the biggest TV series in the world. That puts us on the map as a place that can produce this kind

The Viking Great Hall, built on the soundstage at Ashford Studios, County Wicklow

“Vikings is a fantastic opportunity for Irish directors — all of a sudden, they’re getting the chance to work on a massive international series” STEVEN DAVENPORT

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Filming a warrior returning to the Viking home village of Kattegat

of production. It’s very different from a one-off feature film and you can see the development of the crew over that six-year period." Davenport believes Vikings has shone a spotlight on Ireland’s expertise, its locations, its tax incentives and the infrastructure that has been developed around that. “Plus it’s a fantastic opportunity for Irish directors,” he adds. “All of a sudden, they’re getting the chance to work on a massive international series. That’s had a huge knock-on effect. It’s given an opportunity to Irish crew . We’ve had lots of Oscar nominations, but this gives them the calibre to be in big international productions.” Another Vikings legacy is Ashford Studios. Situated in County Wicklow, 25 miles south of Dublin, it was co-founded by Vikings executive producer Morgan O’Sullivan. It boasts three impressive sound stages, production offices, make-up rooms, costume departments, prop workshops and bedrooms for the actors to rest in between scenes. Thousands of costumes and props, from hammered iron-look helmets and fur-trimmed cloaks to rubber axes and bloodied shields, are produced and stored at Ashford. “We started from scratch in terms of the costumes and props,” O’Sullivan says, explaining that Viking paraphernalia was not available from costume houses. “We now have warehouses full of it. We’re

“Everyone who works in Ireland has a similar experience of positivity” MICHAEL HIRST talking about selling it one day on eBay — there’s a huge market it for it.” Ashford Studios also offers an extensive backlot. In addition to providing a rural setting for a fullscale Viking village, boat scenes can be shot using the controlled wave tank, set in front of a 100 ft (30.45 metre) green screen. “That studio didn’t exist before Vikings,” Screen Ireland’s Davenport says. “It was literally built for the series. So Vikings has developed the expertise, it’s developed the infrastructure and it’s used some phenomenal locations. It’s also shown that Ireland doesn’t just do twee Irish cottages — we can be many places: Scandinavian settlements, Georgian and Victorian London, the Scottish highlands, modern cityscapes. The studio’s even been New York in a couple of feature films very recently. And Vikings has really helped that. A lot of people didn’t know that it was filmed in Ireland.” The model for an Irish/Canadian co-production began for O’Sullivan with The Tudors, which was made at nearby Ardmore Studios. “With modern technology, we can sit in a room in Ashford

Studios and we can look at what they’re doing in the cutting room in Toronto,” he says. “Canada is unique in the sense that it has co-production treaties with almost every country in the world, certainly in Western Europe. We put the two countries together with The Tudors and it worked out so successfully. We’re able to marry the Canadian incentive with the Irish incentive.” As Vikings nears its finale, Hirst says his modernday Viking invasion has been all about collaboration. “All the pieces of the puzzle have fallen into place,” he says. “For me as a creator, it’s been a joy, because I’m working with heads of department who I not only respect, but who I think are geniuses. The production designer, the costume designer — I set them challenges and they always transcend them. Everyone who comes to Ireland and works in Ireland has a similar experience of positivity. I know what happens in other jurisdictions and the fraught conditions in which people shoot. We don’t have any of that. This is a friendly, collaborative, creative-driven environment.”

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FEATURE THE UK

Blessed by diverse locations, state-of-the-art studios, a highly-competitive tax-credit regime and world-class talent, the UK continues to be one of the most in-demand film and TV production hubs on the planet. ANDY FRY reports

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THE GOLD STANDARD

Rachel Weisz as Lady Sarah and Olivia Coleman as Queen Anne in The Favourite

HE UK attracted £3.1bn in spending on highend television and film production during 2018, according to the British Film Institute (BFI). Films made in the UK in 2018 included such inward-investment blockbusters as JJ Abrams’ Star Wars Episode IX, Kenneth Branagh’s Artemis Fowl, Stephen Gaghan’s The Voyage Of Doctor Dolittle and Tom Harper’s The Aeronauts. Alongside these were UK films including Gurinder Chadha’s Blinded By The Light, Philippa Lowthorpe’s Misbehaviour, Marc Munden’s The Secret Garden and Danny Boyle’s upcoming Yesterday. In parallel, the year saw a surge in new high-end television productions, which account for £1.17bn of the above total. Among the 119 projects made in the UK were The Crown, The ABC Murders, Black Mirror, Death And Nightingales, His Dark Materials, The Little Drummer Girl and Les Misérables. “Year after year, we are privileged to welcome inward-investment

productions to every region and nation of the UK, drawn here by our reputation as a centre for world-class talent, facilities and technical expertise,” says Adrian Wootton, chief executive of the British Film Commission and Film London. Wootton has just returned from a trip to North America, where he told the UK’s US production partners that concerns about Brexit have done nothing to diminish his country’s ability to handle major productions — nor diluted its appeal. “All the signs are that 2019 is shaping up to be another great year, with juggernaut movies including Bond 25 and another Fantastic Beasts already booked in,” he says. It’s not just the movies that are keeping the UK buzzing, Wootton says: “We’re maintaining our share of the big studio franchises but, if there is a trend, it’s the growing importance of high-end TV, with HBO, Starz, Netflix, Amazon and Apple all driving that market. Eventually, I can see TV outstripping the value of film, which is great for all the UK’s production hubs, which are already servicing major shows.” With his Film London hat on, Wootton says the UK capital continues to host a remarkable array of projects, ranging from Mary Poppins Returns

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London. The best place to tell a story. The end. If youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re working in film, TV, animation or games, Film London can offer you expert advice on locations, logistics and the UKâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s generous tax reliefs. From big-budget blockbusters to ground-breaking indies, we can help you to create something special. Get in touch to find out more. @Film_London filmlondon.org.uk

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Lin-Manuel Miranda as Jack in Mary Poppins Returns

ADRIAN WOOTTON “IF THERE IS A TREND, IT’S THE GROWING IMPORTANCE OF HIGHEND TV, WITH HBO, STARZ, NETFLIX, AMAZON AND APPLE DRIVING THAT MARKET. EVENTUALLY, I CAN SEE TV OUTSTRIPPING FILM”

production securing access to rarely seen locations, including Gray's Inn, Lincoln's Inn and the Royal Courts of Justice. “Gray's Inn and Lincoln's Inn are very central but quite hidden and wanted to give a real sense of this beautiful, almost secret world right in the middle of London,'' production designer Peter Francis says. At the same time, the creative team behind the project wanted to show off some of the city’s less well-known sights, opting for unusual views of Blackfriars and Waterloo Bridge — a decision that grew out of a conversations between director Richard Eyre and Ian McEwan, the author of the book on which the film is based. According to Wootton, The Children Act shows that London is “a filmmaker's dream”. He adds: “It’s testament to the city's can-do attitude that this enigmatic world can be brought to life so faithfully on screen." The strength of London’s offer is, of course, doubly enhanced by the proximity of studios in the South East of England, with Pinewood the biggest beast in a jungle that also includes Warner Bros.’ Leavesden Studios, Elstree, 3 Mills and Twickenham. It has has been another excellent year for Pinewood’s Iver Heath facility, thanks to the latest edition of the Star Wars franchise, Dumbo and Bond 25. In addition, there are strong industry rumours that Netflix is looking to take up tenancy at the famous studio complex. One issue with this level of activity is that Pinewood’s UK stages were running at 93% capacity in the nine months to December 2018. However, the company is in the midst of expanding Iver Heath and was also given permission by Spelthorne Borough Council to push on with

Richard Gere as Max and Billy Howle as Caden in MotherFatherSon

to Oscar triumph The Favourite, which was partly shot at Hampton Court Palace. BBC drama MotherFatherSon, starring Richard Gere, shot at Elstree Studios, The Leadenhall Building and Middle Temple Hall. Elstree also has season three of The Crown in 2019. A feature of London filming in recent years has been the willingness of its various agencies to sanction shoots in high-profile, world-renowned locations, Wootton says — something that will be evident when blockbusters Spider-Man: Far From Home and Men In Black 4 hit the screens. “What’s remarkable is that filmmakers keep coming back to London for its iconic landmarks, but the city never looks stale or tired,” he says. Last year’s crop of productions also demonstrates that there is more to the city than hero shots. A Private War, which sees Rosamund Pike play war correspondent Marie Colvin, was filmed at a range of London locations, ranging from Goldsmiths’ Hall and Butler’s Wharf to the streets of Camberwell and Islington. Fighting With My Family, starring Steve Merchant and Dwayne Johnson, shot in community halls across the capital. 2017’s critically acclaimed movie The Children’s Act was a good illustration of London’s film-friendly character, with the legal-themed

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FEATURE THE UK

a proposed £500m expansion at Surrey-based Shepperton — the other major UK-based studio facility in the Pinewood group. If approved by the government, the plans will provide a projected £300m annual boost to the UK economy. The good news for the UK, of course, is that Pinewood is not alone in trying to tackle the capacity squeeze. Plans are under way for a new London-based studio facility in Dagenham, Wootton reports, while Elstree has secured permission for Netflix’s The Crown to build new sets for season three. “We talk about capacity all the time,” Wootton adds. “What I would say is that the TV projects coming to the UK tend to be more flexible than film, which requires big sound stages. We’re constantly finding alternative spaces like disused industrial sites that can be fitted out for the purposes of television production.” Then, of course, there are the excellent production ecosystems that have developed in Northern Ireland, Wales, Scotland, Yorkshire, Bristol and Liverpool. Between them, these hubs are handling a stunning array of domestic and international projects. Writer and director Steven Knight is also looking to kickstart a studio project near the midlands city of Birmingham, where he was born. In Northern Ireland, 2018 was marked by the final season of Game Of Thrones, the epic HBO production that has generated £206m of production expenditure. Although the TV series has now ended, Northern Ireland is confident that it will leave a dual legacy in the shape of an ambitious screen-tourism agenda and an industrial base capable of handling any kind of production. Northern Ireland Screen’s chief executive, Richard Williams, says 2018 was “a fantastic year” for the screen industries in his region. “We’ve come to the end of phase one of our Opening Doors 2014-2018 strategy, during which the value of the sector has doubled and the economic targets set out have been exceeded, reaching £270m. As we enter phase two [2018-2022], we hope to deliver a minimum of £300m in direct Northern Ireland spend — a 20% increase.” Contributing to this ambition will be the arrival of a Game Of Thrones spin-off, scheduled to land in Belfast’s Paint Hall in late 2019. Dubbed The Long Night, the series is a prequel set 1,000 years before the original storyline. However, Northern Ireland has worked hard to ensure that it is not overdependent on the HBO franchise. With expanded studio capacity in Belfast and a rich array of coastal, rural and architectural locations, it has been able to play host to projects as diverse as Krypton, Line Of Duty, Dublin Murders, Death And Nightingales and Mrs. Wilson. The latter used several Northern Ireland locations, including Crumlin Road Gaol, Castle Ward and Belfast’s The Merchant Hotel, despite being set primar-

Ed Sheeran makes a cameo appearance as himself in Danny Boyle’s Yesterday — pictured (right) with Himesh Patel as would-be superstar Jack Malik

ily in period London. Wales is experiencing its own production boom, having played host to a rich portfolio of productions in 2018. Like Northern Ireland, the country is benefiting from the fact that it has studio space, spectacular locations and those all-important tax breaks. Among the high-profile projects to have graced Wales is the new Dr Dolittle production, which shut down the Menai Bridge in Anglesey during June 2018. With a cast including Robert Downey Jr, Michael Sheen, Emma Thompson and Ralph Fiennes, the film is sure to be one of 2020’s family hits. Also filming in Wales during 2018 were the BBC’s His Dark Materials and Sky’s A Discovery Of Witches, both produced by Bad Wolf. Then there was Channel 4’s period espionage epic Jerusalem and Six Minutes To Midnight, a movie starring Judi Dench and Eddie Izzard that has filmed in locations around Carmarthenshire, including the Penarth Pier. Based on true events, Six Minutes To Midnight is set in a finishing school in the south of England that teaches the daughters of Nazis — just on the eve of the Second World War. The script is also co-written by Izzard. “For me, starting filming on Six Minutes To Midnight — a film I have wanted to make for 10 years — is very exciting," Izzard says. "And to start our shoot only 30 minutes from where I used to go to school in Swansea is a wonderful added bonus.” While South Wales tends to attract most of the work because of its stateof-the-art studios and crew base, North Wales boasts superb locations and is not difficult to reach from the UK’s northern production hubs of Liverpool and Manchester. Manchester-based Cold Feet, for example, shot on Anglesey. Izzard’s Six Minutes To Midnight also shot in Llandudno, while the

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C Reilly. Among the TV productions to film in Bristol were A Discovery Of Witches, Fortitude and the fourth series of BBC One’s Poldark, which built 18 sets at The Bottle Yard Studios, including a period-correct scale replica of the House of Commons. Stan & Ollie filmed at the Bristol Hippodrome and also took advantage of the city’s historic Princes Wharf in April 2018. The preserved harbourside, which is a popular location for film and TV shoots, doubled for the Irish docks at which the comedy double act arrived in 1953. Producer Faye Ward says: “One of the most memorable days [of the shoot] was when we recreated Cobh harbour in Ireland. We couldn’t go to Cobh harbour, so we cheated it in Bristol harbour. It was a sunny day and we had this incredible vintage ship [MV Balmoral] and about 350 extras, all dressed in Irish textures, along with authentically reproduced banners.” Red Planet Pictures has also used Bristol for its new ITV Jane Austen adaption Sanditon, building an extensive outdoor Regency set at The Bottle Yard. Alex Protherough, Red Planet’s head of production, says: “There is a wealth of locations in this area that are perfect for period drama and, particularly, the Georgian period in which our story is set. The country houses, Bath and its elegant Regency architecture, even the Somerset coastline all offer a range of locations that were perfect for San-

new movie version of The Secret Garden, starring Colin Firth and Julie Walters, was on location at Bodnant Gardens near Colwyn Bay. Yet to be officially confirmed, HBO is also reported to have shot scenes for its Game Of Thrones prequel at Penrhyn Castle near Bangor. If this proves to be true, it joins Netflix, which shot some of its lavish royal production The Crown at Caernarfon Castle in November 2018. Around 250 locals featured as extras in the hit TV series. Scotland’s ability to attract production has been limited to some extent by the lack of a studio infrastructure, although there are active plans to EDDIE IZZARD “STARTING FILMING ON SIX MINUTES TO MIDNIGHT IS VERY EXCITING. AND TO START OUR SHOOT 30 MINUTES FROM WHERE I USED TO GO TO SCHOOL IN SWANSEA IS A WONDERFUL ADDED BONUS”

rectify this situation. Despite this, the pulling power of the Scottish Highlands and Islands, combined with period architecture in Glasgow and Edinburgh, remains considerable. In 2017, the country attracted £95m of production — the highest ever figure and £26m up on the previous year. Contributing to this were Avengers: Infinity War, Outlaw King, Outlander, Patrick Melrose and The Cry. Arguably the most high-profile project to have been shot in Scotland recently is the lavish movie Mary Queen Of Scots. With locations including Blackness Castle, Seacliff Beach, Glen Coe and Strathdon in Aberdeenshire, the Working Title production made full use of what the country had to offer. At the Scottish premiere of the film, lead actor Saorirse Ronan said: “There was conversation early on about maybe making the film in Budapest. But I said, you can’t do that. It has to be Scotland. Nowhere looks exactly like Scotland. It feels very different here and magical.” Tim Bevan, Working Title co-chairman and producer on Mary Queen Of Scots, also seemed happy with the choice. “Scotland’s great,” he says. “We shot a lot of the exteriors up here for about three or four weeks. There’s a great infrastructure here… really good crews and a lot of Scottish actors, who are in the movie.” Keen to build on its momentum, public agency Creative Scotland has unveiled a £3m fund to boost TV production. It has also launched Screen Scotland, a joint venture responsible for driving the screen agenda north of the border, backed with £20m from the Scottish government and the National Lottery. Robert Wilson, chair of Creative Scotland, says these announcements “deliver on the promise to increase funding, build stronger relationships and increase capacity”. The success of the nations is replicated in England’s cities. Bristol, situated between London and Cardiff, generated £15.2m of inward investment in 2017-2018, according to figures released in September 2018. The city issued permits to 383 productions, resulting in 1,141 filming days at Bristol locations and at The Bottle Yard Studios. This year has also started strongly, with Sanditon, War Of The Worlds and The Trial Of Christine Keeler anchored here. Natalie Moore, manager of Bristol Film Office, says £15.2m is “a significant total”. She adds: “The10% rise in filming days shows Bristol is maintaining its popularity as a filming destination. The fact we can host four major features and 10 TV productions in one year is proof Bristol does filming well.” The feature films referred to by Moore included The Guernsey Literary And Potato Peel Pie Society, Hellboy: Rise Of The Blood Queen and the Laurel and Hardy biopic Stan & Ollie, starring Steve Coogan and John

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The studio referred to by Evans is the £50m project announced last year by property developers Capital & Centric and Twickenham Studios. Located in the city’s former Littlewoods building, the plan is to have two new 20,000 sq ft Hollywood-standard sound stages ready to go by 2020. There was a well-publicised fire at the site in late 2018, but this seems unlikely to cause a hold up. Tim Heatley, co-founder of Capital & Centric, says the legacy of the new studio will be that “Liverpool becomes a powerhouse for the film industry. We’re creating something that has been on the city’s wish list for a long time.” Liverpool Film Office’s Saunders says the city is thriving, thanks to its range of locations and talent for finding makeshift studio space. But she recognises that the launch of the new state-of-the-art studio will transform Liverpool’s ability to secure films and high-end TV series. “Thanks to platforms such as Netflix, Amazon and Hulu, there’s a ferocious appetite for content — but with this comes increased competition from other areas of the UK and Europe,” she adds. Another key initiative, Saunders says, is the launch of a £2m production fund, which will be the first-ever English city-based fund of its kind. Launched at the end of March, it offers up to £500,000 to individual productions and can be combined with the UK’s tax credits. While keen to build Liverpool’s production base, Saunders actually has a bigger vision: a “connected northern offer” that includes Liverpool, Manchester and Yorkshire. “There’s such a rich talent base and strong infrastructure in the north,” she adds. “Between us, we could handle almost any production.” There is no question that Yorkshire has proved its credentials as a production hub and makes a formidable ally for its north-west counterparts.

diton. With the construction and studio spaces at The Bottle Yard, Bristol was the obvious place to base the production.” Worth noting also is that Bristol has proved more than capable of hosting modern dramas. Channel 4’s Kiri used the city’s urban streets and green spaces as its backdrop while also filming Bristol from the sky via drones. Hellboy used Waring House, a council block in the city’s Redcliffe area, for night shooting major scenes during September 2018. The UK production boom has also benefited the iconic northern city of Liverpool, which has become popular for both period and contemporary productions, with its ability to double for New York and London a notable attraction. Last year was a record-breaking one for the city, with 366 film and TV projects based in Liverpool and the wider region. That equates to 1,387 film days and £16.1m in revenues — up £5m on 2017. Among the high-end productions to have visited Liverpool are BBC period drama The War Of The Worlds, Sky One’s Bulletproof and Jimmy McGovern-penned Care. Meanwhile, the third season of Sky’s Tin Star has also just been announced for 2019. There was also activity around Peaky Blinders and the aforementioned Yesterday. “We’ve had three or four productions in the city every day of the year,” says Lynn Saunders, manager of Liverpool Film Office. “There used to be times when it would go quiet, but now there is production all year round.” Betsan Morris Evans, producer of The War Of The Worlds, says filming in Liverpool was “a fantastic experience. The Liverpool Film Office made our time in the city so easy, from closing roads and helping source locations. It was a wonderful working relationship. Every producer I know wants to film in Liverpool and the arrival of the new film studios will make it all possible.”

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and television.” The film office, he adds, is a one-stop shop that acts as the first port of call for all filming enquiries in the region. In addition, Screen Yorkshire’s head of investments, Hugo Heppell, says the news that Channel 4 is going to relocate to Leeds is providing an additional boost to the region: “We’re already seeing significant growth in inward investment as producers prepare themselves for the move. Channel 4 has a stated goal of increasing the volume of shows it commissions outside London and this move will benefit us.” Heppell shares Saunders’ ‘Northern Powerhouse’ ambition and believes a more high-profile northern offer would benefit the UK production scene as a whole: “With talk of capacity issues in London and the south east, having a strong northern production hub would be a game-changer in terms of the UK’s appeal to international producers. I think we already have the infrastructure in place in the north. The only thing we’re really missing is a way of getting a clear message out there.”

Backed by the well-established Yorkshire Content Fund, which can also be accessed alongside the UK’s national tax credits, the county has played host to productions as varied as Mike Leigh’s Peterloo, Yardie, Ackley Bridge and Gentleman Jack. Like the UK’s other hubs, Yorkshire benefits from a spectrum of superb locations, says Chris Hordley, Screen Yorkshire’s head of production liaison and development. “There’s a range of rural landscapes within easy reach of the city of Leeds, as well as our varied coastline,” he adds. “You get a real range of urban looks in the cities Hull, Leeds, Sheffield and Bradford, which are good for doubling.” ITV’s flagship period drama Victoria has filmed at Church Fenton Studios in Tadcaster for three seasons. Now, Yorkshire is seeking to strengthen its offer by adding further studio space. It also launched its own dedicated film office in November. Explaining the rationale, Hordley says: “It’s about positioning Yorkshire and Humber as a world-class hub for film

> COUNTY CREDITS THE UK’s network of production hubs means that none of the country’s geographically and architecturally diverse counties is now off-limits to production. Here are a few of the English counties that appeared on location scouts’ maps in 2018. CORNWALL: BBC period drama Poldark and Sky comedy drama Delicious have reminded TV viewers just how beautiful the coastline and countryside of this rugged county is. Last year’s highlights included Netflix series Frontier and the latest chapter in a series of Rosamunde Pilcher adaptations for German TV. Set to be released during 2019 is feelgood film Fisherman’s Friends, which shot in and around the harbour of Port Isaac.

KENT: Easily accessible from London, Kent has become a popular location for both period and contemporary series. Last year saw visits from TV productions including Baptiste, Black Mirror, Killing Eve and Vanity Fair, the latter using the beach and promenade in the town of Deal. The highlight of 2018 was the arrival of Disney's Christopher Robin, starring Ewan McGregor, which is estimated to have spent £600,000 in the county. NORTHUMBERLAND: This beautiful county has hosted the Harry Potter franchise, Transformers and Inspector George Gently, but undoubtedly deserves to see more production work. That said, it can at least rely on ITV hit drama Vera to showcase its range of stunning locations. Based in Newcastle, the popular ‘Geordie Noir’ crime series

has featured iconic locations including the Holy Island of Lindisfarne and Whitley Bay’s Spanish City, alongside gritty urban cityscapes. OXFORDSHIRE: The architectural magnificence of Oxford was brought to the world’s attention in Inspector Morse. And the great university city is once again the focal point in A Discovery Of Witches and His Dark Materials. Filming on the latter, based on Philip Pullman’s novels, came to Oxford in the summer of 2018. Crews were given permission to enter the heart of the city, filming around New College, Queen’s Lane and Merton Street. SHROPSHIRE: This is another of England’s under-utilised locations, though the town of Whitchurch did play host to Netflix series Free Rein

in 2018. The US show, based on a fictional island off the UK coast, is produced by Liverpool-located Lime Pictures. Shropshire is not especially easy to reach from London, but is likely to feature more prominently as Liverpool, Birmingham and Cardiff ramp up production. SUFFOLK: This historic East Anglian county has exploded on to the production scene, with two major movies visiting in 2018: Armando Iannucci’s David Copperfield and Danny Boyle/ Richard Curtis’ Yesterday. For David Copperfield, which stars Dev Patel, 200 cast and crew set up camp in the market town of Bury St Edmunds. Halesworth was the big beneficiary of Yesterday. Screen Suffolk’s network of ‘film champions’ at local councils ensures location requests are dealt with quickly.

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WILD WEST IN M ON TA N A THE ULTIMATE LOCATION

FIND YOUR

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WITH THE HELP OF FILM COMMISSIONS, PHOTOGRAPHERS AND LOCATION MANAGERS, LOCATION INTERNATIONAL PUTS THE SPOTLIGHT ON SOME OF THE STRIKING AND DIVERSE LOCATIONS ON OFFER AROUND THE WORLD

QUITO, ECUADOR Ecuador's capital city Quito sits at an altitude of 2,850 metres, in the Andean foothills. Constructed on the foundations of an ancient Incan city, it is known for its wellpreserved historic centre, rich with 16th- and 17th-century churches and buildings that blend European, Moorish and indigenous architecture and interiors. In 1978 Quito was declared a World Cultural Heritage Site by UNESCO. Movies that shot here include: Clear And Present Danger (1994), Proof Of Life (2000) and The Dancer Upstairs (2002). (Photo, courtesy Mark Indig LMGI)

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KINGSTON PENITENTIARY, ONTARIO, CANADA Kingston Penitentiary, built in 1833-34, is a former maximum-security prison, one of the oldest prisons in Canada. It is now decommissioned but preserved for tours and film use. Located at the eastern end of Lake Ontario, about halfway between Toronto and Ottawa, Kingston offers other historic buildings, including a courthouse, City Hall and period housing. TV series Alias Grace (2017) shot here, and also Blues Brothers 2000 (1998) filmed here, among many other films. (Photo, courtesy Destination Ontario)

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OTZARRETA FOREST, BIZKAIA, SPAIN Otzarreta Forest is in the Gorbeia Natural Park in the Basque region of northern Spain. The forest is a unique area featuring beautiful, ancient beech trees in an atmospheric setting which, according to myth, was at one time the chosen home for the Lord of the Woods, or Basajaun in Basque. Fog envelopes Otzarreta Forest at dawn and fallen red leaves and green moss covers the ground, as well as the tree trunks. This location provides a magical, but as yet undiscovered, film location. (Photo, courtesy Bilbao Bizkaia Film Commission)

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ROSOMACKA GORGE, OLD MOUNTAIN, SERBIA Rosomacka gorge is a narrow canyon on the Rosomacka river, with shallow water basins that stretch to 500 metres within the pristine natural environment of Old Mountain, located in the eastern part of the Balkan Peninsula. The location is surrounded by virtually abandoned old village settlements, stone houses and a 16th-century monastery. Like many locations in Old Mountain this offers a terrain abundant with mountain springs, waterfalls, rivers and stunning mountain shapes. Indian action film Vivegam (2017) shot here. (Photo, courtesy Serbia Film Commission Location Database)

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TAHOE NATIONAL FOREST, LAKE TAHOE, CALIFORNIA, US Tahoe National Forest is northwest of Lake Tahoe, and crosses six counties: Sierra, Placer, Nevada, Yuba, Plumas and El Dorado. The forest contains many natural and manmade resources including hundreds of lakes and reservoirs — most notably Boca Reservoir — river canyons carving through granite bedrock and many miles of trails including a portion of the Pacific Crest Trail. Numerous productions have shot in this area including TV classic Bonanza (1959-1973), and movies The Godfather Part II (1974) and Last Weekend (2014). (Photo, courtesy Ted Alvarez, LMGI)

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MID-LEVELS, HONG KONG ISLAND, CHINA Located between Victoria Peak and Central, Mid-Levels provides amazing visuals with an intriguing tangle of roads and walkways. For foreign producers Hong Kong Island is the easiest location in which to operate within China, and English is widely spoken. Films shot here include: Kill Bill: Volume 1 (2003), The Dark Knight (2008), Contagion (2011), Fast & Furious 6 (2013), Snowden (2016) and Ghost In The Shell (2017). (Photo, courtesy Dow Griffith, LMGI)

THE ROOFTOP HELIPAD OF THE SOFITEL AT BEVERLY HILLS, CALIFORNIA, US The helipad at the Sofitel hotel provides a 360-degree panoramic view of Los Angeles, includingÂ the Hollywood sign, Griffith Observatory, Pacific Design Center, the Downtown skyline and the horizon of the Hollywood Hills. This location is perfect for movies, photo shoots and music videos. It has been recently used by a selection of magazines, including Gentleman, Bella, Social Life and Sharp. It was also used for a video featuring rock band Foo Fighters. (Photo, courtesy Edward De La Torre)

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SAINT-TROPEZ, FRENCH RIVIERA, FRANCE Saint-Tropez is a coastal town on the French Riviera, in the Provence-Alpes-CĂ´te d'Azur region of southeastern France. Long popular with artists, the town attracted the international jet set in the 1960s and remains known for its beaches and nightlife. Previously a fishing village, the town is now a mixture of historic streets and trendy boutiques, and high-end yachts now outnumber fishing boats in the Old Port. Many movies have shot here including: The Troops Of St Tropez (1964), And God Created Woman (1956) and A Summer In St Tropez (1983). (Photo, courtesy Michel Brussol)

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CHATTAHOOCHEE HILLS, GEORGIA, US Chattahoochee Hills is a city in southern Fulton County, Georgia. The Chattahoochee Hill Country, an area encompassing approximately 60,000 acres southwest of Atlanta, is bordered on the northwest side by the Chattahoochee River. Unlike much of the area around Atlanta — often named the Hollywood of the South — it is still relatively undeveloped, and most of its rural character remains unchanged. Filming has recently included: TV series The Walking Dead (2010-) and Stranger Things (2016-); and among the many feature films, The Hunger Games series (2012-2015) shot here. (Photo, courtesy Ted Alvarez, LMGI)

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PIRHUAYANI IN THE OCONGATE RANGE, CUSCO, PERU Pirhuayani is located in the highest part of the Ocongate Valley, an area dominated by the snow-capped Ausangate, the highest mountain in Cusco, A vertiginous descent from this point leads to a jungle below. The area offers a great diversity of ecosystems, from the snows of the highlands, to the lush Amazonian forests. This shot was taken while scouting for a movie that included sourcing the Amazon River. (Photo, courtesy Lori Balton, LMGI)

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VATNAJOKULL GLACIER, SOUTHERN ICELAND Vatnajökull — water glacier in English — is the largest ice cap in Iceland, and one of the largest in Europe. It covers an area of roughly 8,000 sq km and is almost 1,000 metres thick at its deepest point, with an average thickness of 500 metres and a total ice volume of 3,300 cubic kilometres. Some well-known productions that have filmed here and the surrounding area, including: TV series Game Of Thrones (2011-); and films, Die Another Day (2002), Noah (2014) and The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty (2013). (Photo, courtesy Ragnar Th. Sigurðsson / www.arctic-images.com)

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MAKING A SCENE VIENNA BLOOD

IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF HARRY LIME WHERE ELSE WOULD YOU FILM A TV SERIES SET AND SEEPED IN VIENNA THAN — WELL, VIENNA? CLIVE BULL TALKS TO VIENNA BLOOD PRODUCER HILARY BEVAN JONES ABOUT FILMING IN THE AUSTRIAN CAPITAL

OR THE creators of Vienna Blood, a new drama series based on the best-selling Frank Tallis novels, it was always the intention to shoot entirely in the Austrian capital. Endor Productions teamed up with Red Arrow Studios International, Austria’s MR Film, Austria's ORF and Germany's ZDF for the three feature-length films, set in 1900s Vienna — at the time, a hotbed of philosophy, science and arts, where cultures clashed and ideas collided in the grand cafes and opera houses. Psychoanalysis, as pioneered by Sigmund Freud, was in its infancy but was capturing the imagination of many in the city. The crime drama centres on Max Liebermann, played by Matthew Beard, a young Jewish doctor who has just qualified and is looking for a specialism. He becomes intrigued by Freud — whom we meet briefly in the series — and his theories. As part of his training, Liebermann — who is a disciple of Freud — shadows Detective Inspector Oskar Rheinhardt, played by Austrian actor Juergen Maurer. It is through Rheinhardt that Liebermann is called upon to help the police solve a number of curious murder cases, lending his forensic skills and deep understanding of human behaviour and deviance to the investigations.

“They are a completely unlikely pair,” says Endor’s Emmy Award-winning producer Hilary Bevan Jones. “Wonderfully for me, Max and Oskar have a real-life chemistry and it’s great to see the two of them together on screen. They think totally differently and so there’s unexpected humour as well as some very gripping stories.” From the outset, the plan was to film in Vienna itself, primarily for authenticity. “Vienna in 1906 is a real mixture of absolute opulence, wonderful concerts, the opera, gilded carriages, beautiful ballgowns… and then people living on the edge in very poor surroundings,” Bevan Jones tells Location International. “What we wanted to do was find the truth in that through the locations. And I believe we have succeeded.” Filmmakers have long been attracted to Vienna for its atmospheric streets and its impressive collection of historic buildings. The wide range of stunning palaces, churches, estates and castles — many dating back to the Baroque era — offer an authentic historical context, alongside the narrow lanes and centuries-old cafes in the city centre. One such location was Schloss Neugebäude (Neugebäude Palace), a large castle complex in the Simmering district of Vienna, built in the 16th century by Emperor Maximilian II. This was used

as a set not just for its beautiful exteriors, but also for its grim period dungeons. Vienna Blood also followed in the footsteps of the classic film noir The Third Man (Carol Reed, 1949) by shooting scenes in the Vienna sewers and the Riesenrad — the giant 19th-century Ferris wheel, on which Orson Welles, as Harry Lime, took a ride. Other key locations include the Naturhistorisches Museum; the Volkstheatre, founded in 1889; Zentralfriedhof, one of the largest cemeteries in the world; the Steinhof hospital; and the Palais Pallavicini, which also featured in The Third Man as Harry Lime’s apartment building.

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Matthew Beard (left) as Max Liebermann and Juergen Maurer as Oskar Rheinhardt in Vienna Blood

Bevan Jones says the Vienna Film Commission was consistently helpful in connecting location manager Niki Brechelmacher with the appropriate people and bodies when accessing major buildings and public spaces. The Commission also attended key meetings and provided assistance in securing permission and marrying the needs of the locations with the needs of the shoot. The production was able to benefit from UK and Austrian tax incentives, with shooting taking place in Vienna, and development and post-production in London. In such a historic city, it wasn’t difficult to

maintain the period look. “We had to choose carefully, of course, but we haven’t had to actually build, apart from adding the odd wall where a room was too big — that sort of thing,” Bevan Jones says. Vienna Blood’s 3 x 90 mins episodes are entirely shot on location. “We’ve shot more inside than out because it’s more controllable — although we do have stunning exteriors, which are worth their weight in gold,” Bevan Jones says. And for those exterior shots, Vienna delivered with the weather as well. “We’ve been really lucky, particularly at the end of film one, where we had quite a

romantic scene and it snowed for us out of the blue — one of the few days on the whole shoot we had snow. It couldn’t have been more perfect," she says. “We could have gone to another European city, but why? We have a tremendous cast of Austrian actors, some terrific German actors and the Austrian crew have been great. I wouldn’t see any reason to go anywhere else.” Vienna Blood — written by Steve Thompson and directed by Robert Dornhelm and Umut Dag — was made with support from Televisionfund Austria, TV-Filmfund Vienna and Niederoesterreich Kultur.

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THE PERFECT PLACE TO TELL A STORY

With Spain at its western extreme and, 4,000-plus kilometres away, Turkey’s Gulf of Iskenderun on the eastern edge, the Mediterranean basin is home to three continents, 60 countries and more than 3,300 islands. No wonder the scale, scope and beauty of its locations are the envy of the world, writes GARY SMITH

The Little Drummer Girl, the ﬁrst production ever to shoot on the Acropolis at night

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The northern Spanish region of Navarre hosted Terry Gilliam's The Man Who Killed Don Quixote. Pictured are: Adam Driver (left) and José Luis Ferrer

VENIA VERGOU “YOU CAN FIND AND FILM EVERYTHING HERE — CASTLES, ANCIENT MONUMENTS, PICTURESQUE VILLAGES, ISLANDS, BEACHES, FORESTS, SNOW-CAPPED MOUNTAINS, HOT SPRINGS, CANYONS — EVEN VOLCANOES”

ANDWICHED between Crete and the Turkish coast, Rhodes is part of the Dodecanese island sub-grouping. The medieval city of Rhodes is one of the few fortified settlements from the Middle Ages to have survived almost intact. “The town still features its original walls, layout, public buildings, places of worship and residences,” says Venia Vergou, director of the Hellenic Film Commission, the directorate of the Greek Film Centre responsible for attracting foreign productions to Greece. “The medieval town is celebrating its 30th anniversary as a UNESCO World Heritage Site this year. For anyone looking for unbroken authenticity, once you step into the medieval town, you are instantly back in the 14th or 15th century, the period when the Knights of Saint John of Jerusalem ruled Rhodes.” Vergou also highlights a spectacular location of a different kind — The Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center in Athens. This includes the new National Library of Greece and the Greek National Opera, as well as the 210,000 sq m Stavros Niarchos Park. “The Center was designed by Renzo Piano,” she says. “This is a state-of-the-art location that I believe has huge potential to host amazing productions.” Vergou reports that The Little Drummer Girl shot scenes in

the Nikaia neighbourhood of Athens, which doubled for Palestine. “That’s just one example of the fact that you can find and film everything here — castles, ancient monuments, picturesque traditional villages, unique islands, amazing beaches, forests, snow-capped mountains, hot springs, canyons — even volcanoes,” Vergou says. The Little Drummer Girl, directed by Park Chan-wook (The Handmaiden; Old Boy) for the BBC and based on the novel by John le Carré, filmed for 24 days in Greece — and was the first production ever to shoot at the Acropolis at night. “And believe me, that was the experience of a lifetime,” Vergou says. Park adds: “It was an incredible experience, filming The Little Drummer Girl in the same locations described in le Carré’s book. The immense privilege of shooting at such historically and culturally important places as the Acropolis or the Temple of Poseidon cannot be understated. Greece, as the birthplace of western

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PARK CHAN-WOOK “GREECE, AS THE BIRTHPLACE OF WESTERN DRAMA, OFFERS FILMMAKERS A CANVAS OF UNIQUE RESONANCE”

Gran Canaria. She adds: “We also worked with several film projects, including Wonder Woman 1984, directed by Patty Jenkins and shot in Fuerteventura and Tenerife; Blanco En Blanco, shot on Tenerife and Lanzarote; and Rambo V: Last Blood, produced by Lionsgate and Millennium, and directed by Adrian Grunberg, which shot in Tenerife.” But two earlier productions still stand out in terms of scale, reputation and logistical challenges, Mora says: “Clash Of The Titans (2010), shot in Tenerife, was the first modern blockbuster that came here and it opened the door to other Hollywood productions, including Wrath Of The Titans, Exodus: Gods And Kings, Fast & Furious 6, Allied and Jason Bourne.” The other landmark production was Solo: A Star Wars Story, which came to the Canary Islands in 2018. “It’s the biggest production ever to have come to here,” Mora says. “The result has been very positive for us in terms of popularity and reputation, but hosting such a huge production posed major challenges. But our infrastructure is good and, thanks to that shoot, around €15m was spent on the island. The local government even made a tourism campaign with the strap line ‘The best climate in the galaxy’. The producers say they chose the Canary Islands because of the annual average temperature of 23C and our 4,800 hours of sunlight a year.” Lying south of Sicily, off the east coast of Tunisia, it’s easy to forget just how far south the island of Malta is located. Thanks to its position, Malta has long been a jumping-off point for the Middle East and is home to a huge variety of architectural styles that reflect the changing tides of the region’s history and political influence. And it is also an underwater paradise, with white-sand beaches and coves. “Malta does have elements that make it unique,” agrees Julian Guillaumier, marketing co-ordinating officer of the

drama, offers filmmakers a canvas of unique resonance and, for me, it was the perfect place to tell this story.” Park and the crew of The Little Drummer Girl also shot at Elefsina, which doubled for Lebanon. Further productions in Greece include season four of another UK series, The Durrells, which recently completed filming on the island of Corfu. Previous seasons of the series have been filmed around the island, including in Corfu’s old town — yet another of the many UNESCO-protected monuments in Greece. The Durrells is based on the autobiographical trilogy of books by Gerald Durrell, the naturalist, explorer, writer and conservationist, and covers the period that his family lived on Corfu in the 1930s. It was on the back of the production that Corfu was named Best European Film Location of 2018 by the European Film Commissions Network (EUFCN). “We are extremely proud of this win,” Vergou says. Greece also hosted Michael Winterbottom’s latest feature, Greed, starring Steve Coogan, which filmed on the island of Mykonos in autumn 2018. “They also shot for one day on Delos, near Mykonos at the centre of the Cyclades archipelago, which is one of the most important mythological, historical and archaeological sites in Greece,” Vergou says. She also cites the Spanish-Greek co-production Sumendia, directed by Miguel Ángel Jiménez and starring Emma Suárez, which filmed on Nisyros: “It included several shots from inside the crater of a volcano. Where else can you do that?” Other major shoots of the last 12 months include TV series Eden, which centres on the refugee crisis and was executive produced by Greek company Blonde, and feature film Echoes Of The Past, starring Max von Sydow and Danae Skiadi. Directed by Nicholas Demetropoulos and shot in Attica and Kalavryta, the film tells the story of the Nazi massacre of Kalavryta in 1943. EKOME, Greece’s National Centre of Audiovisual Media & Communication, supports a variety of initiatives related to film, TV and digital-media production, including a new cash-rebate programme that offers 35% on eligible expenses incurred in Greece to both foreign and local productions. “We have also started organising and operating local film offices in various municipalities all over Greece, in order to facilitate productions,” Panos Kouanis, president and CEO of EKOME says. “With the cash-rebate programme and the new film offices, Greece is able to offer a complete package to producers.“ Over on the far western edge of Europe, Natacha Mora is the coordinator of both the Canary Islands audiovisual department and Canary Islands Film. Mora, like Vergou in Greece, can point to year-round sunshine, very mild winter weather and utterly unique landscapes as reasons to shoot on the continent’s southern-most point. The Canary Islands has hosted several big TV and film productions in the last year, including Hierro, produced by Portocabo, Atlantique Productions, Movistar+ and ARTE, which was entirely shot on El Hierro, the smallest island in the archipelago. Mora also mentions TV thriller La Sala, produced by Can Can, Isla and HBO, which was directed by Manuel Sanabria and shot on

NATACHA MORA “THE PRODUCERS OF SOLO: A STAR WARS STORY SAY THEY CHOSE THE CANARY ISLANDS BECAUSE OF THE ANNUAL AVERAGE TEMPERATURE OF 23C AND OUR 4,800 HOURS OF SUNLIGHT A YEAR”

Malta Film Commission. “And it’s the combination of these elements, coupled with our other characteristics and strengths, that make Malta an ideal filming location. We have one of Europe's best marine filming facilities, specialising in shooting the most elaborate SFX sequences in a totally controlled environment. Our construction crews have built sets for some of Hollywood's biggest projects, including Troy, Gladiator and Assassin's Creed. No challenge is too big for our skilled workforce.” Among the big names to have shot in Malta are Steven Spielberg, Ridley Scott and Michael Bay. “Our local crews have learnt with the best and have exceeded expectations whenever put to the test,” Guillaumier adds. Adding to Malta’s attractions are the fact that everyone speaks English, its locations are versatile and can double for multiple places, and its excellent climate allows for long hours of filming. Moreover, Malta now offers a 40% cash-back incentive, making it an extremely competitive filming destination. In 2018, the island hosted a number of prominent TV projects, including Das Boot, Queen Of The South and Genius — the latter featuring Antonio Banderas in the role of Pablo Picasso. Other recent produc-

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ALON HATTINGH “THERE WAS A SUDDEN SPLASH ON THE SURFACE AND UP CAME A 3,500-YEAR-OLD AMPHORA, FOLLOWED BY MORE AND MORE MARKER BUOYS, WITH MORE AND MORE AMPHORAS”

Europe and the Middle East. And of course, Malta has 300 days of sunshine a year.” Hattingh recalls a shoot off the coast of Gozo, Malta’s sister island, for a production involving sunken treasure: “We were a small team of camera divers, as the location was secret and very, very deep. We had tried day after day to head out, but the waves were too high to do the dives safely. After three days of waiting, the weather finally cleared. It was September and we set off very early, before sunrise, but it took some time to get to the marked location.” Once in place, the divers started their descent to the seabed while, on the boat, the rest of the crew waited — and waited. “It seemed to take forever but then, all of a sudden, a marker buoy popped up indicating that something was coming up,” Hattingh says “We waited another 10 minutes and there was a sudden splash on the surface. Up came a 3,500-year-old amphora, followed by more and more marker buoys, with more and more amphoras. And, best of all, the camera crew had got all the shots they needed. As much as Malta is the result of a cultural mix stretching back thousands of years, so in its own way is Croatia. As Tanja Ladovic Blazevic, co-ordinator at Filming in Croatia, puts it: “Croatia is a small and utterly unique country formed by so many different influences, because it’s situated at the crossroads of Central Europe, the Balkans and the Mediterranean. Its turbulent history goes back to the Roman era and continues through the Renaissance, the Baroque period, the Ottoman conquests and the communist regime following the Second World War, up to the present day.” Croatia can be divided into three geographically distinct

tions include German TV series Beat, Belgian feature film Torpedo and Russian production One Breath. “And we’ve also worked with a number of game shows, including The Bravest Couple and Superstars,” Guillaumier adds. One of the biggest projects to film in Malta in the last year was a Bollywood production called Bharat, featuring Indian superstar Salman Khan. “This was the second Bollywood project to shoot in Malta in as many years, and cements our reputation as a film destination for the Indian market,” Guillaumier says. “Bharat stands out because it featured a number of mass dance sequences in various Maltese locations, which have proved to be very effective as a vehicle for screen tourism.” He adds: “These days, Malta is attracting business from all over the world, including the US, Europe, Russia and, of course, India. We have also had a number of enquiries from China and we are optimistic about further expanding our reach into the Australian and Canadian markets.” According to Alon Hattingh, executive producer at Rock Productions Malta, it is the people and the weather that help to make the island special: “The Maltese are a super cultural mix from all over

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CORFU island Crowned Best European Film Location 2018 Film Location of THE DURRELLS TV series

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The Zagreb Funicular, which connects the Upper town with the Lower Town of old Zagreb

the series Success, which was the first original HBO production to come to this region.” TV series Heirs Of The Night, directed by Diederik van Rooijen, and Quicksand, directed by Per-Olav Sørensen, also visited during the first half of the filming season, while German feature films Hartwig Seeler and The Master Butchers Singing Club were entirely filmed in Croatia. “There were also several interesting co-productions, such as feature film Barefoot Emperor,” Ladovic Blazevic adds. “And Gabriele Salvatores, director of Oscar-winning Mediterraneo, used Croatian locations for his new film, Se Ti Abbraccio Non Aver Paura.” The Master Butchers Singing Club, a historical drama about German migrants to North America directed by Ulrich Edel, was the first production to apply for the 30% cash rebate for filming in regions with below-average development. The film's producer, Lutz Weidlich, is very keen on filming in Croatia: “Since the introduction of the production-incentive programme in 2012, we have returned to Croatia time and again. For this particular project, we were looking at several other countries across two continents but, ultimately, we decided on Croatia due to its winning combination of spectacular locations, excellent professionals and well-established production-incentive scheme. The recently introduced 30% incentive for filming in under-developed areas enticed us to explore locations beyond the known filming areas, and we were very fortunate to find genuinely pristine locations, which

zones: the coastal region, the densely wooded mountains and the Pannonian region, with its flat plains. “This means you can have morning coffee in Zagreb and, within less than a two-hour drive, be on the Adriatic coast, or among rocky mountains, or on the endless plains of Slavonia,” Ladovic Blazevic says. “It’s no surprise that, among the production community, Croatia is known as ‘location, location and location’! Alongside that, Croatia recently increased its cash rebate rate to 25%, with an additional 5% for productions filming in regions with below-average development. These changes in the incentive programme are not only encouraging productions to explore new locations, but are also creating a positive impact on local communities.” In 2018 Croatia hosted a record number of productions supported by the incentive programme. “Altogether, there were 14 projects, which breaks down as seven feature films, one TV film and six TV series,” Ladovic Blazevic says. “The year started with the final season of Game Of Thrones filming in Dubrovnik and continued with LUTZ WEIDLICH “CROATIA’S RECENTLY INTRODUCED 30% INCENTIVE FOR FILMING IN UNDER-DEVELOPED AREAS ENTICED US TO EXPLORE LOCATIONS THAT WOULD NOT HAVE BEEN ON OUR RADAR”

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Solo: A Star Wars Story is "the biggest production ever" to have come to Spain’s Canary Islands

SEHAD CEKIC “MONTENEGRO’S USP IS NATURE. BEAUTIFUL, BREATHTAKING NATURE, WITH MOUNTAINS, CANYONS, RIVERS AND BEACHES, ALL PACKED WITHIN A VERY SMALL TERRITORY”

now form an important part of our story. They would not have been on our radar without this thoroughly praiseworthy financial incentive.” Head south-east from Croatia and you find yourself in unspoilt Montenegro. Sehad Čekić of Film Centre Montenegro describes his country’s multiple charms: “Our USP is nature. Beautiful, breathtaking nature, with mountains, canyons, rivers and beaches, all packed within a very small territory. Also, Montenegro is well known for its cultural and historical heritage, through being on the crossroads of the western and eastern cultures and civilisations.” Čekić reports that, last year, Papillon with Charlie Hunnam and Oscar-winner Rami Malek shot most of the exteriors in Montenegro, as did Hong Kong film Golden Job. “The action scenes for Golden Job were really challenging,” he adds. “Some of the very complex, heavily choreographed fight scenes were shot in the old town of Sveti Stefan in Budva. Perhaps the most demanding thing for the film crew was to protect the site from the sort of damage that often goes with shooting action scenes.” Bilbao Bizkaia, located in the Basque Country in northern Spain, sits at Southern Europe’s most northerly, temperate point and is home to some of the most spectacular coastline to be found anywhere on the continent. As a consequence of this abundant natural drama, it has been one of Game Of Thrones’ favourite locations. “Game Of Thrones put us on the map — San Juan de Gaztelugatxe is known around the

world as Dragonstone,” says Xabier Ochandiano, city councillor for economic development, trade and employment at Bilbao City Council. “That shoot is the best example of the capacity of Bilbao Bizkaia to accommodate large productions and successfully respond to all their needs and demands. As a city and a territory, we’re prepared for ambitious projects and we guarantee a positive outcome. We host television programmes from all over the world, mostly attracted by the culture, the cuisine and the urban transformation of the city, with the Guggenheim Museum as its landmark. Spanish productions still make up the majority of productions, but the phenomenon of the ondemand platforms is bringing in more international work.” In 2018, Bilbao Bizkaia has been the location for eight feature films and two television series, which have generated a direct economic impact of €13m. “This is highly positive because it endorses the potential of Bilbao Bizkaia as a place of reference in the film and TV industries,” Ochandiano adds. “I have to give a mention to the talent of Basque directors Koldo Serra, Mikel Rueda, Galder Gaztelu-

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FEATURE SOUTHERN EUROPE

70 Binladens, ﬁlmed in Bilbao Bizkaia

global icon of avant-garde architecture since opening in 1997 and continues to arouse the interest of the film industry.” Ochandiano also points to the cliffs and beaches of the Urdaibai Biosphere Reserve, the centuries-old beech forest of Otzarreta, the Gorbea Natural Park and the Bizkaia Bridge, a suspension bridge that has connected the left and right banks of the Nervion River for the last 125 years. The majority of productions in the northern Spanish region of Navarre are national projects due to a competitive tax incentive of 35% for local films and television series. However, there have been several foreign productions keen to benefit from the region’s tax relief on 20% of the costs incurred in Spain, provided said costs amount to at least €1m. Recent projects include The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, directed by Terry Gilliam and shot in Gallipienzo; Chinese action drama Line Walker II, directed by Wai-Keung Lau; and Dutch film Fully Hooked Up, directed by Eva Zanen. “Line Walker II was serviced by Babieka Films, whose producer is very knowledgeable about the resources and locations in Navarre,” says Sara Sevilla Aragón of the Navarre Film Commission. “Several Asian projects have been shot in Navarre in recent years, including The Promise, which was shot in Bardenas. The choice of Navarre in that case was due to the script, which included scenes during the holiday celebrations that take place in the capital of Navarre.”

Urrutia, Koldo Sojo and Miguel Ángel Jiménez, who shot their latest works in Bilbao Bizkaia — films including 70 Binladens, El Doble Más Quince, El Hoyo, La Pequeña Suiza and Sumendia. All these projects highlight the strength of the local sector and its ability to tell stories with a universal vision. Last year, we also hosted icons Daniel Calparsoro and Alejandro Amenábar.” Presunto Culpable, produced by Atresmedia and Boomerang TV for Amazon Prime, and Netflix’s La Víctima Número 8 also shot in the region. In an area in which modern cityscapes, industrial landscapes, wild coastline, pure nature and ancient quarters sit side by side, Ochandiano struggles to choose his favourite locations. “Obviously, San Juan de Gaztelugatxe, which is a rock nestled in the Bay of Biscay with a 10th century chapel on top of it, is one of my favourites,” he says. “It’s no accident that it was chosen by Game Of Thrones — or that it won the second Best Film Location of the Decade award from the European Film Commission Network. The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, whose walls James Bond climbed, has become a XABIER OCHANDIANO “GAME OF THRONES PUT BILBAO BIZKAIA ON THE MAP — SAN JUAN DE GAZTELUGATXE IS KNOWN AROUND THE WORLD AS DRAGONSTONE”

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MAKING A SCENE THE MALLORCA FILES

FUN ON THE RUN CAST AND CREW ENJOYED WORKING ON FAST-MOVING CRIME SERIES THE MALLORCA FILES. THEY TOLD JULIAN NEWBY WHY

HE MALLORCA Files is a new crime drama from BBC Studios pitched at daytime viewers. A departure from the brooding, atmospheric crime and mystery series that have played such a key role in the migration of talent and audience from big to small screens around the world, it’s a sun-drenched saga focused on two detectives who find themselves forced to work together on a beautiful island that becomes their home quite by accident. It’s the first series greenlit for Cosmopolitan Pictures, the independent production company founded by BBC executive Ben Donald in 2014. Shot entirely on location on the Spanish island, the production spent a total of seven months there for the first series — and all were happy to do so. “Mallorca is the gift that doesn’t stop

Elen Rhys and Julian Looman in The Mallorca Files

giving,” Donald says. “It’s not the type of show where the characters spend a lot of time in incident rooms, cross-examining suspects. They spend a lot of time out and about so to have a backdrop like that is perfect. We are at least 90% on location and we are mining every inch of the island.” The 10-part series centres around introverted Brit Miranda Blake (Elen Rhys) and German Max Winter (Julian Looman) an extrovert who breaks all German stereotypes, according

“Mallorca is the gift that doesn’t stop giving” BEN DONALD

to executive producer Dan Sefton who heads the writing team. Both find themselves on the island for different reasons out of their control and although their personalities clash, they are forced to work together and their very different approaches to fighting crime eventually start to bring results. “She finds herself stuck on the island with Max, much to her disappointment and frustration, having a very different approach to policing,” Rhys says of her character. “But even though they’re opposites, they eventually strengthen each other in different ways.” Mallorca is a popular resort island — particularly among the Germans and the Brits, hence the storyline. And for series-one cast and crew remained there pretty much permanently for seven months, “which is not a punishment!”, Looman says, adding: “The idea of the series is for us to be out there. On the go, on the run.” Rhys adds: “We do all our thinking and all our interviewing of suspects on the road. Ben and Dan didn’t want to do another procedural dominated by interview rooms. This is much lighter, feel-good and it’s against the beautiful backdrop of Mallorca — which is like a third main character really. So a lot of it is out-and-about and that’s amazing for us.” She adds: “We do have days in the studio and they’re quite intense, but fun too.” Looman describes the studio as “a hangar”. Rhys adds: “It’s one of [production services company] Palma Pictures’ warehouses where they have built this incredible, very impressive HQ with interview rooms, chief-of-police rooms, a bullpen and so on — it’s great.” “It’s on the outskirts of Palma,” Donald says. “It doubles as a studio and a production office. It’s a building that we have re-purposed for the series. There is quite a lot of infrastructure on the island but most of it is dedicated to commercials or bits of feature films that pass through. What we’re trying to do is create our own independent infrastructure really, and hope that we can put down some long-term roots there.” He adds that the island and its people have been “very welcoming” to the production. “We’re doing two things really: we’re doing a big international TV series on their island, but also putting Mallorca on screen as Mallorca rather than doubling it as Istanbul or Florida.” There are plans by the Mallorca Film Commission to grow the production infrastructure on the island and possibly to establish local incentives in the long-term, but meanwhile The Mallorca Files is benefiting from a combination of British and Spanish incentives. The Mallorca Files is a Cosmopolitan Pictures/ Clerkenwell Films co-production for the BBC. BBC Studios and Cosmopolitan Pictures have jointly put a co-production deal in place with BritBox for the US and Canada, and with ZDFneo for Germany. Other partners include France 2. BBC Studios is the international distributor.

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MAKING A SCENE WORLD ON FIRE

THE PEOPLE’S WAR ON THE OCCASION OF THE 80TH ANNIVERSARY OF WWII, THE BBC IS SCREENING NEW EPIC DRAMA SERIES WORLD ON FIRE, SET AT THE OUTBREAK OF THE CONFLICT. CLIVE BULL SPOKE TO CAST AND CREW ABOUT THE TASK OF RECREATING WARTIME EUROPE

HIS YEAR marks the 80th anniversary of the start of WWII — and it’s the impact of the outbreak of the global conflict that lies at the heart of new drama World On Fire, produced by Mammoth Productions and screened in the UK on BBC 1. ITV Studios Global Entertainment handles global distribution. Emmy and BAFTA winner Sean Bean (Broken, Game Of Thrones, Lord Of The Rings) is joined by Academy Award-winner Helen Hunt (As Good As It Gets, Mad About You) and Academy Awardnominated Lesley Manville (Phantom Thread, Mum) for an ambitious drama that explores the fates of ordinary people across Europe and the United States as the war unfolds. Bean plays Douglas, a WWI veteran suffering from what we would now call PTSD and struggling to bring up his family. “He’s a beaten man in some ways,” Bean told Location International. “You can see the strong character that he once was, but he’s been battered down, shocked and demoralised by the bloodshed and the horror that he saw. And he’s not on his own. There were many, many men like him and they were treated as though there was something wrong with them. People didn’t really recognise

that being ‘shell-shocked’ had an effect on so many men. He’s a conscientious objector due to that and he gets a hard time from everybody.” Bean says World War II would have been the hardest of all wars in which to be a conscientious objector. And he has a personal connection to the story. “My Grandad — he was a sailor in the Royal Navy and was in Russia in the war. He was shaky when he came home and for quite a few years. And he’d not seen my Dad for years — he’d only have been three or four years old when he left so it was a difficult time.” The seven-part series begins a few days before the outbreak of war, and ends a year later, recreating some of the conflict’s landmark events as a backdrop to the human stories of those affected. While the historical moments of 1939 and 1940 are played out on an epic scale, the central focus is on the personal; the intricate

Shooting among the ruins at Lenesice, near Louny, north of Prague. Photo: Dusan Martincek/ Mammoth/BBC

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relationships between the characters. “A lot of my time [on set] was spent in the kitchen, having cups of tea and reading the paper,” says Bean, who plays a working-class bus conductor, living in a small terraced house in Manchester. His role is away from the action. “The papers are really interesting — all about the build-up to WWII, so I just sit there reading all about it. I did a lot of very intense scenes there in that room, and that’s where you see him kind of fall apart, when he’s on his own.”

Writer Peter Bowker says he and Mammoth managing director Damien Timmer were both big fans of World At War, the BBC’s definitive WWII documentary made in the 1970s. “We wondered whether it would be possible to do a drama where you captured some of the multi-stranded nature of it internationally. Not just in one city, but the world. That was the challenge.” Bowker says a lot of research was involved, and it is important to do that, but then put the research to one side when creating the story

and the characters. "You don’t want to show the research in your writing:," Bowker says. “There’s an apocryphal tale of a WWI movie where a character declares that WWI has broken out!” Bowker discovered a personal connection to the story as well, as he delved into his own family history. Douglas (Sean Bean’s character) is named after Bowker’s grandfather — who was himself a bus conductor — who had fought in WWI during which he suffered a mustard gas attack. While writing the drama, he reflected on what had

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“We have the fall of Paris, we have Dunkirk, the Battle of Britain, the fall of Warsaw and we have a naval battle in Uruguay” PETER BOWKER been said about his grandfather over the years and concluded: “That sounds like undiagnosed PTSD.” Despite the epic backdrops, the series is all about character. “We wanted to take it away from the board rooms and the politicians and go back to everyday lives and cover the more hidden, human stories,” executive producer Helen Ziegler says. “Because there’s a war on, it doesn’t mean people stop loving, stop laughing, stop doing stupid things.” Donning the period costumes was a particular joy for Bean’s co-star Manville, who plays plays frosty, upper-middle-class Robina — and who shares numerous scenes with Bean. Some were original pieces, some made especially for the series. “Nipped-in waisted suits and dresses, cardigans just over the shoulder,” Manville says. “I remember my mother looking like that, in pearls. Women did that all the time then. Such an elegant look. I looked absolutely like my mother. I sent a picture to my sister and she said ‘Oh my God, it’s Mum!’”

While Bean and Manville feature in the British end of the production, predominantly shot in the north of England, major events of WWII that happened across Europe were being filmed at the same time. “The curious thing about this production was that we had units all over the place, filming simultaneously,” Timmer says. “We had scenes coming in from Sean and Lesley in Manchester, scenes from Warsaw, from Paris, from Berlin — it did feel like the war was unfolding in real time.” The producers chose Prague to play those three cities, largely because of its sheer versatility. Location manager Andrew Bainbridge says what they found in Prague was a wealth of different period locations that had a distinct look, identifiable to the viewer. “There was a tone set for each city. What we didn’t want was to have the need to say ‘Warsaw’ more than once as a subtitle. There was a colour palette set for each city and a tone for each city which meant visually you would immediately know where you were.”

Ziegler concurs that Prague was the perfect location for the Europe scenes, thanks to its wide variety of architecture, all in close proximity. “It was incredible. It just offered so many possibilities,” she says. “A tremendous amount of work went into creating these worlds and making sure that when you were in Warsaw, or when you were in Berlin, you could recognise them through the look of the colours and the feel. And the locations that we found in Prague really offered those differences. For example with Berlin we really wanted to use straight lines, embracing that in the architecture, and then with Warsaw, we were looking at the most beautiful city and those art-deco swirling lines — and we found buildings that gave us all of that and so much more.” According to Bowker even the weather was obliging, with a fall of snow that didn’t melt too quickly. “There was a scene in the Czech Republic where I wrote a snowscape, and in my head it was never going to work,” he says. “I’ve done this before where if it does snow it can melt so quickly that for continuity you have to decide whether to go with the snow or not. And you’re going to have to buy snow if it melts.” Fortunately the snow persisted for long enough. To the north of Prague, the bombing of Warsaw was recreated in the small village of Lenesice, near Louny. Here, doubling as a bomb-site in this case, the ruins of a former sugar factory

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The Dunkirk evacuation recreated on a beach at Lytham St Annes, near Blackpool in England. Photo: Ben Blackall/Mammoth/BBC

have proved popular with filmmakers. The town authorities have planned eventually to remove the ruins, but meanwhile they are open to using them for demolition sequences in films. Shooting the big set-pieces was the greatest challenge for the production. “Every episode has a key event. We have the fall of Paris, we have Dunkirk, the Battle of Britain, the fall of Warsaw and we have a naval battle in Uruguay,” Timmer says. For the staging of Dunkirk, the famous evacuation of allied troops in northern France, Bainbridge headed a lengthy search across Britain for a beach with the required tidal movements — one that still left enough sand even when the tide was in. The beach needed to be dressed with detritus and vehicles that wouldn’t

be harmed by tidal movements. And then there were the practical demands when working with dunes and sandy beaches. “We had to think about welfare,” Bainbridge says. “We were shooting in late January, early February so it was going to be very cold, and we have people in the water.” By “a process of elimination” the production ended up on a beach at Lytham St Annes, near the northern England seaside resort of Blackpool. Again, the production got lucky with the weather. “We were supposed to be dressing the beach, and then Storm Erik arrived and we couldn’t get on the beach at all — the tides just went completely berserk. The wind was bringing water right in up to the dunes. Thankfully it blew itself out, took the bad weather away and we had some time to dress

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the set, followed by four days of filming in fantastic sunshine and beautiful light. We were left with shots that could quite easily have been May.” Indeed Dunkirk took place at the end of May and beginning of June 1940, and the good weather was crucial to the success of the operation. “We had no choice but to shoot it in February,” Bowker says. “But we were blessed with the bluest skies. What could have been our Waterloo, turned out to work incredibly well. It was a complete fluke. As a writer I was thinking ‘There’s no way you’re going to make the sky look right’, but it was beautiful, and it was massive in terms of the technical exercise and the staging.” Another location challenge was to find the street of terraced houses for the Manchester home

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MAKING A SCENE WORLD ON FIRE

Sean Bean as Douglas, a WWI veteran suﬀering PTSD

of Douglas and Lois, played by Julia Brown (Grasslands, The Last Kingdom). Because most of Manchester's terraced streets have now gone, Bainbridge had to look further afield, chancing on the perfect spot via an online search. “I was trawling the internet looking for terraced streets in the northwest of England outside Manchester, and I just happened to come across an estate agent’s picture of a house for sale. I had a look at the whole street on Google earth and bingo! We jumped at that,” he says. The street in question was Kendal Street in Wigan, an almost perfect row of red-bricked terraced houses — although a lot more work had to be done before shooting was possible. A certain amount of re-dressing was required, with satellite dishes removed, street furniture replaced and windows altered. “It was a big number to prepare that street,” Bainbridge says. “There are probably 250 houses and the most extraordinary amount of cars which were parked there.” Vehicles had to be cleared for two periods of four to five days but, says Bainbridge, the results speak for themselves. “It’s an absolutely stunning street — never been shot on before, which makes it all the more special. It was a real find and a key location.” Turning the clock back to 1939 on a modernday street requires a lot of preparation and a

“People didn't recognise that being 'shell-shocked' had an effect on so many men” SEAN BEAN very specific process. “The first thing we do is advise all the residents in the street by letter,” Bainbridge says. “Then we put on a residents meeting. We tell them what we’re planning to do and give them a chance to voice any concerns they may have. It’s when people don’t know what’s going on, that’s when they get upset.” But the experience can be an enjoyable one for the residents, and something of an education, too. “What was extraordinary about this street was that people were absolutely astounded to see it without any cars. All the residents said how wonderful it was — and actually the residents are now speaking to the council about trying to get some sort of parking restrictions set up.” Ironically the lucky streak with the weather ended in Manchester, which failed to live up to its famed — although technically unjust — reputation as ‘the rainy city’. Shooting along the cobbled streets, dotted with classic cars and buses, the stage direction called for a rainy day, which was ultimately a brief shower provided artificially by the crew on hand with a hose, and some work in post-production. “There was

a hope that it would be a dank and miserable as it could be, in true Manchester fashion,” Bainbridge says. “We did wet down the roads and the special-effects people used a sort of haze where which gave a misty feel.” Other northern England locations include The Old Courts in Wigan which stood in for such venues as Levenshulme Palais de Dance in Manchester and a decadent Parisian nightspot called Club Amour; and Braime’s Pressing Ltd, a remarkable looking building at Clarence Dock in Leeds, a working factory with a 125-year history, with exterior and interior areas which have retained their period features. The production is filmed predominantly on location, although the action moved to Manchester’s Space Studios for some interior shots with Sean Bean. “We did that just because a little terraced house just doesn’t afford you the size to get everything you need and all the cameras in there,” Bainbridge says. “So we built the house with floating walls — so you can take a wall off and go outside the room so to speak. Everything else was on location.”

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FEATURE GEORGIA

Robert Downey Jr as Tony Stark/Iron Man in Avengers Endgame. ©Marvel Studios 2019

EMPIRE

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CCORDING to the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America), Georgia is now the number-one filming location in the world. This is based on the number of projects that shot in The Empire State of the South in the 2018 financial year, along with the amount of direct spend generated by those projects. And the impact of this is not only to seen in state capital Atlanta, says Lee Thomas, deputy commissioner of the Georgia Film, Music & Digital Entertainment Office: “It benefits rural areas and small businesses too. The motion-picture and television industry is responsible for more than 92,100 jobs and nearly $4.6bn in total wages in Georgia. On top of that, 28,700 people are directly employed by the film and TV industry in the state, including 12,518 productionrelated employees.” In January 2018, MovieMaker magazine named Atlanta the numberone large city for filmmakers to live and work in and Savannah as the number-two small city. Feature films and television productions shot in Georgia generated $9.5bn during the 2018 financial year (July 1, 2017-June 30, 2018). The state is also the production base of several major motion pictures, including Marvel’s Black Panther,

When it comes to filming, Georgia truly has it all, including a 30% tax credit. Introduced back in 2008, the incentive is credited with kick-starting the phenomenal growth of Georgia’s film and TV industry. GARY SMITH takes a tour of the Empire State of the South

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FEATURE GEORGIA

Director Ang Lee and Will Smith on the set of Gemini Man. Photo: Ben Rosenstein©Paramount Pictures BETH NELSON “IT’LL BE EXCITING TO SEE OUR BEAUTIFUL SAVANNAH LOCATIONS TAKEN BACK IN TIME IN LADY AND THE TRAMP — WE KNOW THE CITY IS GOING TO SHINE”

several Avengers movies, along with numerous TV series. In March alone, there were 38 film and TV productions based in Georgia. But the state’s attractions go far beyond a generous tax credit and reasonable rates. First settled by the British in 1733, Georgia is home to numerous mansions and antebellum homes dating from the early 19th century, as well as intact historical quarters, rolling countryside, swampland and Pinewood Atlanta Studios, with its 18 sound stages. There are also numerous other sound stages dotted around the state. Then there’s the Georgia Film Academy, mild winters, 2,700 hours of sunshine per year, enthusiastic and co-operative local authorities, sunny weather and thousands of skilled crew members. On top of all that, there’s also a wide choice of architecturally varied cities, such as Macon, Atlanta, Augusta, Columbus and Savannah. According to Beth Nelson, film commissioner and executive director at the Savannah Regional Film Commission, the city, globally famous for its abundant period charms, is a genuine chameleon. “Savannah rarely plays itself, but we are always excited to see it transformed into other locations,” she says. “For example, we have been 19th-century America, Florida, London, New York City, Los Angeles, California, New Orleans, Washington, Buenos Aries and Fall River in Massachusetts.” Over the past 12 months, Savannah has seen a surge in visiting productions, meaning that the economic impact in 2018 was almost double that of 2017 — which, until then, had been the best year on record. “The Savannah region hosted three major feature films, two TV series and several independent productions, along with commercials, photo shoots and reality shows,” Nelson says. “The first major feature of 2018 was sci-fi action drama Gemini Man, directed by Ang Lee and starring Will Smith. The most challenging aspect of that project was figuring out the logistics of landing a sea-plane on a beach, which involved permits and permissions from federal, state and local government agencies.”

Disney’s live-action remake of Lady And The Tramp arrived immediately after Gemini Man wrapped. “Lady And The Tramp is set in the early 1900s and our historic downtown made for a perfect double,” Nelson says. “The challenge was finding period homes with cobblestone streets while avoiding modern infrastructure. Fortunately, our community is dedicated to historic preservation and our downtown is the largest historic district in the US, which provided a host of location options for the production. It’ll be exciting to see our beautiful Savannah locations taken back in time — we know the city is going to shine.” Nelson adds that, in 2019, Savannah has so far welcomed The Glorias: A Life On The Road, a feature film depicting the life story of Gloria Steinem, starring Julianne Moore and Alicia Vikander. “For this, Savannah had to represent decades of locations and double as a variety of places, including rural Oklahoma, New York and London,” she adds. “The main challenge was the large number of locations to be covered in approximately 40 days.” Visiting TV series in 2019 include Florida Girls for Pop TV and The Act for Hulu. The latter, starring Patricia Arquette and Joey King, tells the true story of Gypsy Rose Blanchard and her over-protective mother. In addition, Savannah has also hosted several independent productions over the past 12 months, including Backtrace, starring Sylvester Stallone and Matthew Modine; The Poison Rose with John Travolta and Morgan Freeman; and Emperor, based on the life of fugitive slave Shields Green. “The filming dates of many of

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FEATURE GEORGIA

Savannah's Chippewa Square: famously scenes from Forrest Gump were ﬁlmed here LAURA BRYANT “THE PROJECT I’M MOST PROUD OF IS BIRTH OF A NATION, FOR WHICH WE CREATED PLANTATIONS AND COTTON FIELDS. IT LOOKS AMAZING”

restaurant — plus it was part of three houses in a row, just like in the original,” she says. Bryant, who worked on Forrest Gump and The Legend Of Bagger Vance in the 1990s, points to two of her favourite spots in Savannah: “In terms of interiors, I’d have to choose the Owens-Thomas House, built in 1816. It’s a perfect English Regency-period home built out of stone brought over from Bath in the UK. It’s elegance personified, with an upstairs walkway and unusual features, such as curved walls. We used it for Bagger Vance and, more recently, shot scenes from the second series of Underground there.” In terms of exteriors, Bryant points to “the period perfection” of Chippewa Square. “It’s where Forrest Gump was filmed sitting on a bench at the start of the film — although the bench itself was a prop,” she adds. “We also have some unusual ramps that can be up to twostoreys high, which run from the city to the river. The oldest of them were built from the ballast that ships used to arrive with and then unload before filling their holds with local produce.” Two hours inland, at the halfway point between Savannah and Atlanta, sits Macon. The city has an amazingly rich and varied architectural history and features 7,000 properties listed on the National Register of Historic Places, including 70 perfectly preserved antebellum homes with a unique external look. “The local geology means that there’s a lot of clay around Macon,” says Aaron Buzza, vice-president of development and chief operating officer of the Macon Convention & Visitors Bureau. “So there are plenty of brick buildings featuring a variety of tone, from nearly black through orange and red to pale yellow, which you don’t find anywhere else. Plus we also still have some intact brick streets.”

Savannah’s Forsyth Park

these productions overlapped but, because our region is large and diverse, we managed to co-ordinate all the productions, so they were never on top of each other,” Nelson says. Savannah-based location manager Laura Bryant worked on the The Glorias, as well as the remakes of Birth Of A Nation and Lady And The Tramp. “As Beth says, Savannah is incredibly adaptable,” she adds. “And it’s also very busy as a location. For The Glorias, we were filming for 42 days, doubling for Washington DC.” Savannah also has rows of brownstones and the “right kind of shop fronts” to re-create New York City. “And we’ve also done Michigan, and even the Badlands,” Bryant adds. “But the project I’m most proud of is Birth Of A Nation, for which we created plantations and cotton fields. It looks amazing.” Re-creating a film as iconic as Lady And The Tramp put extra pressure on Bryant to find locations that matched certain scenes in the animated original. “The spaghetti-eating scene is one of those you just have to get right. And somewhat ironically, we found exactly the right combination of old bricks and walls behind an actual Italian

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CMY

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FEATURE GEORGIA

> THE CLASS OF 2019

IN MARCH this year, there were 38 film and TV Productions filming across Georgia, including 7 Little Johnstons, a reality-documentary series about the world’s largest known family of achondroplasia dwarfs; Creepshow, based on stories from a selection of acclaimed horror writers; and season two of black comedy-drama Insatiable. Also shooting in the state were Conjuring 3, The Council Of Dads, Labor Of Love, Deputy, Reckoning, Say Yes To The Dress, The Baker And The Beauty, Heart Of Life and The Liberator. Then there were reboots of the 1980s primetime series Dynasty and MacGyver. Puget Sound, Bad Boys For Life, Zombieland: Double Tap, Jumanji 3 and Star Crossed were also in the state, as was Cipher, in which secret military technology is accidentally implanted in the brain of a 13-year-old video-game junkie.

Buzza adds that Macon has doubled for Europe, New York, Chicago and Florida: “And they even filmed a chase scene here for Need For Speed, which was supposed to be in New Jersey. We also have lots of intriguing and very filmable alleyways, some of which can even accommodate vehicles.” Alongside the period charm, Macon offers some more gritty spots. “Last month, when I showed a visiting location manager the Eisenhower Parkway Extension, he was super enthusiastic,” Buzza says. “He told me it was a potential goldmine of a location. It’s a four-lane road that can easily double as an interstate highway, but it’s conABIGAIL BRADLEY “AT PINEWOOD ATLANTA STUDIOS, YOU CAN WALK ON TO THE LOT WITH AN IDEA AND LEAVE WITH A COMPLETED MOVIE”

trolled by the county authorities, so permitting is much quicker. Also, stretches of it are very open on both sides, which means you can use FX to make it look like anywhere you want. And it’s not finished, so the road just stops dead, which makes it very easy to control access during filming, and to maintain a secure set when necessary.” A particularly spectacular location is the stunning combination of Macon City Auditorium and City Hall. “The Auditorium has one of the largest copper-domed roofs in the country and the interior is very adaptable — it can be a period ballroom or a performance venue,” Buzza says. “It also looks out on to City Hall, which is a spectacular construction that was originally a bank for farmers. The fact that two large and elegant buildings are separated by a park makes it a very special area of the city.” In terms of memorable shoots, Lee Thomas of the Georgia Film, Music & Digital Entertainment Office points to the Neil Armstrong biopic First Man. “It was a challenge to find a double for Cape Canaveral,” she says. “But our partners at Georgia Power helped by offering up their power plant.” Georgia is well known for its period locations, atmosphere and multiple areas that can stand in for other parts of the US and Europe. But it can also deliver otherworldly. The state has hosted a slew of postapocalyptic films, including The Hunger Games: Catching Fire and Mockingjay, Guardians Of The Galaxy, Zombieland and the recently wrapped Zombieland: Double Tap. Pitch Perfect 3 used Georgia for the French Riviera, while Kill The Messenger used it to cheat for Afghanistan. “For anyone who’s interested, there’s a video of the countries and states that Georgia has been used to double on our website,” Thomas adds. Abigail Bradley, Pinewood Atlanta Studios’ brand and buzz executive, says the iconic studio group’s decision to build a facility in Georgia was an easy one to take. “Georgia is a great state in which to do business and has a long history in the entertainment industry, from Turner Studios and Tyler Perry in film and TV, to Elton John and Ludacris in music, to Hi-Rez Studios and Tripwire Interactive in the game space. So when you combine this history of entertainment leadership with a wide variety of filming locations, top-notch crew and a smart tax policy, Georgia was the obvious place,” she says. Bradley adds: “Pinewood has an 80-year history of hosting the greatest filmmakers in the world and learning from their experiences. At Pinewood Atlanta Studios, you can walk on to the lot with an idea and leave with a completed movie, because you’re surrounded by a studio team, alongside more than 40 support vendors dedicated to bringing your project to life.”

> IT WAS MODERN, ONCE

HAY HOUSE in Macon is a former private residence built between 1855-1859. In its day, the mansion was a miracle of modernity, featuring flush toilets, an indoor kitchen and an intricate cooling system that pulled in cold air from the basement, circulated it through the upper floors and expelled it through vents in the roof. More modern but equally amazing is Macon’s Barnes estate. The huge mansion is set in 16.5 acres of land and has the biggest Asian gardens outside of Asia. The property also features an indoor gazebo, where the owners used to keep monkeys, a medium-sized church that can accommodate around 100 people, a ballet studio, coy carp ponds and a vast entrance hall.“You could film a whole series at Barnes, due to the huge variety of locations,” says Aaron Buzza of the Macon Convention & Visitors Bureau. “And to top it all, it’s located in the city.”

> ISLAND HOPPING

THE ISLE of Hope, on the Intracoastal Waterway just 10 miles from downtown Savannah, features an oak-lined street that runs right alongside the river, with historic mansions and quaint cottages facing the water. It has been the location of numerous films, including the original Cape Fear, Glory, Camilla, Baywatch and Gemini Man. City of Tybee Island, meanwhile, is a small beach community 18 miles from downtown Savannah. One of only three accessible barrier islands on the Georgia coast, Tybee lends itself to many looks, from funky beachfront stores, restaurants and hotels to period beach homes, a pavilion and a fishing pier. Tybee has served as the location for many film and television productions over the years, including The Last Song, Baywatch, Dirty Grandpa, Royal Pains, Gemini Man, Galveston, Gifted and several Hallmark shows.

> ONLY IN GEORGIA…

THERE really is something in Georgia that simply does not exist elsewhere else — it’s called Stone Mountain and it’s located close to state capital Atlanta. The largest lump of granite in the world stands 251 metres high and is famous not only for its geology, but also because of the enormous rock relief on its north face, which is the largest bas-relief in the world. For Lee Thomas of the Georgia Film, Music and Digital Entertainment Office, Stone Mountain illustrates the diversity of locations to be found in Georgia. Her two personal favourites are the mountains of Rabun County, where she lives.“It’s where they shot Deliverance and the topography there is beautiful,” she adds.“My second pick would be the town of Thomasville in South Georgia. It’s just the quintessential southern town.”

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MAKING A SCENE YELLOWSTONE

Helicopters and horses: shooting Yellowstone on location

HELICOPTERS AND HORSES PARAMOUNT NETWORK INTERNATIONAL’S YELLOWSTONE STARS KEVIN COSTNER IN THE CONTEMPORARY WESTERN FILMED ENTIRELY IN THE US ROCKY MOUNTAIN STATES OF UTAH AND MONTANA. CLIVE BULL REPORTS

OW IN its second season, the hit drama Yellowstone centres around John Dutton, a sixthgeneration homesteader and family patriarch played by Kevin Costner, who runs the fictional Yellowstone Ranch. It features a way of life in America that is not often explored, according to Costner, bringing into focus the pressures of modern-day ranching. Dutton controls the largest contiguous ranch in the US and its borders with the national park; an expanding town and an Indian reservation are other key elements to the story. The first challenge for supervising location manager Charlie Skinner was to find the right ranch and a fitting home for the Duttons, one that conveyed a sense of family history. The search led eventually to Chief Joseph Ranch in Bitterroot Valley in southwestern Montana. “We found the perfect historic house there, constructed over a hundred years from logs that had been harvested from the land and buried in linseed oil for two years,” Skinner says. “We were sold on that house.” By Montana standards the ranch is not that big — around 150 acres — but, Skinner says: “We were able to get in with all the other ranches around it and utilise the other properties and so expand the size.” The valley itself offers two distinct backdrops. “On the west side of the river it’s very vertical

and green. The Bitterroot range is steep and tall and very timbered,” Skinner says. “Then on the east side of the Bitterroot river are the Sapphire mountains which are almost like rolling hills and that juxtaposition allowed us to mimic terrain on the eastern side of the state.” Allison Whitmer, film commissioner at the Montana Film Office agrees that finding the right family home was crucial. “From the beginning, we understood the main ranch location would be critical to establishing a sense of place for the characters and the story,” she says. “In addition to being surrounded by spectacular unspoiled nature, the historic ranch near Darby conveyed both the depth of its history and the modern ranch operations essential to the series. It’s also very cinematic in the building layouts, having the lodge looming over the working ranch, allowing for those wide camera moves and the Western feel.” Whitmer says the Bitterroot Valley community really embraced the cast and crew, inviting them into their homes and businesses. “It’s a valley known for its warm hospitality, and they really pulled out the stops to help prep the ranch for filming, assisting with housing for everyone and filling in the small but crucial details of the Western lifestyle for the wardrobe and art departments,” she says. “The other locations of the State Capitol and the Crow Indian

Kevin Costner as John Dutton in Yellowstone

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MAKING A SCENE YELLOWSTONE

“It's a Western epic, but it's a contemporary story” CHARLIE SKINNER

Reservation are rarely filmed and that’s a treat to share those locations with viewers.” Getting the balance between traditional cowboy country and contemporary cattle ranching was part of the challenge faced by the makers of Yellowstone. “We wanted it to feel like you were in a Western,” Skinner says. “It’s a Western epic, but it’s a contemporary story. There are still gigantic ranches in Montana and the ranchers use modern equipment to help them ranch, but they still use horses and other traditional ways to ranch. It’s a combination of both now — you’ll see a helicopter, and you’ll see people on horseback.” For Costner, “it’s important to know that places

like this still exist in our country, adding drama against its backdrop, and actually understand in the realest terms that the meat that arrives on our table is still coming from somewhere,” he says. “It’s coming from people that are getting up early in the morning and work really late.” The production is based in Utah, at Park City Film Studios, where almost all the interiors of Chief Joseph Ranch have been reconstructed on the sound stage. Yellowstone has been shooting in more than 20 Utah locations, including Spanish Fork, Thousand Peaks ranch, Rogers Ranch and the historic 25th Street, Ogden. Virginia Pearce, director, Utah Film Commission,

told Location International that Utah’s 84,000 square miles of diverse landscapes has given the state deep roots in the entertainment industry with more than 1,400 productions, reaching back to the John Ford and John Wayne Westerns of the 1930s and 1940s. “Utah loves having a quality production like Yellowstone, as well as talented people like Taylor Sheridan (series writer-director) who recognise the value of shooting here. We also appreciate productions like Yellowstone that allow the landscape to become a central character.” Montana film commissioner Allison Whitmer agrees that the location plays a key role in the drama. “It’s a silent partner in plot and character development, a tool for directors and a selling point for producers. The wow factor of the grand helicopter shot over the mountains, rolling into the plains is awe-inspiring and creatively challenging.” Yellowstone is distributed internationally by co-producer 101 Studios and Endeavor Content.

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LOCATION IN PICTURES

WITH THE HELP OF FILM COMMISSIONS, PHOTOGRAPHERS AND LOCATION MANAGERS, LOCATION INTERNATIONAL PUTS THE SPOTLIGHT ON SOME MORE STRIKING AND DIVERSE LOCATIONS ON OFFER AROUND THE WORLD

POWERSCOURT WATERFALL, COUNTY WICKLOW, IRELAND Powerscourt Waterfall — Ireland's highest at 121 metres — is in North County Wicklow just outside Enniskerry Village. It flows over the granite rocks from the peatlands above, down to the river below where it continues out to sea at Bray. Numerous movies have filmed at Powerscourt and in the Wicklow area, including: Excalibar (1981), Braveheart (1995), Michael Collins (1996) and P.S. I Love You (2007). TV series include: The Tudors (2007-2010) and Vikings (2013-). (Photo, courtesy Screen Ireland)

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LOCATION IN PICTURES

BOMBAY BEACH, CALIFORNIA, US Bombay Beach is on the Salton Sea in Imperial County, four miles from Frink and is the lowest-lying community in the US, at just over 70 metres below sea level. When the former resort town was marooned by a dying desert lake residents fled, leaving a virtual ghost town of decaying homes. For decades the only visitors were filmmakers shooting horror films. Now with a population of nearly 300, Bombay Beach is enjoying a bohemian rebirth. Films shot here include: The Salton Sea (2002), The Island (2005) and Into The Wild (2007). (Photo, courtesy Mark Indig, LMGI)

BRIDGE OF PEACE, TBILISI, GEORGIA This photo shows the Bridge of Peace in Republic of Georgia's capital, Tbilisi, with the old town in the background. This ultra-modern pedestrian bridge was built in 2010, with over 1,200 LED fixtures with four lighting programmes that run at night. Additional lighting is prompted by motion sensors as people pass by. Tbilisi is rich in history, invaded and occupied by many cultures. As a result there is diverse architecture ranging from the old town to the remnants of Soviet occupation and modern structures like the Bridge of Peace. There is a growing film production community and Georgia is film friendly, with varied locations. Recent film visitors include Bollywood productions, Chinese TV show The Mask (2016) and a segment of TV series The Amazing Race was shot here. (Photo, courtesy Robin A Citrin, LMGI)

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ESSAOUIRA, MOROCCO The city of Essaouira lies on Morocco’s Atlantic coast. Its old town centre is protected by 18th-century seafront ramparts, the Skala de la Kasbah. Old brass cannons line the walls facing the sea. The town’s name means ‘little picture’ in Arabic, and it’s a perfect location for artists and a filmmakers. Films shot here include: Othello (1995), Kingdom Of Heaven (2005), Rendition (2007) and John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum (2019). TV series include Jack Ryan – Season 1 (2018-). (Photo, courtesy Christian McWilliams, LMGI)

CHINESE GARDEN AT THE HUNTINGDON LIBRARY, SAN MARINO, CALIFORNIA, US Inspired by the 16th-century scholars’ gardens of Suzhou, China, work on the first phase of Liu Fang Yuan (the Garden of Flowing Fragrance) only began in 2008. Currently 10 pavilions circle the one-acre lake. Bridges, plantings and weathered limestone rocks imported from China’s Lake Tai further the illusion that this is not in LA county. When the final phase is completed in 2020, expanding the garden to its full 12 acres, it will be one of the largest classical-style Chinese Gardens in the world. Productions that have filmed here include TV series Parks And Recreation (2009 -2015), Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D (2013-) and The Good Place (2016 -). (Photo, courtesy Dinah LeHoven, The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens)

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LOCATION IN PICTURES

BUSAN HARBOR BRIDGE, BUSAN, SOUTH KOREA Busan Harbor Bridge connects Yeongdo District and Nam District and the multi-level construction was completed in 2014. Busan is a large port city in South Korea known for its beaches, mountains and temples. Films shot in Busan include: Train To Busan (2016), Along With The Gods: The Two Worlds (2017) and Black Panther (2018). Films shot on the bridge include: Reset (2017) and The Spy Gone North (2018). Also numerous car commercials have used the bridge as a location. (Photo, courtesy John Hutchinson, LMGI)

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LOCATION IN PICTURES

MOUNT TARAWERA, ROTORUA, NEW ZEALAND The Bay of Plenty is home to New Zealand’s only active marine volcano. Mount Tarawera, the site of one of New Zealand's largest eruptions, is 24 kilometres southeast of Rotorua on the North Island. The local iwi – Maori tribe – Ngati Rangitihi, is guardian of the mountain. Filming is encouraged, with proceeds going to conservation work. Access to the top is via a four-wheel-drive track or helicopter. Mount Tarawera provides a unique other-worldly location for future productions. (Photo, courtesy Lori Balton, LMGI)

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JUUTUA RIVER FALLS, INARI, LAPLAND, FINLAND This area of Lapland holds all the ingredients for a perfect photogenic landscape: pristine wilderness, long daylight hours, late-season snow, clear skies, river rafting, Sรกmi culture and reindeer herds. Along the tree-fringed banks of the River Juurua, as night falls, the sky becomes a perfect backdrop for the Northern Lights, the Aurora Borealis. Productions that have shot here include: The Eagle Has Landed (1976), Lovers Of The Arctic Circle (1998), Lapland Odyssey (2010) and Aurora (2018). (Photo, courtesy Dow Griffith, LMGI) .

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LOCATION IN PICTURES

PIODAO VILLAGE, ARGANIL MUNICIPALITY, PORTUGAL Piódão is known locally as the ‘postcard village’, because this remote authentic village is in a beautiful setting, surrounded by mountains. When it snows in winter it looks like a Christmas card, and in the summer it boasts a beautiful light. The surrounding area also features many waterfalls and rivers. Although not well-known for international filming, it is a stunning location waiting for its first chance to shine on screen. (Photo, courtesy CM Arganil)

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LOCATION IN PICTURES

PECENESCAL VALLEY, JANDIA NATURAL PARK, FUERTEVENTURA, CANARY ISLANDS The Jandia Natural Park is a nature reserve on Fuerteventura island and features species of vegetation that are threatened or protected. This beautiful park contains virgin landscapes, including Cofete Beach. Films shot here include: Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018), Solo (2018) and 4 Latas (2019). TV series EspaÃ±ola (2018) also filmed here. (Photo, courtesy Carlos de Saa)

FORMER GEORGE AIR FORCE BASE, SAN BERNARDINO COUNTY, CALIFORNIA, US George Air Force Base is located within the city limits of central Victorville, about 75 miles northeast of Los Angeles. This closed base is now known as Southern California Logistics Airport. There are military-type buildings available for filming as well as a boneyard of decommissioned planes. The geography is flat and the environment is desert. This abandoned base has runways that can be shut down for filming. Productions filmed here include: Contact (1997), The Sum Of All Fears (2002); Jarhead (2005) and The Hulk (2008). (Photo, courtesy Rick Schuler, LMGI)

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LIGHTWELLS AT SOMERSET HOUSE, LONDON, UK The Lightwells at Somerset House, on the north bank of the River Thames, are perfect for filming with doorways that can serve as a Victorian-period street. Running along three sides of The Edmond J. Safra Fountain Court, the Lightwells are a long-time favourite of location managers for film and television. TV productions shot at Somerset House include: Downton Abbey (2010-2015) and The Suspicions Of Mr Whicher (2014). Film projects include: Bride & Prejudice (2004), X-Men: First Class (2011) and London Has Fallen (2016). (Photo, courtesy Film London)

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FEATURE BELGUIM

WHERE THE

IMPOSSIBLE'S

POSSIBLE

Choosing where to shoot isn’t just a question of location, location, location. Time, proximity, incentives and budget-saving efficiencies are often a deciding factor — and few places are more culturally and historically rich, compact, varied and generous than Belgium. GARY SMITH reports The Caves of Han in southeast Belgium feature long galleries of rock formations

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FEATURE BELGIUM

ES MISÉRABLES, based on the novel by Victor Hugo, is of course set in France. But many of scenes for the BBC mini-series, directed by Tom Shankland and co-produced for Flanders by Eurydice Gysel for Czar TV & Film, were shot on location in Belgium. “It was one of the most satisfying shoots of 2018,” says Screen Flanders film commissioner Katrien Maes. “The series filmed at a number of locations, including the Korenlei and the famous St Michael’s Bridge in Ghent, and the castle in Edingen, but also in Vilvoorde, Tervuren and Brussels.” Les Misérables spent over €3m of eligible audiovisual spend in the Flanders region, working with local crew, including art director Bart van Loo, plus local suppliers, such as LITES for camera and lighting equipment, and Cine Qua Non for grip material. Pierrette Baillot, manager at the screen.brussels Film Commission, says the scale and duration of Les Misérables made it a particularly challenging shoot: “It involved 28 days of filming around the BrusselsCapital Region, 350 cast and crew, and dozens of trucks and trailers, and it happened over a two-month period. On top of that, the project demanded a lot of preparation with both the Belgian crew and the authorities, in order to get everyone on the same page. Happily, the result was equal to the amount of work by all involved.” Co-operation is, however, a Belgian speciality. “We co-produce with countries including the Netherlands, Italy, Germany and even Canada,” Baillot adds. “You could even say we’re the kings of co-production. On a more local level, the projects that screen.brussels finances are mostly Belgian productions or French-Belgian co-productions. Our main foreign business comes from France, closely followed by the UK, but we also provide services and crews for TV shows from all over the world, from Argentina to Japan.” Historically, Flanders — the Dutch-speaking northern area of Belgium — has tended to co-produce mainly with the UK, the Netherlands and Germany. Over the last few years, however, the region has seen an increase in co-productions with the Nordic territories. Examples include the TV series Bullets, whose main producer was

> ANTWERP: ACTION STATION

NAMED THE MOST ATTRACTIVE RAILWAY STATION IN THE WORLD by news website Mashable in 2014, Antwerp's Central Station is a true work of art. Over the past few years, it has also become a popular film location, hosting international productions including Erased, starring Aaron Eckhart, and Spider In

Finnish company Vertigo Production; Sthlm Requiem with Sweden’s Spark Film & TV and Karnfilm; Cold Courage with Finland’s Luminoir; State Of Happiness with Norway’s Maipo Film; Occupied II with Yellow Bird Norge; and Hassel with Sweden’s Nice Drama. Other notable co-productions include the Icelandic-Belgian animated feature Ploey: You Never Fly Alone and the Swedish-Belgian co-production Breaking Surface, both of which were supported by the Screen Flanders fund. Flanders also looks set to benefit from the new studio facility that was opened this year by camera and lighting supplier LITES in Vilvoorde. “The complex has five professional sound stages — from 250 sq m up to 1,700 sq m — including one of the most advanced water stages on the European mainland,” Screen Flanders’ Maes says. She adds that the 1,450 sq m interior water stage includes a tank of 24 metres x 21 metres x 9 metres, which features a range of built-in water FX, including current, rain, water-based mist, dump tanks and different water qualities. It also has a moveable pool floor, which can be positioned at any depth for dry set construction and submerged scenes. The Swedish-Belgian survival drama Breaking Surface was the first production to make use of the new Vilvoorde complex, spending 17 days shooting in the water stage. PIERRETTE BAILLOT “WE COULD MAKE THIS QUOTE BY THE BELGIAN ACTRESS AUDREY HEPBURN OUR OWN: ‘NOTHING IS IMPOSSIBLE — THE WORD ITSELF SAYS I'M POSSIBLE’"

According to screen.brussels’ Baillot, the Belgian capital’s unique selling point is its multifaceted offer. “Through screen.brussels, the government intends to make Brussels and its regions especially film friendly with a mix of financial incentives and a focus on strong technical resources across the region,” she says. “We also offer a wide variety of locations in a relatively small area. We could, in fact, make this quote by the Belgian actress Audrey Hepburn our own: ‘Nothing is impossible — the word itself says I'm possible.’"

The Web, starring Monica Bellucci and Ben Kingsley. “Central Station is a much-requested location where old and new come together in perfect harmony,” says Antwerp City Film Office’s Ira Guilini. “But Antwerp also features dry docks and a harbour, old and new cranes, plus the new harbour house, which is a new building on top of an old one. Then there’s the fact we have a lot of locations in a relatively small area. The shoot for BBC TV drama Baptiste was a real challenge, because they had a big unit base and filmed for about 45 days in Antwerp. In the old town centre, they constructed a red-light district, they held car chases on the left bank and, at Stadswaag, they staged an entire

event, so the street had to be shut down for several days.”

> GHENT: CITY OF BRIDGES

THE ST MICHAEL’S BRIDGE in the historical city centre of Ghent used to be a flat turntable bridge, but it was replaced by stone arches at the beginning of the 20th century. “It’s the only place in Ghent from which

you can capture the famous three towers of Ghent — St Nicolas' Church, the Ghent Belfry and St Bavo's Cathedral — in one single frame,” says Screen Flanders’ Katrien Maes. “The bridge and surrounding Korenlei and Graslei neighbourhoods have featured in multiple features and series, including Les Misérables, The Emperor, Storm: Letter Of Fire and Mack The Knife – Brecht’s Threepenny Film. The Aula Academia of Ghent University dates back to 1826 and is still used for official university ceremonies. Its neo-classical decor has featured in both local and international productions, such as The Prime Minister and Mack The Knife – Brecht’s Threepenny Film.

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FEATURE BELGIUM

The BBC's Les Misérables shot for 28 days all over Belgium

ges is the jewel in the queen’s crown. The city — one of several referred to as the Venice of the North, but perhaps the most deserving of the comparison — features street after street of intact historical buildings, along with any number of picturesque bridges and canals. “For me, the highlights include Sint-Anna quarter, because of the unbroken authenticity of the district,” says Loes Maveau, co-ordinator at the City Film Office Bruges. She also points to the city’s Gruuthuse museum district, “because the whole area immediately plunges you into a slice of history that has long gone”.

In addition to living with three official languages — French, Dutch and English — the people of Brussels have “a make-do mentality embedded in their DNA”, Baillot adds. “Finding solutions and compromises comes naturally to us, which may be why we are the capital of both a complex country and the not-always-simple European Union. Our architectural heritage spans six centuries and we can also boast of being a very green region, even though the city covers a modest 162 sq km. We believe this makes Brussels the queen of film locations.” If Brussels is, as Baillot says, the queen of Belgian locations, then Bru-

> BRUSSELS:

‘PICTURESQUE OR GRITTY’

FOR SCREEN.BRUSSELS’ PIERRETTE BAILLOT, the lobby of Hotel Metropole is hard to beat: “It’s full of character, with a functioning turn-of-the-century lift and a majestic wooden counter. The hotel has featured in films with actors including Isabelle Adjani, Fanny Ardant, Carole

Bouquet, Gérard Depardieu, Jean Dujardin, Rupert Everett, Colin Firth, Jodie Foster, Vittorio Gassman, Annie Girardot, Isabelle Huppert, Ron Perlman and Charlotte Rampling.” Baillot’s other favourite locations in the Belgian capital include Chalet Robinson — “a piece of countryside in the city with a Swiss vibe” — and the Ursulines skatepark. The latter is a modern urban location in the heart of old Brussels, close to several churches and schools. “It’s always very dynamic,” Baillot adds. She also tips the Brussels-Molenbeek canal: “It’s an up-and-coming area with museums, urban art and hotels. It can be picturesque or gritty, depending on your needs.”

> MONEY MATTERS

BELGIUM’S GENEROUS INCENTIVES include a federal tax shelter and two cultural funds: the Flanders Audiovisual Fund (VAF) for the country’s Flemish-speaking region, and the Centre du Cinéma et de l’Audiovisuel (CCA) fund for the French-speaking region. “Alongside that, regional funds from screen.brussels, Screen Flanders and Wallimage are available and they can be combined,” says Noël Magis, managing director of the screen.brussels’ fund. The Screen Flanders economic fund mainly invests in international co-productions that stimulate the local audiovisual

industry. Belgian producers can apply for up to €400,000 in refundable advances from the Flanders Region. According to director Jean-François Tefnin, Wallimage Tournages "is one of the most generous regional funds in Europe, since it pays up to a quarter of audiovisual expenditure in Wallonia. But there’s more: because the Belgian tax-shelter system covers specified expenses up to 40%, often these two incentives pay two-thirds of the costs incurred on a foreign production. Also, being an economic fund, Wallimage is open to any kind of cinema or TV production, although we tend towards genre movies.”

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d’Emines in Namur; and L’Echange des Princesses, filmed in some of Belgium’s many castles and parks, including the Château de Beloeil, the Bois-Seigneur-Isaac and the Palais des Princes-Évêques de Liège. Horror film Raw was shot almost entirely in Liège, in particular at the university veterinary faculty, while US sci-fi film Gemini Man spent a day shooting at the Liège-Guillemins train station, designed by architect Santiago Calatrava. Tefnin runs through several other unique Wallonian locations: “The lake and the dam of La Gileppe is a wonderful place in the heart of the Belgian Ardennes. The Le Tombeau du Géant [Giant’s Tomb at Botassart] offers one of the most impressive panoramas in Belgium. And the Caves of Han feature exceptional stalagmites and rock formations sculpted by the river Lesse.” Also popular is the aforementioned Liège-Guillemin station, which rises to a height of 40 metres and is 150 metres wide. “Opened in 2009, it took over 10 years to build due to the need to keep it operational during construction work,” Tefnin says. “With its enormous glass roof, it’s often called a ‘cathedral of the modern age’. But although modern, the station bears the ancient name of Guillemins, which refers to the religious order of the Guillemites. The order was founded St William in the Middle Ages.” And then there’s the awe-inspiring funicular boat lift of Strépy-Thieu. “This colossus is a soaring 102 metres in height and, at the top, it’s the size of a football pitch,” Tefnin says. “You can see it standing over the town of Havre like a giant black mushroom as you approach on the motorway from Mons. And when you get up close, it’s all you can see — it dominates the Canal du Centre and the entire valley.”

Recent projects hosted in the Bruges region include VIER’s De Dag; Hallmark’s Love, Romance & Chocolate; NHK’s Carillon: The City Is A Musical Instrument; and Red Bull’s What Tourists Don’t See. “Carillon was a standout shoot in terms of impact and crew,” Maveau adds. “It was a prestige project shot in 8K UHD, using the 22.2k sound standard. The filming had quite an impact on the functioning of the Belfry of Bruges and needed the full co-operation of several city departments. Alongside that, they had to build a mobile studio inside the Belfry because the broadcasting trucks could not get into the city centre.” Red Bull’s What Tourists Don’t See features Australian freerunner Dominic Di Tommaso. “We ended up using all sorts of unusual locations, including private gardens and houses, all over the city centre,” Maveau says. According to Jean-François Tefnin, director at Wallimage Tournages, Belgium’s small domestic market forced it to turn to co-production as early as the 1960s. “France has been a major production partner for many years,” he says, citing projects such as Le Couperet (The Ax) by director Costa-Gavras, co-produced by the Dardenne brothers (Les Films du Fleuve), and French box-office hit Nothing To Declare (Rien à Déclarer). Moreover, following the introduction of the tax credit (TRIP) in France, Belgium producers, working with French partners, have been involved in several high-profile Irish, Spanish, German and Italian co-productions, including Good Favour, Little Miss Doolittle, Muse and Pasolin. Other notable shoots to visit Belgium’s French-speaking southern region of Wallonia in the last 12 months include Mandy, which was shot in the forests of Wallonia doubling for the North West of the US, and Fort

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ANYTOWN

AMERICA Ask anyone who has ever filmed in California what keeps them coming back to the West Coast and the first thing they’ll say is the spectacular locations. But it’s also a place that allows you to shoot Anytown America — or, in fact, anywhere in the world. ANDY FRY AND JULIAN NEWBY report Brie Larson as Captain Marvel

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FEATURE CALIFORNIA

Escaping along the Smith River in Bird Box: Julian Edwards (left), Sandra Bullock and Vivien Lyra Blair

SUSANNE BIER “IF YOU DROPPED SOMETHING INTO THE RIVER, IT WOULD BE GONE, SO WE WERE ALWAYS REMINDED OF ITS POWER”

more than crashing waves and picturesque ocean highways: “In our case, we have the Pinnacles National Park, 40,000 acres of vineyards around places like the Salinas Valley, and pretty villages such as Carmel. There’s lots of agricultural land, which offers a green look all year round. That’s why, in addition to film and TV productions, we are constantly busy with commercial and fashion shoots.” To the west of California, Tom Cruise’s Top Gun 2 chose the spectacular surroundings of Lake Tahoe while, right at the top end of the state, Netflix movie sensation Bird Box took advantage of the dense forest canopy and raging rivers that can be found in Del Norte county. “The location team on Bird Box managed to find locations on the Smith River that had never been shot before,” Humboldt-Del Norte film commissioner Cassandra Hesseltine says. “The production really underlined just how varied the California landscape is.” The film’s river scenes were shot near Crescent City, Del Norte County, on the Smith River that rushes through the towering redwoods of the Klamath Mountains all the way to the Pacific Ocean. “It's a huge, powerful, dangerous river,” the film’s director Susanne Bier says. “It has a very strong current, so there were all sorts of safety measures we had to put in place. If you dropped something into the river, it would be gone, so we were always reminded of its power. “The Smith River was amazing, absolutely stunning — and the redwoods… it all looked amazing on screen,” Bird Box location manager Boyd Wilson adds. “We scouted every river in California as we had to find the right rapids and the right terrain. It had to have the right water flow.” But not everything went to plan. “Because the Smith River is a free river, which means it does not have a dam, its flow is based on the rain,” Wilson says. “We were going to film there on the first part of the shooting schedule, back in October 2017. But torrential rain meant that all the parts of the river we originally chose

Susanne Bier contemplates the diﬃculties of shooting on the wild Smith River

HE THIRD biggest state in the US has every kind of landscape you could imagine — and then some. “California is known worldwide for its spectacular Pacific coastal highway and its majestic redwood forests,” executive director of the California Film Commission (CFC) Amy Lemisch says. “But in addition to that, there are national parks, snow-capped mountains, rivers, lakes and a range of different desert looks.” Film and TV aficionados could point to thousands of productions that have used these backdrops over the last 100 years. But testament to the endless variety of California’s locations is that the state looks as fresh as ever in the latest wave of productions to have visited it. HBO’s award-winning series Big Little Lies, for example, has just returned to shoot season two in the stunning coastal county of Monterey. That show, according to Monterey County film commissioner Karen Seppa Nordstrand, “has done a wonderful job of showcasing Northern California’s rugged coastline and its beautiful communities”. Nordstrand says that Californian counties such as Monterey offer

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Anne Winters (left) and Alisha Boe on set at the ﬁctitious Liberty High School in 13 Reasons Why GREG ALPERT “IT’S NOT JUST CALIFORNIA’S RANGE OF LOCATIONS, BUT THE INFRASTRUCTURE — THE STUDIOS, BACKLOTS, RANCHES AND UNRIVALLED POOL OF PRODUCTION TALENT"

to shoot at didn’t exist at that time because everything was under water. So we rescheduled – from October to January the next year.” “Even then the location team had to fine-tune the specific spots along the river in case it rose and became too strong to film on,” Hesseltine says. “But in the end, winter didn't really hit hard and it was not as bad as it could have been.” For particularly dangerous water scenes, cast and crew relocated to Sable Ranch, Santa Clarita, whose sheltered reservoir fitted with wave machines and blue- and green-screen, matched perfectly the turbulent waters of the Smith River. The ranch was the only controlled location used in the entire film. For the scenes on the actual river, the boat was attached to motorised rafts which guided the craft to wherever it needed to be on the water — while marine safety personnel were on hand at all times. So Bullock and kids were always safe even in the unfriendly waters of the Smith. Notwithstanding their relatively remote location, Humboldt and Del Norte counties have proved themselves capable of hosting major productions time and again, with Steven Spielberg’s ET: TheExtra-Terrestrial one of the first modern-day blockbusters to visit, back in 1981. Of course, California’s landscape is just one dimension of a much richer and more complex location story. “Radiating out 60 miles from the intersection of West Beverly Boulevard and N La Cienega Boulevard — the epicentre of LA’s thirty-mile zone — a production can double anywhere on the planet,” says veteran location manager Greg Alpert. “But that’s just one reason why California is the film capital of the world. The thing that really sets the state apart is not just its range of locations, but the infrastructure that sits alongside

that. The studios, backlots, ranches and unrivalled pool of production talent mean that it’s possible to achieve almost any look within the state.” A big percentage of Alpert’s time in the last two or three years has been spent on the star-studded set of Big Little Lies. But he stresses that, in many cases, the goal of a production is not to look like it is set in California “but in Anytown America. If you look at a series like HBO’s Sharp Objects, which I also worked on, the story is actually set in Missouri. So there you get to see the skill of the crew in creating a Midwest feel to a production.” This point is echoed by Cinelease’s director of studio development, Mark Walter, who is overseeing the expansion of the Mare Island studio complex in California’s Bay Area. “We’ve been really fortunate to have three seasons of 13 Reasons Why [produced by Paramount for Netflix] shooting on Mare Island and in nearby Vallejo,” he says. “In this case, it’s definitely Anytown America rather than the Bay Area that they want.” 13 Reasons Why, which returned to Vallejo in 2018 to shoot season three, enjoys a strong relationship with the local population and the city’s authorities. With millions of dollars of inward investment as a direct result of Paramount’s filming activities, residents, business owners and public agencies have all demonstrated the kind of

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The Smith river, a free river running through Del Norte County. Photo: Humboldt-Del Norte Film Commission AMY LEMISCH “THE BEAUTY OF HAVING SO MANY LANDSCAPES IS THAT CALIFORNIA CAN REPLICATE VIRTUALLY ANY PART OF THE WORLD. IN FACT, ANY WORLD”

Force pilots and it’s just moving to meet, like, the real Carol Danvers — women who are actually breaking barriers in the Air Force and becoming the first woman to do the many things that are happening right now.” The same craft skills that make it possible to create Anytown America are evident in other ways. “The beauty of having so many landscapes is that California can replicate virtually any part of the world.” the CFC’s Lemisch says. “In fact, any world. Our deserts haven’t just been used for Westerns and Middle Eastern backdrops, but also sci-fi landscapes. Similarly, the forests of Northern California have proved to be the perfect backdrops for fantasy-adventure movies like After Earth or Disney’s A Wrinkle In Time.”

can-do attitude that persuades productions to shoot in California. Captain Marvel marks the return to California of the Marvel franchise — it’s the first Marvel movie to shoot in the state since 2014’s Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Captain Marvel is an extraterrestrial Kree warrior who gets caught up in the middle of an intergalactic battle between her people and the Skrulls. Finding herself on Earth in 1995, she has recurring memories of another life as US Air Force pilot Carol Danvers. The film shot in a number of locations in and around the state but one in particular remains in the memory of the movie’s star, Brie Larson — who spent the best part of a year getting in physical shape in the gym and trained with real-life Air Force pilots to prepare for the movie’s flying scenes. The location used for those scenes was Edwards Air Force Base in Kern County, southern California — the home of the Air Force Test Center, the Air Force Test Pilot School and NASA's Armstrong Flight Research Center. As well as filming there, Larson did some of her training there too. “Our time at Edwards Air Force Base was really invaluable for a lot of reasons,” Larson says. “Reading the comics, Carol has this incredible mix in her personality of really having this dry sense of humour along with confidence — but also being humble. It is an interesting mix and I thought that was just her character. But it wasn't until we went to the Base that I realised that this is the spirit of these Air

The streets of production capital LA continue to prove endlessly versatile when it comes to doubling for pretty-well anywhere. During 2018, location manager Mandi Dillin worked on Are You Sleeping, one of Apple’s first TV shows to enter the production phase. “Are You Sleeping takes place in Oakland, San Francisco, Marin County, San Mateo and New York City,” Dillin says. “I’m incredibly proud that we filmed 95% of the show on location in LA. We turned the lobby of the Los Angeles Theatre Center in Downtown LA into the newsroom of an unnamed national newspaper. It looked fantastic.” Particularly significant during the production, Dillin adds, was the support of local industry-support body FilmLA: “We took full advantage of the tools available to us. We had a close working relationship with the community-relations teams at FilmLA, who were a godsend in neighbourhoods like Hancock Park and Windsor Square. We could not have had a successful shoot without their help.” Dillin’s experience of doubling New York in LA is not unusual. Other high-profile New York cheats have included Amazon’s Good

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Carmel-by-the-Sea

Picture perfect…

Photo: SeeMonterey.org

MONTEREY COUNTY You’ll find camera-ready locations in Monterey County. From the coastal Monterey Peninsula to the Salinas Valley’s “Steinbeck Country,” we’re picture perfect! Call on us for locations, permits, crew and resources referrals. 831-646-0910 FilmMonterey.org Karen@FilmMonterey.org

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FEATURE CALIFORNIA

Girls Revolt, HBO’s The Newsroom, CBS’ CSI: NY, ABC’s Castle and AMC’s Mad Men. Amazon’s Sneaky Pete relocated from New York State for season three and filmed in Santa Clarita. LA has, of course, provided the perfect representation of itself in countless TV series and movies over the years. Crime writer Michael Connelly insisted that the series Bosch was filmed entirely in LA — including inside its iconic Musso & Frank Grill restaurant — when it finally came to the small screen courtesy of production company Red Arrow and streaming service Amazon Prime. Though Florida-based, Connelly has a passion for — and a deep understanding of — the backdrop to his Harry Bosch crime novels inspired, in part, by his previous incarnation as crime reporter for the Los Angeles Times. Dalton introduces Booth to agent Marvin Schwarzs, played by Al Pacino, at Hollywood restaurant Likewise, native Angelino Quentin TaranMusso & Frank Grill in Once Upon A Time In Hollywood. Photo: Andrew Cooper/©2019 SPE tino pays homage to the city in his latest feature Once Upon A Time In Hollywood. An enviable job, maybe, but not an easy one. “It is very difficult to Striking backdrops that evoke the glamour and the superficiality film a period movie in Hollywood these days, as there has been a of Los Angeles and its movie capital Hollywood — again including boom in construction on what appears to be every street corner. Musso & Frank Grill — appear throughout the film that tells the stoPeriod buildings are being torn down at an alarming rate and newer, ry of a faded TV actor and his stunt double seeking fame and fortune more modern ones are being erected in their stead,” Schuler says. “It in the city in 1969, as Hollywood’s golden age is starting to fade and only takes a few upgrades in the middle of a block to destroy a perthe counter-culture explosion is set to ignite. fectly reasonable row of period buildings. And let’s face it, 1969 was And it’s a filmmaker’s dream, whether you’re Tarantino or one of the half a century ago so a lot has changed.” But that didn’t deter Schuler team who has to strip 50 years off Sunset Strip and give it the air, the and the rest of the production team and Tarantino was determined gloss and the underlying scariness of its heyday. to recreate the Hollywood he knew as a child. LA-based location manager Rick Schuler describes the movie as “a Chicago, Boston and Atlanta have all been shot in California — as walk down memory lane” for the director. “By the end of the project, has Florida, which is often recreated in Orange County or Long there was a general consensus that we had managed to resurrect a Beach. Fans would not necessarily know it, but Long Beach, 15 portion of 1970s Hollywood that is going to disappear forever in the miles from Downtown LA, has played Florida in CSI: Miami, Dexdecades to come,” Schuler says. “In many ways it was a farewell to a ter, Rosewood and Ballers. Hollywood Tarantino had grown up in and loved.” Long Beach has also built up quite a reputation in recent years for Other locations were considered, briefly, before the right decision cheating rather more exotic locations, including Shanghai, Calcutta was made to shoot the movie where it all happened — in Hollywood. and Central America. In 2018, it was also used to double for France “We did visit a couple of Western town sets in New Mexico, but with in the $100m blockbuster Ford Vs Ferrari, starring Matt Damon an $18m California tax rebate already secured, there was no reason and Christian Bale. The film, which is about Henry Ford II’s plan to to think of shooting a movie about Hollywood somewhere else othbuild a car to compete in the Le Mans 24 Hours race, is also er than in California,” Schuler says. LocationIntrntional2016.qxp_ArtDrectr1 04 3/29/16 4:27 PM Page 1

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The Dock at Pine Lake, one of two lakes on Golden Oak Ranch EVAN THOMASON “WE’RE HOME TO THE MOST SOPHISTICATED MOVIE RANCHES IN THE WORLD”

set in Florida, Michigan and the UK, despite being filmed entirely within California. Another area that plays a key role in California’s doubling offer is Santa Clarita, a production hub located out on the edge of LA’s thirty-mile zone. Indeed, Ford Evan Thomason, economic development associate in the city of Santa Clarita, says doubling is in his district’s DNA: “We’re blessed with a wide variety of locations, all in close proximity to a state-of-the-art studio complex. Then, on top of that, we’re home to the most sophisticated movie ranches in the world.” The state’s many movie ranches are ideal backdrops for Westerns, a genre that is once again in the ascendency. Melody Ranch Motion Picture Studio, for example, has hosted an astonishing array of productions on its Western-town backlot, most recently Deadwood, a new feature film spin-off of the HBO TV series. “But in addition to Westerns, the movie ranches have also constructed a wide range of exotic backlots,” Thomason says. Buoyed up by the high levels of production activity in California, in part inspired by increased investment from Netflix and Amazon, the ranches have been building, expanding and renovating standing sets. Melody has a Mexican/Middle Eastern town, a Mid-American street — complete with a lonely gas station — and a junkyard that you could imagine in any US crime series. Over at Santa Clarita-based Blue Cloud Movie Ranch, owner Dylan Lewis has extended his Middle Eastern village and also introduced Latin American-themed buildings to his site. “It’s been a busy year for us, with productions including the movie Vice and the CBS scripted series SEAL Team,” Lewis says. “In terms of new building activity, we've expanded our cave set, added some roadways into our canyons and other natural sites, and built an Italian/Spanish old

world-style school house and an abandoned tin home. The northern end of our Middle Eastern town has also undergone a rebuild, making it more distinctly North African, with mud hut-style structures.” Sable Ranch has hosted one of the most ambitious shoots of the year — a movie adaptation of Jack London’s Call Of The Wild, starring Harrison Ford. Location manager Robin Citron says: “This is a story about a dog fighting for survival in Alaska and the Yukon, yet it was produced entirely in California. As a production, it’s quite strongly reliant on VFX, but it’s still quite remarkable that it could be filmed in Southern California.” Sable’s commitment to the production involved the creation of a 19th-century mining town, but Citron says there was still a lot of location work that needed to be done beyond the ranch. “The fact that the film is so reliant on VFX makes it really interesting from a scouting perspective, because you’re looking for locations that can be enhanced,” she says. “It’s a whole new way of making movies and meant we had a VFX team with us all the time, because they needed to figure out what was needed for the blue-screen elements of the production.” The growth of VFX-enhanced production has enabled ranches to serve as backdrops for sci-fi series. A good example is Fox Studios’ comedy series The Orville. Primarily filmed on a $5m set at Fox Studios in LA, the production team occasionally heads out to Disney’s Golden Oak Ranch or Blue Cloud Ranch in search of locations that can be used for alien worlds. These, however, are not screened in their natural state, but are manipulated as required, using

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Tulare County, Count California ia Home to a Million Stars. And thousands of pla places to shoot them. Two National Parks A National Forest Giant Sequoias Scenic Vistas Picturesque Agriculture Historic Architecture

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The Firestone Ranch at Agua Dulce Movie Ranch after a ﬁre. The area is now oﬀered to productions by S.O.S. FilmWorks as a scorched-earth location

digital VFX overlays. One of the most powerful aspects of California’s ranch model, Thomason adds, is the willingness among the various ranch owners to share work or direct clients to neighbouring ranches that might suit a production better. Location manager Nancy Haecker has a good example of this in the shape of Camping, a new HBO comedy series starring Jennifer Garner. “The tent scenes, barn scene and most of the hiking or walking scenes, as well as a football game, were shot at Golden Oak Ranch,” says Haecker, whose team won the half-hour television category at the 2018 California On Location Awards. “Golden Oak is a wonderful and vital location for filming in LA. It irrigates, which means it can provide ‘green’ all year. In addition, however, we shot woods and landscape scenes at Calamigos Ranch and, to open up the landscape, we went to Newhall Land and Farm, which provided a more open vista.” Even if it is not possible to find the right location within the ranch network, producers usually do not have to travel too far for what they need, Haecker adds. “The producers wanted a cinematic quality to Camping, which meant some shooting off ranch,” she says. “For example, Golden Oak has two lakes, but the production team want-

Titus Welliver as Bosch in his cliﬀ-hugging residence in the TV series Bosch

ed larger bodies of water for the swimming and fishing scenes, so we used Lake Piru for a skinny-dipping scene and Puddingstone Reservoir for the fishing. In addition, we used Placerita Canyon Nature Center for the opening shot at the entrance of the camp, because this allowed for more depth than we could get at Golden Oak.” The wildfires that affected parts of the state are thankfully over, although the loss of lives — and property — will have their affect on familes and business for some years to come. Attempts to find positive stories from this tragedy have born little fruit, although one of the Santa Clarita ranches has a new facility as a result of the damage caused by a local fire. “We weren't affected by any of the major fires, but we did have a small fire of our own — the Stone Fire, which burned entirely around Firestone Ranch. Speculation is that a Pacific Crest Trail hiker started it,” says Jessica Fix of S.O.S. FilmWorks, which is

ROBIN CITRON : “CALL OF THE WILD IS A STORY ABOUT A DOG FIGHTING FOR SURVIVAL IN ALASKA AND THE YUKON, YET IT WAS PRODUCED ENTIRELY IN CALIFORNIA”

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an up-market community west of LA. Built in 1973, the house was designed by Malibu architect Douglas Rucker — who, coincidentally, also designed a house for Kris Kristofferson, star of the 1976 version of A Star Is Born. Warner Bros. Pictures shot at the house for 15 days. Arguably, the movie house of 2019 is the Monrovia property that featured as a safe house in Bird Box. Nestled beneath a large evergreen tree, the Craftsman-style home on the corner of North Canyon Boulevard and East Greystone Avenue has quickly attracted a cult following and is the subject of thousands of selfies by fans wearing blindfolds. While most people would associate California’s coastline with surf culture or affluent Big Little Lies-style communities, the emergence of ex-Naval base Mare Island as a filming hub is a reminder that the state also has a long military history. Mare Island itself offers some potential backdrops for productions with a military angle, but there is also a strong historic connection between filmmaking and the US armed forces much further south, around the city of San Diego. The last few years have seen TNT’s popular TV series, The Last Ship, film in and around Naval Base San Diego — although perhaps even more famous is the fact that Tom Cruise shot sections of the 1986 movie Top Gun on the base. A testament to Cruise’s durability as an actor is that summer 2018 saw him return to the same location to film a sequel. Cruise alerted fans to this fact in May, when he tweeted a photo of himself at Naval Air Station North Island holding his iconic Maverick helmet. The Navy then confirmed that Cruise

situated on the Agua Dulce Movie Ranch. “Luckily it didn't take any structures, and the scorched earth landscape it left behind was quite unique and hard for any art department to recreate.” S.O.S. FilmWorks is a 348-acre filming site consisting of flat topography. A large area of the property is zoned for large-scale pyrotechnics and weapons firing live fire. It has a private water system, asphalt and concrete pads, nine fire hydrants and gated access on an asphalt road. “We specialise in open space and represent a variety of fields, roads, rock formations, cliffs, mine tunnels and much more,” Fix said. “We also represent a number of homes, arenas and even recreation centres. We think people are most surprised by the variety we can offer and the history of some properties such as the house on Firestone Ranch built by William Mulholland.” The most visible set at S.O.S is a L10-11, full-size, jet fuselage. The interior is vintage 1974, complete with ashtrays. Another set is The Sierra Inn, best-known as the biker bar where Pee Wee Herman sang Tequila on a table to make friends with the bikers. It was also the venue used for the opening of Terminator 2 where the Terminator crashes a ladies night out and takes the leather clothing from a male stripper. Iconic residences have featured heavily in California shoots in recent years. Fans of Amazon series Bosch will be familiar with the cliff-hugging residence that acts as the central character’s home. Meanwhile, in the hit movie A Star Is Born, filmed entirely in California, Bradley Cooper’s character’s house was located in Calabasas,

More stories per square mile.

Film in SF. Get up to $600,000 in rebates. Visit filmsf.org or call 415-554-6241 to learn more.

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FEATURE CALIFORNIA

Giovanni Ribisi as Marius Josipović in Sneaky Pete

also an up-close-and-personal feel to Venom, in line with director Ruben Fleischer’s vision. Interviewed by pop-culture website Uproxx, Fleischer explained that he wanted the film to feel “very grounded and of reality, not a heightened world, but real-life San Francisco, where this journalist unexpectedly goes through a transformation that results in a larger-than-life experience”. This year is also shaping up to be a good one for San Francisco, Robbins adds: “We are working with CBS Films’ Lexi, which is written and directed by Jon Lucas and Scott Moore [The Hangover, Bad Moms]. They are filming for 30 days, using a mostly local crew, in a production that will feature the beauty of San Francisco.” San Francisco will also star in Netflix’ upcoming adaptation of Tales Of The City, based on Armistead Maupin’s novels. “They shot for eight days featuring iconic locations,” Robbins adds. This raises an additional point with regard to California locations. While some producers are attracted to the state for its geographic beauty and others for its doubling capabilities, California is so ingrained in global film and TV culture that many of its locations are in demand purely on their own terms. TV series Bosch and movie La La Land were both, in their own way, love letters to LA — as was Cooper’s reboot of A Star Is Born. The latter filmed all over LA, at locations including the Shrine Auditorium, Chateau Marmont, Griffith Park, The Hollywood Roosevelt, Regent Theater, the Millennium Biltmore Hotel and The Short Stop bar in Echo Park. Outside LA and San Francisco, Santa Clarita takes a star turn in horror comedy web series Santa Clarita Diet, while comedian Andy Samberg has recently announced plans for a Palm Springs-based comedy. Palm Springs, as it happens, is Samberg’s home town — and this raises a final point in California’s favour. “Producers who come to California don’t just get all these great locations, but also have access to the amazing array of on-screen talent that lives here,” the CFC’s Lemisch says. “Persuading an actor to join a production where they can go home to their family at the end of the day is easier than trying to convince them to spend weeks or months living out of a suitcase in a hotel.”

would be filming up and down the coast at a number of military installations, and possibly also shooting on board an aircraft carrier off the coast. The CFC’s Lemisch says there is such a depth of production design expertise in California that it is also a perfect place to locate period series and movies. In 2017, California’s craftspeople recreated 1950s Pennsylvania for George Clooney’s indie movie Suburbicon. While the lion’s share of Californian production takes place within striking distance of LA, concerted efforts by the CFC and county film commissions have started to open up the north of the state to production — as illustrated by Bird Box, Big Little Lies and 13 Reasons Why. One northern Californian location that needs no special introduction, however, is San Francisco, one of the most distinctive cities in North America. Susannah Robbins, executive director of the San Francisco Film Commission, says: “We had a busy year in 2018 with both feature films and TV series. We had the Netflix comedy film Always Be My Maybe, starring Ali Wong and Randall Park with a special appearance by Keanu Reeves as himself. They shot here for 19 days in 2018. We also had 16 days of first- and second-unit filming for Sony’s Venom, starring Tom Hardy and Michelle Williams.” The latter is the latest in a line of high-profile projects to have demonstrated San Francisco’s ability to host logistically complex productions. “They did amazing stunts at night in very sensitive neighbourhoods, but pulled it off beautifully with everyone being very excited about what they were seeing,” Robbins says. Like the Marvel comics it is based upon, Venom makes great use of San Francisco’s iconic features, including the Golden Gate Bridge, the city’s futuristic business district and Chinatown. But there is AMY LEMISCH: “PRODUCERS WHO COME TO CALIFORNIA DON'T JUST GET ALL THESE GREAT LOCATIONS, BUT ALSO THE AMAZING ARRAY OF ON-SCREEN TALENT THAT LIVES HERE”

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Mary J Blige (left) and Cameron Britton in Netflixâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s The Umbrella Academy

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SHOOTING CANADA

The arsenal of attractions that Canada has to offer filmmakers packs a punch thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s hard to beat. DEBBIE LINCOLN reports

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FEATURE CANADA

Aidan Gillen plays astrophysicist Dr Allen Hynek in A+E’s series Project Blue Book which shot around Vancouver, British Columbia

ANADA has unfurled a welcome mat for filmmakers over the years, that is second-tonone. The country is blessed coast to coast with extraordinary and versatile landscapes, and an enviable foundation of national, province- and territory-wide investment in an industry that has become a crucial component of Canada’s economy. A network of incentives, government-backed bodies dedicated to invigorating the industry and a dynamic policy of education initiatives in the creative arts have resulted in a deep well of filmmaking talent. The country also benefits from a network of film commissions that work locally and collaboratively territory- and province-wide to help filmmakers get started. Their local expertise, willingness to go the extra mile and recognition of the economic boost that filmmaking can bring to their regions, has given them an enviable international reputation. Directors and crew alike are fulsome in praise when working in Canada, to say nothing of the welcome that talent can expect there. The production industry is analysed annually by the Canadian Media Producers Association (CMPA). Headline figures from its 2018 research showed that the sector continued to grow in 2017/18, setting a record at C$8.92bn in production volume, and generating recordlevel job creation. There is however no doubt that the market for filmed content today looks very different from how it did even 10 years ago. The well-documented competition for eyeballs can see content move from giant to the smallest of screens. While this may cause headaches for some decision-makers, Canada has benefited from one of the dominant trends — the robust demand for high-end TV drama and quality long-running series. Talent, in front of and behind the camera, that was once wedded to a feature-film career is now happy to bounce

between screens. British Columbia and Ontario have long been hubs that facilitate TV crews with revolving-door speed. But other provinces and territories in Canada have seen productions like these raise their profile recently. A great example of how cinema standards are applied to TV is the new 10 x 60 mins series from Netflix, The Umbrella Academy. The six-month shoot ran from early 2018 in Toronto and Hamilton, a city on Lake Ontario southwest of Toronto. It is an adaptation of a comic-book series created by ex-rock star Gerard Way and Brazilian artist Gabriel Bá, published by Dark Horse Comics. The plot revolves around a dysfunctional family of adopted sibling superheroes who reunite to solve the mystery of their father's death — and the threat of an imminent apocalypse. The series is produced by Borderline Entertainment, Dark Horse Entertainment and Universal Cable Productions. Originally envisaged as a feature film by Universal Pictures, it was eventually greenlit by Netflix as a TV series in 2017. Among the many city locations used in The Umbrella Academy are local cafes, a bookstore, city gardens, the Hamilton Canadian National Railway Station, the David Dunlap Observatory, the Elgin And Winter Garden Theatre and a historic industrial complex in Hamilton called Cotton Factory. The location for the exterior of `The Umbrella Academy's home is an imposing mansion on King Street, which is given an impressive large courtyard garden in the series with the help of CGI. General shots of the city were also used with the skyline altered to suit the production design. Toronto is a hotbed of filming, with its concentration of talent, studios and experienced professionals, but also its varied and adaptable locations. In a small radius you can find locations that can double for almost any North-American urban centre, suburb or farmland, as well as locations that can double for Europe or further afield. “The industry initially found its footing in Toronto and the surrounding municipalities of Durham, Hamilton, Mississauga and

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PROUD TO PL AY A SUPPORTING ROLE OMDC is now Ontario Creates. We offer exceptional financial incentives, scouting services and over 10,000 film-friendly locations.

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FEATURE CANADA

eign-language and director categories — a film that completed its post-production visual effects in Ontario. In 2017 Toronto hosted the shoot for the newest superhero movie from the DC Extended Universe, Shazam!. A story that first appeared in comic books in the 1940s, Shazam! features 14-year-old foster child Billy Batson (Asher Angel) who after an encounter with an ancient wizard only has to say the word “shazam” to turn into a fully-grown superhero (Zachary Levi), with all the abilities of the immortals Solomon, Hercules, Atlas, Zeus, Achilles and Mercury. Principal photography for Shazam! took place in Toronto early in 2018, during a cold spell. But this did not dampen enthusiasm: Toronto-dwellers are renowned for their film-friendly attitude as social-media posts prove, with citizens excitedly charting filming in the city, often witnessing more than one production at the same time and moving from one shoot to another.

Brampton. Building on this, producers and studios have been looking further afield in recent years,” Justin Cutler, film commissioner for Ontario, says. “As a result, production has radiated, using southern Ontario for small-town and mid-western-America looks, and northern Ontario for industrial, rural, small town and vast nature vistas. Northern Ontario also offers guaranteed winter snowfall, which can be a major advantage for some producers.” Cutler cites Kingston as a city that has untapped potential. Located at the eastern end of Lake Ontario, about halfway between Toronto and Ottawa, it offers a concentration of historic buildings with a neo-classical courthouse and City Hall, period housing — and one of largest gothic prisons in North America, which is now decommissioned but is open for filming. Canada’s capital, Ottawa, Ontario is on the cusp of a production renaissance, according to Cutler. The Ottawa Film Office, in partnership with TriBro Studios, has announced an 80,000 sq ft soundstage and production service campus that will support location filming. As well as urban, historic and nature locations the city features an extensive canal system. Cutler also points to the extensive databases of film-friendly locations in the province, put together by the Ontario Film Commission — overseen by Ontario Creates — containing over 350,000 images of more than 10,000 locations. The office estimates that 400 new locations are posted annually. These efforts are for good reason, Cutler says: “Film and TV production contributed CA$1.6bn to Ontario’s economy in 2017 (according to the most recently available data), and 32,800 full time employment opportunities.” A mark of how important the business is to Ontario is that Ontario Creates, through a financial partnership with the City of Toronto and with marketing support provided by industry trade organisation FilmOntario, maintains a full-time marketing presence in Los Angeles. The majority of activity in the province is TV series production – which has recently included The Umbrella Academy, The Handmaid’s Tale, Titans, Star Trek: Discovery, Condor and Designated Survivor — followed by TV movies and specials and then feature films. With more than 1.2 million sq ft of new studio space expected to open in Ontario before 2021 – there is already an estimated two million sq ft of sound-stage space — plus recent long-term commitments from both CBS and Netflix, Cutler says that Ontario’s film and television sector is assured future growth. Feature-film production in Toronto came under the spotlight during the 2018 Oscars after the stellar performance of Guillermo Del Toro’s The Shape Of Water, which was made entirely in Toronto. And this year, Alfonso Cuarón’s Roma won in the cinematography, for-

JUSTIN CUTLER “NORTHERN ONTARIO ALSO OFFERS GUARANTEED WINTER SNOWFALL, WHICH CAN BE A MAJOR ADVANTAGE FOR SOME PRODUCERS”

The locations for Shazam! include many city streets and stores, Danforth Collegiate and Technical Institute, a historic building at the University of Toronto, the Hearn Generating Electrical Station — while some of the production took place in the impressive Pinewood Studios complex. Another key Canadian production hub is Vancouver, British Columbia, popular with both filmmakers and producers of TV series. A perfect example of the latter is A+E Networks’ 10-part thriller Project Blue Book, a series that filmed in 2018 in Vancouver. Produced by Robert Zemeckis, Project Blue Book focuses on the US Air Force’s true-life investigations of UFO sightings in the 1950s. Filming took place in a range of locations in the city, including the exterior of the beautiful art-deco Marine Building and The Vancouver Club, a members club established in 1889. The crew also visited small towns and locations in the surrounding countryside, including Matsqui, Langley and Delta. The production designer Ross Dempster says that one of the challenges in shooting Project Blue Book was finding locations to suit period scenes of air bases and hangars. Fortunately Boundary Bay Airport has a hanger that worked for the production, while other sets were mocked-up using sites within the PNE, the Pacific National Exhibition, a huge urban park that includes sports facilities, gardens and skate parks as well as forested areas and water. Instigated

Filming at the Edge Mississauga, Ontario. Open for filming. mississaugaculture.ca/film

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Dennis Quaid filmed in Manitoba for 2017 feature film A Dog’s Purpose, directed by Lasse Hallström

to the smooth running of a shoot and Canadian film commissions are skilled at this. As well as the array of locations in British Columbia, including the magnificent coastline and islands, long river systems, lakes, forests and mountains, there are many settlements, including Vancouver, that are well-used by filmmakers to double for other cities and countries. High-profile TV series to have filmed in the region recently include: the second series of Netflix Original Altered Carbon (the first series of which saw Netflix invest in its own studio facility to accommodate the dystopian series in Skydance Studios, Surrey); and long-running series Arrow, The Flash, Riverdale, Supergirl, Chesapeake Shores, Get Shorty, Motherland and Van Helsing. New movies coming out of Vancouver include the Disney live-action remake of animation series Kim Possible; Always Be My Maybe, starring Keanu Reeves; and romantic drama To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before 2. And there are film centres away from the buzzing industries of Ontario and British Columbia. Prince Edward Island (PEI) is one of the smallest provinces in Canada, lying within the protection of the Gulf of St Lawrence on the east coast, with Nova Scotia to the east and New Brunswick to the west. Known to many as the backdrop to LM Montgomery’s Anne Of Green Gables books, the island was used for much of the filming of the various iterations of the stories in the 1980s. “PEI is an island with one giant beach that wraps around its perimeter. It has a small population with pristine landscapes, so your production could really be set in any time period,” executive director at Film PEI, Renee Laprise says. “We have a gentle rolling landscapes, starkly

in 1910 as an eclectic exhibition, it has been the location for countless movie, TV and commercial productions, offering a number of adaptable buildings including studio space. In Project Blue Book Aidan Gillen — most recently seen in UK series Game Of Thrones and Peaky Blinders and therefore well-equipped to appreciate the strengths of high-end TV — plays astrophysicist Dr Allen Hynek. Recruited by the US Air Force to take part in a topsecret UFO hunting programme, Hynek gradually comes to realise that he is at the centre of a dangerous cover-up. “The show is set in a fascinating period. It was a tantalising prospect for me,” Gillen tells Location International. The locations around Vancouver were useful says executive producer and showrunner Sean Jablonski, because it could double for many of the different UFO sighting locations in the story. Filming took place in and around the city during a cold, rainy winter, which was useful according to Jablonski, as it added to the atmosphere. Laura Mennell, who plays Hynek’s wife, adds that “the weather played well into the noir mood of the show”. Project Blue Book also employed local cast and crew, according to BC Creates, the collaborative communications initiative that supports the creative industries in the province — which, it estimates, employs 65,000 full-time workers and thousands more on part-time contracts. BC Creates is the overseeing body for film production — but as with all regions in Canada the province has a jigsaw of local film commissions that provide on-the-ground advice and practical help. As Vancouver Island South film and media commissioner Kathleen Gilbert says: “No one knows our region better than we do. We add that extra layer of knowledge of our communities.” Gilbert is passionate about helping creators do their work, including encouraging local businesses and facilities to be film-friendly. Engendering the support, or even just the tolerance, of local businesses, as well as efficient permitting and co-ordination with law enforcement or other bodies, adds

LAURA MENNELL “THE WEATHER PLAYED WELL INTO THE NOIR MOOD OF THE SHOW”

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ly surrounded by ocean, Nova Scotia offers a variety of unique and spectacular locations. Whether your production requires downtown urban sophistication, small-town ambiance, rolling hills, expansive forests or miles of unspoiled coastline, we have it all,” she says. “There is also a can-do attitude from the local film-production community, with sound-stage space and talented production design teams who are able to transform empty warehouses and arenas into state-of-theart film sets.” A local attraction is Survival Systems, a pool facility used to create realistic marine and underwater scenes. The pool can simulate ocean conditions, including up to six-foot waves, wind and rain effects, fog conditions, thunder and lightning and a variety of sound and lighting effects. Survival Systems has been used by a variety of productions, including 2019’s The Lighthouse, from Robert Egger, a fantasy horror which sees Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe embroiled in a mystery of sea-faring myths. McClair says: “Our 2018 production season was at full capacity and we saw a 160% increase in government spending, based on demand, from 2017. We’re looking forward to a busy year or two, with both service and local productions lined-up to shoot in the province.“ Further recent feature films include Spinster, starring Chelsea Peretti and Stage Mother, starring Lucy Liu, Adrian Grenier and Jackie Weaver. Television series include Pure (WGN/Hulu), Trailer Park Boys (Netflix), The Curse Of Oak Island (History), Locke & Key (Netflix) and CBC series Mr. D, Cavendish and Diggstown. A province that has hit the jackpot with TV productions in recent years is Alberta, perhaps best known for its awe-inspiring

contrasted by jagged red cliffs at the waterfront. The most interesting thing about PEI is that you could be in a forest and then on a sandy beach within a minute or two.” The last 12 months has seen a big effort from the municipal, provincial and federal governments to develop the local industry. “This has meant a CA$400,000 expansion in FilmPEI's space and equipment inventory and a substantial investment by the province in local talent development,” Laprise says. Consequently, activity in independent and commercial production has increased significantly. “There are currently two feature films slated for 2019 — Still The Water (Mighty Ocean Film, from PEI writer Susan Rodgers) and Blessings From The Sea (Club Red Productions, created by Adam Perry).” Also a Telefilmfunded (government film support organisation) feature film called Pogey Beach from Rear Gear Productions, shot entirely in PEI. Television has also been part of the growth in PEI with Netfilx series Anne With An E, the latest version of the popular children’s title; and comedy mystery series from CBC, Cavendish, which used the province for selected shoots. Another showcase for the island is comedy web series Wharf Rats, from Club Red Productions. The series follows two brothers who dreamed of inheriting their father’s fishing boat but which eventually ends up in the hands of their high-school nemesis turned future step-dad. The production company describes PEI as: “A dream come true for creators wanting to tell stories from home and for all the local crew who are driven to see the industry grow.” Nova Scotia, like Newfoundland to its north, faces the Atlantic Ocean in dramatic fashion. But Tara McClair from Screen Nova Scotia says that is not all that the province has to offer. “Almost complete-

calgaryfilmcentre.com

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FEATURE CANADA

amedics: Emergency Response; and paranormal investigation series The Other Side. The territories that span the northern expanse of Canada — Yukon, Northwest Territories (NWT) and Nunavet — boast snowy environments and crew who are specialised in cold-weather and frozen location shooting. NWT Film Commission’s Camilla MacEachern says: “Our most popular attractions continue to be our northern lights, midnight sun and ice roads. One of the key things we want to spread awareness of is the easy access to nature from our communities. You can go from being in a downtown urban street to being in the middle of the bush in a matter of minutes.” In the NWT is Great Slave Lake, one of the world’s largest lakes and the deepest in North America — and home to a community of houseboats. Virginia Falls is twice the height of Niagara and the Cirque of the Unclimbables, a cluster of towering walls and peaks in the Mackenzie Mountains, is awesome, as are the Salt Plains in Wood Buffalo, a perfect location for an alien world. Another asset is a new highway that connects Inuvik and Tuktoyaktuk, currently the only road in Canada that leads to the Arctic Ocean. “There’s been a very noticeable increase in film activity in the Beaufort Delta region mainly due to the new Inuvik-Tuktoyaktuk Highway,” MacEachern says. “We are also noticing an increase in inquires and productions from China. The NWT has been a hotspot for documentaries and reality series for years but is playing host to more feature films, commercials and background plates.” Recent highlights include: 2018 feature films A Wrinkle In Time (plate shots) and Elijah And The Rock Creature; reality show The Amazing Race Canada; and commercials for General Motors, Volkswagen and Air Canada. The territory of Nunavet stretches across an area of 1,877,787 sq km and the Inuit people, language and culture offer a unique location experience. Recent homegrown television productions here are: comedy show Qanurli; children’s series Anaana's Tent; cooking series Nunavummi Mamarijavut and craft show Uakallanga! The feature film A Day In The Life Of Noah Piugattuk has recently been completed as well as the short film Northern Haze; and features The Grizzlies and Tia And Piujuq recently received their international releases. The largely French-speaking province of Québec revealed that in 2018 foreign film shoots and the VFX sector combined, generated CA$871m in expenditure in the province; for filming, that represents the third-best year for incoming productions according to the Québec Film And Television Council (QTFC). Among the 20-orso productions filmed in Québec in 2018 was wartime naval drama Midway, directed by Roland Emmerich and starring Woody Harrelson. A television regular is magazine-based drama The Bold Type. The province can provide everything from arctic tundra and boreal forest, through rolling countryside, thousands of lakes, numerous waterways and sandy beaches — and a wealth of architectural history and settlements that have seen it double for many locations worldwide, often for New York, but also for Paris in The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button (2008) and X-Men: Days Of Future Past (2014). The array of locations, incentives, talent and industry professionals that are easily found in Canada, backed up by government bodies — including Telefilm, The National Film Board of Canada, The Canada Media Fund and CBC — ensure that through all the layers of the industry, ground-up or top-down, Canada is a country that writes film-friendly into the statute.

frontier scenery, beautifully on show in the 2015 blockbuster from Alejandro Iñárritu, The Revenant. Since then it has become familiar on screen as the backdrop for TV drama series — including three seasons of Fargo, with a possible fourth in development, but no firm location decided at press time; and two seasons of Tin Star. Add to that three seasons of Wynonna Earp; new series Black Summer which shot in Beiseker, north of Calgary, Alberta; and scenes from the seventh season of Game Of Thrones. Jolyane Motiuk, from the television and creative industries office of Calgary Economic Development says: “From the deserts of Afghanistan, to the battlefields of feudal Japan, to a trendy restaurant in Beverly Hills, Calgary is a chameleon able to play a wide spectrum of roles.” She adds that production capacity continues to grow in the province as well as government support, which has resulted in incremental growth year after year. The two provinces that form the centre of Canada are often thought of a largely agricultural prairie states, but this would be to dismiss the variety of locations to be found in Manitoba and Saskatchewan, including lakes and rivers, idyllic small towns, mountains and a variety of cities. JOLYANE MOTIUK “FROM THE DESERTS OF AFGHANISTAN TO THE BATTLEFIELDS OF FEUDAL JAPAN, CALGARY IS A CHAMELEON ABLE TO PLAY A WIDE SPECTRUM OF ROLES”

Ginny Collins, communications and marketing director at Manitoba Film & Music is happy to highlight a couple of unexpected locations in her province. “Perhaps our most notable location is Winnipeg’s Exchange District — a densely built, turn-of -the-19th-century warehousing and business centre of some 150 buildings covering 20 city blocks,” she says. The area has been used as a location in many films including: 2004’s Shall We Dance; 2005’s Capote; and 2007’s The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford. The prairie locations have been used for Heaven Is For Real in 2014 and 2017’s A Dog’s Purpose. Also successful CBC legal series Burden Of Truth has filmed all its seasons in Manitoba. Collins adds: “Northern Manitoba is the polar bear capitol of the world and features icy tundra. Our province also has the world’s largest ice maze, which is currently being used as a film location.” Business has been busy and looks ready to continue. “We anticipate by the end of our fiscal year in April 2019, our production volume will have hit CA$250m for the year,” Collins says. Other projects out of Manitoba include Amazon series and co-production with Fox 21 TV Studios, Tales From The Loop, a series inspired by the art of Simon Stalenhag. The series, with Nathaniel Halpern as showrunner and executive producer, features a town built above ‘The Loop’, a machine that explores the mysteries of the universe. Sean Penn’s next outing as director is also shooting in 2019 in Manitoba. Feature film Flag Day follows a young journalist who struggles to understand the legacy of her conman father. Saskatchewan has been equally busy, according to Craig Lederhouse of Creative Saskatchewan. “Saskatchewan is home to one of the largest sets of active sand dunes in Canada, The Great Sandhills,” he says. The extraordinary Great Sandhills rise high over the surrounding terrain and cover 1,900 sq km. Recent films that visited Saskatchewan include: horror comedy Another Wolfcop (2017); action drama SuperGrid (2018); and family film A.R.C.H.I.E. 2 (2018). Recent TV production includes: documentary series Bridging Borders and Par-

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FEATURE CANADA

CANADIAN INCENTIVES Canada has a range of incentives on offer. Some jurisdictions offer their own incentives or additions to the territory- or province-wide rules. Incentives are not usually applicable to commercials, but sometimes other help is offered locally. In addition film offices are happy to help with location scouting and finding local production services. Here are some of the incentives headlines, A-Z…

ALBERTA

The Screen-Based Production Grant supports film and TV production in Alberta. It offers up to 30% of eligible production expenditures made in Alberta up to C$7.5m in funding per project. Not available for commercials.

BRITISH COLUMBIA

The Production Services Tax Credit (PSTC) is a refundable corporate income tax credit. The PSTC is not subject to any Canadian content requirements. In addition, there is no limit on the PSTC that may be claimed on a particular production and there is no limit that a corporation or group of corporations can claim. The programme includes four initiatives: Basic (28%), Regional (6%), Distant Location (6%) and Digital Animation, Visual Effects and Post-Production (DAVE, 16%).

MANITOBA

Productions receive up to 65% with the Cost-of-Salaries Tax Credit. The base credit is 45% and bonuses are offered for Frequent Filmers (10%), Working With a Manitoba Producer (5%) and Filming in Rural Areas (5%). OR 30% on all eligible Manitoba expenditures with the Cost-of-Production Tax Credit. Manitoba’s tax credits do not have a cap and were recently made permanent by the Government of Manitoba.

NEWFOUNDLAND

The Newfoundland and Labrador Film Tax Credit is based on a calculation of eligible labour limited to the lesser of 25% of the total eligible budget or 40% of the total eligible labour expenditure. The credit may also be considered as part of a producer's equity in a given production. At least 25% of the total salaries and wages must be paid in Newfoundland and Labrador to eligible employees.

NOVA SCOTIA

The Nova Scotia Film & Television Production Incentive Fund gives producers up to 32% back on eligible Nova Scotia expenditures (including labour, goods and services). Administered by Nova Scotia Business Inc., the average

payout timeline is 30 business days. The fund can also be combined with Canada’s Federal Tax Incentive (16% for service productions; 25% for domestic on Canadian labour costs).

NUNAVUT

The Nunavut Spend Incentive Program is available to film, TV and commercial producers, when they are partnered with a Nunavut producer or production company. It awards a rebate on the total eligible costs for production goods and services purchased and consumed in Nunavut.

THE NORTHWEST TERRITORIES (NWT)

The NWT has a Film Rebate Program administered by the NWT Film Commission which gives productions filming on location in the territory 25-40% cash rebates on travel, labour/training, goods and services spend. Commercials are eligible under the travel rebate category of the scheme. In order to be eligible to access the Program, productions must spend a minimum of C$60,000 on location in the NWT.

ONTARIO

Ontario offers three film and TV incentives. Ontario’s tax credits are refundable, with no annual caps, no sunset clauses and no buybacks. In addition, Canada’s federal government offers ‘stackable’ incentives. The Ontario Film & Television Tax Credit (OFTTC) is a refundable tax credit available to eligible Ontario-based Canadian corporations of 35% of qualified Ontario labour expenditures for eligible film and television production. The Ontario Production Services Tax Credit (OPSTC) is a refundable tax credit to eligible Ontario-based Canadian and foreign-controlled corporations of 21.5% of qualified Ontario production expenditures for eligible film and television productions. The Ontario Computer Animation & Special Effects (OCASE) Tax Credit is a refundable tax credit to Ontario-based Canadian and foreign-controlled corporations of 18% of qualifying Ontario labour expenditures for

digital animation and digital visual effects created in Ontario for film and television productions.

PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND (PEI)

The PEI Film and Media Fund is a 25% PEI All Spend Rebate for productions over C$25,000 and owned in full or in part by a PEI producer. Co-productions require a 20% PEI ownership.

QUEBEC

Québec offers 20% cash-back on all expenses, 16 % for labour-based computer-aided special effects and animation. No minimum spend, no caps. In Quebec, the tax credit is based on all expenditures and the producer is not required to release the film in Québec. At the federal level, there is an additional tax incentive of 16%, net of any assistance, of eligible labour expenditures within Canada.

SASKATCHEWAN

Creative Saskatchewan offers an incentive to commercial producers based on spending on Saskatchewan goods and services and on wages for Saskatchewan-based crew. The incentive is a grant valued at 25% to 30% of the eligible Saskatchewan-spend, 80% of which is payable on the first day principal photography.

YUKON

The Yukon Spend Rebate provides a rebate of up to 25% for television programmes or TV movies, documentaries and feature films. This rebate is for productions that are not commercials. The Training Program offers a rebate of up to 25% on wages paid to individuals providing on-set training to eligible Yukon labour. This training can be for techniques and equipment. This rebate is for productions that are not commercials. The Travel Rebate applies to a maximum of C$15,000 in travel costs from Edmonton, Calgary or Vancouver to Whitehorse. Commercials are eligible to apply for this component, however this rebate isn’t available to productions accessing the Yukon Spend Rebate.

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FEATURE AUSTRALIA

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FEATURE AUSTRALIA

LOOKS AND

TALENT When God was handing out locations, Australia was at the front of the queue. But the world’s producers don’t just come for the nature — Australia also knows how to nurture the international crews that come knocking on its door. SANDY GEORGE reports Amber Heard, director James Wan, Jason Momoa and Willem Dafoe on the Aquaman set

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Steve Bastoni and stunt co-ordinator Warwick Sadler on set for Chinese/Australian co-production The Whistleblower

DAM Wingard’s Godzilla Vs Kong is the second film in Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary Entertainment’s Godzilla-Kong cinematic universe to be filmed in Australia. The country must have done something right first time around. Godzilla Vs Kong moved into Village Roadshow Studios on Queensland’s Gold Coast in September 2018. On arrival, producer Alex Garcia told one media outlet that they were thrilled to be back and that they had had a “wonderful experience” on the earlier Kong: Skull Island. Garcia added: “The Queensland government through Screen Queensland has been a terrific resource in helping us leverage the region’s stunning landscapes, exceptional facilities and fantastic crews to achieve the scope we need for this epic next chapter in the saga.” While sets were being built, cast and crew did a side trip to Hawaii. The Australian bump out of Godzilla Vs Kong is mid-2019 and the film will be in cinemas a year later. Prior to Godzilla’s location being announced, Queensland premier Annastacia Palaszczuk met Legendary Pictures executives in Los Angeles, added a new 10% PDV (post, digital and visual effects) rebate to Queensland’s suite of incentives and committed a further A$20m to attract production, effective mid-2019. Political backing matters. While Godzilla was in seven of the Village Roadshow’s nine sound stages, Reef Break was in the other two and taking advantage of gorgeous nearby landscapes and beaches — the 13-part series for ABC Studios International, in partnership with French broadcaster M6, has a big location component. Australian-born executive producer Poppy Montgomery came up with the concept and stars as a thief-turned-fixer for a Pacific Island bigwig. Several Australian directors are on board. ABC Studios is part of The Walt Disney Company, which has made Pirates Of The Caribbean movies and Thor: Ragnarok in Queensland.

Prior to Godzilla and Reef Break, Dora The Explorer was headquartered at the studios from July 2018, using all but stage 1. Filmed entirely on the Gold Coast, the big-screen adaptation of the long-running kids’ series is the first live-action version of any kind. Directed by James Bobin, Dora is one of several Nickelodeon properties being made into films by Paramount Players. Walden Media is also involved. Paramount Pictures’ Monster Problems, to be filmed in Queensland this year, is the fourth offshore project to get a slice of the Australian government’s A$140m location incentive. Directed by Michael Matthews, the film stars Dylan O’Brien as a young man in a post-apocalyptic world overrun by monsters. Godzilla Vs Kong and TV series Reef Break and Preacher were the first recipients of the incentive. Available since May 2018, it is often referred to as a ‘top-up’ because it makes up for the uncompetitive nature of Australia’s 16.5% location offset. ALEX GARCIA “SCREEN QUEENSLAND HAS BEEN A TERRIFIC RESOURCE IN HELPING US LEVERAGE THE REGION’S STUNNING LANDSCAPES, EXCEPTIONAL FACILITIES AND FANTASTIC CREWS”

“For Ausfilm’s membership of 43 production-services businesses all across Australia and for Australian talent in front of and behind the camera, this pipeline of international production creates thousands of jobs,” Ausfilm chief executive Debra Richards says. “The inward investment attracted also benefits other sectors, such as tourism, hospitality and construction, expanding the impact on the Australian economy.” Lee Rosenthal, Paramount Pictures’ president of physical production, adds: “In Queensland, we are able to get outstanding crew, stages and a variety of jungle topography and city backdrops in essentially one place.” He talks of the “artful crafting” of the jungle, ruins and lighthouse sets and how well they blended with the locations. This gave the film a scale

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that could not have been achieved elsewhere, he adds. Cinema audiences from August 2020 will see Dora, Boots, Diego and her other mates save Dora’s parents and solve the mystery behind a lost civilization. Warner Bros. Pictures’ Aquaman is a convincing recent demonstration of Australia’s first-rate facilities, skills and locations. It was filmed in Queensland for most of 2017 by a team headed by Australian director James Wan. It was a box-office hit worldwide. Australia’s two other big studio complexes are also on the east coast. Except for some live-action components of The Lego Ninjago Movie, no purely international projects have been at Sydney’s Fox Studios Australia since Pacific Rim: Uprising exited in March 2017. That said, the big-budget CGI and live-action family film Peter Rabbit 2, made for Sony Pictures by local company Animal Logic and director Will Gluck’s Olive Bridge Entertainment, was in there for a long stretch recently. It occupied four stages from November 2018 through to April 2019. The sequel was given the green light after the original grossed more than US$350m worldwide. The new film will be released in early 2020. The projects hosted by Fox Studios between Pacific Rim and Peter Rabbit included local shiny-floor shows The Voice and Dancing With The Stars, and several high-profile Australian films. Among the latter were huge local hit Ladies In Black, directed by Bruce Beresford; I Am Woman, Unjoo Moon’s film about musician Helen Reddy; and sci-fi horror film Nekrotronic from Kiah Roache-Turner. Down south, the four-part psychological thriller The Cry was in Docklands Studios Melbourne from January through March 2018. The Cry had many Australians on board, including writer Jacquelin Perske and director Glendyn Ivin. It was produced by Glasgow’s Synchronicity Films in association with Melbourne’s December Media — it did not have official co-production status. Set in Scotland and Australia, The Cry chronicles the collapse of a marriage after the abduction of a baby. Docklands hosted Chinese/Australian co-production The Whistleblower from April to October followed by the 10-part fourth series of Preacher. Produced by Sony Pictures Television and Playmaker Studios for the AMC network, cameras rolled from February and will stay on until June 2019. Dominic Cooper again plays the small-town preacher with a criminal past and a superpower. Victoria is known for facilitating high-end television — Preacher is the biggest for a decade. Docklands’ dead spot for international production was 2017, although the Australian films Winchester, from the Spierig Brothers; and Leigh Whannell’s Upgrade picked up the slack. Peaks and troughs are a feature of the international production scene in Australia. A dramatic plunge was revealed in Screen Australia’s annual national drama reports: only A$4m was spent on filming in the 12 months to 30 June 2018, compared to A$521m in the previous year. But the total amount of expenditure is allocated to the financial year in which filming began and this can distort the figures: the annual average is A$222m, based on the last five years. Also, some Australian films are of a scale that keep as many employed and as much money changing hands as a big US blockbuster — Peter Rabbit being an example — even if people outside Australia might not realise they are Australian. The availability of controlled environments — studios — are not enough to attract international production on their own. Skilled cast and crew and, possibly, suitable locations are required too. The numbers also have to make sense, as do the exchange rates: no one will come if the Australian and US dollars are at parity. The availability of worldwide incentives and what the Australian government is offering also have an impact. Australia has a 16.5% location offset for international productions, calculated on how much is spent locally. Expenditure has to be A$15m or more and, in the case of television, at least A$1m per hour. In recognition that the rebate is inadequate, the federal government provides supplemen-

tary ‘competitive grants’. The A$140m made available for the current four years — it equates to A$35m per year — brings the offset up to 30%. When announced on May 3, 2018, the new injection of cash brought cheers from studios, post houses and others — and most state film agencies and the marketing organisation Ausfilm thanked the federal government publicly. But key players privately bemoan that the government did not just increase the location offset. Offshore studios and producers cannot independently assess whether they can score some of the A$140m and this creates uncertainty. The system favours the big US studios, and there is confusion about the application process and no transparency around decisions. There is also more opportunity to grow Australia’s service industry under an increased location offset because it is uncapped. Good economic management is a rallying cry of the government, but Australia cannot lose under an enhanced location offset: for productions to obtain a rebate means they must spend much more, while concerns about productions flooding in are unjustified, because Australia only has so much capacity to service big-budget projects. It is very perplexing. Perhaps the wariness is around sparking criticism from other industries. Godzilla and Reef Break were the first two projects to access the A$140m — together receiving A$16 million — and are expected to also claim the 16.5% location offset (tax matters are confidential, so this information is not available unless the producer makes it public). It is understood that Dora unsuccessfully applied for the top-up funds — possibly because not enough money was being spent — prompting Screen Queensland to step in with significant financial assistance to secure the project. Irrespective of where filming took place, international film and television projects can claim 30% of their Australian expenditure on PDV via the PDV offset. Thirty-five mainly US features spent A$220m over the two years to June 30, 2018, including Black Panther, Jumanji: Welcome To The Jungle, Spider-Man: Homecoming, Crazy Rich Asians and X-Men: Dark Phoenix. BILL KONG “WE CHOSE TO MAKE THE WHISTLEBLOWER IN VICTORIA BECAUSE IT DELIVERED THE DIVERSITY OF LOCATIONS WE REQUIRED, EVEN ALLOWING US TO CREATE A SCENE SET IN AFRICA”

The third of three federal government offsets is the producer offset (PO), which is worth a generous 40% of local expenditure for Australian features and 20% for Australian television documentary and drama productions. Among the eligibility criteria is what is called the ‘significant Australian content’ (SAC) test. Confidentiality again applies, but it can be assumed that Peter Rabbit 2 and, because official co-productions qualify, The Whistleblower will be recipients. They would also have received state-based financial assistance, respectively, from the Made in NSW fund and various pots of Film Victoria money. Apart from a four-day shoot in China, The Whistleblower was filmed entirely in and around Melbourne and the regional city of Geelong in Mandarin and English. Hong Kong-based Edko Films and Perfect Village Entertainment were the producers. “We chose to make The Whistleblower in Victoria because it delivered the diversity of locations we required, even allowing us to create a scene set in Africa, which we shot in the suburbs of Werribee and Footscray,” says Edko president Bill Kong. “Victoria’s locations and crew are the state’s most valuable assets from a film point of view, followed by the [PO] rebate. If not for the rebate, the film would have cost 30%

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Locations L-R: Gurrgura (Pyramid Hill) Pilbara © Tyson Mowarin; Kalbarri Cliffs, Gascoyne © Australia’s Coral Coast; Mimbi Caves, Kimberley © Dan Wood; Thistle Cove, GoldfieldEsperance © Christian Fletcher; Canola Fields and Stirling Range, Great Southern © Christian Fletcher; Mount Magnet, Mid West, Jessica Wyld © No Thing Productions

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Adelaide-based 57 Films facilitated three episodes of the Chinese series If Time Flows Back in 2018. Pictured are actors Zonghan Li (left), Xin Jiang, Dong Jin, with director Jiandong Zhang and actor Naiwen Li

more to make. We filmed 99% of the production in Victoria and, based on the talent and skills of the Victoria crew, we will also complete postproduction and VFX there. Everyone has been fantastic to work with. I’m afraid I cannot think of any negative — sorry!” The Whistleblower centres on a Chinese man living in Australia who, after a fatality, has serious safety concerns about a new technology developed by his employer. The film will be released in China this summer. Four Chinese/Australian features with official co-production status went into production in the two years up to June 30, 2018. Besides The Whistleblower, there was The Longest Shot, At Last and Legend Of Sun And Moon. Eight films that were co-productions were made in all, the others being Mary Magdalene with the UK, Maya The Bee: The Honey Games with Germany, Animals with Ireland and Slam with France. Australia has 12 potential co-production partners. With several key producers reaching out to China, co-production is showing up in Australia with television projects too. Paul Ryan of Adelaide-based 57 Films facilitated three episodes of the Chinese series If Time Flows Back in 2018. Set and filmed in South Australia, the drama is expected to reach an audience of 90 million. Writer/director Zhang Jiandong and the cast and crew were based at the South Australian Film Corporation’s (SAFC) Adelaide Studios and the SAFC provided an investment grant for certain local elements. In 2017, 57 Films partnered with Beijing’s Ciwen Media to make Speed, believed to be the first multilingual Chinese drama series made in Australia. Given the alignment between offshore production and tourism, the Chinese activity in South Australia may well boost visitor numbers to the state. This may also happen in Victoria as it, too, features as itself in Preacher and The Whistleblower, as well as in the post-apocalyptic storyline of the third and final season of HBO’s The Leftovers, which was made in Victoria in 2016. The Leftovers co-creator and showrunner Damon Lindelof told the podcast The Business that there is no other place in the world like Australia: "From an American perspec-

tive, first off, it just feels really, really far. And if you're in Melbourne, it kind of looks like the US, but everything is a little bit weird and a little bit different. And if you just drive 10 minutes out of town, you feel like you're in the 1970s. And if you drive 10 minutes further, you're in the country." No matter how much they yearn for the injection of cash, Australia’s other three states — Western Australia, Northern Territory and Tasmania — don’t have the infrastructure to service a flow of blockbusters. But they do have magnificent locations. DAMON LINDELOF “IF YOU DRIVE 10 MINUTES OUT OF MELBOURNE, YOU FEEL LIKE YOU'RE IN THE 1970S. AND IF YOU DRIVE 10 MINUTES FURTHER, YOU'RE IN THE COUNTRY”

It is yet to be seen whether Screenwest’s new structure as a not-for-profit company — rather than a government entity — can attract more runaway production to what is Australia’s biggest state by land mass. New chief executive Willie Rowe says the state agency now has more autonomy and flexibility, and can attract private finance to supplement the funds it receives from the Western Australian government. Rowe points to the number of Chinese television producers, particularly in the reality genre, that are making enquiries and scouting locations in Western Australia. He also has hopes of developing a large modern studio that would serves as a hub for the needs of the whole industry. But while the government is very supportive, it would need private investment, he adds. That said, the number of features made in Western Australia in the last decade has grown exponentially. Last year, Matchbox Pictures, owned by NBCUniversal, and For Pete’s Sake Productions filmed 30-part serial The Heights in Perth for ABC TV, which was a big boost to both the state’s confidence and reputation on the television-drama front.

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ADVERTISERS INDEX A PERFECT SPACE 130 ACCESS BOOKINGS 36 ARTEM 31 BILBAO BIZKAIA FILM COMMISSION 54 BRITISH FILM COMMISSION 26 CALGARY FILM COMMISSION 125 CALIFORNIA FILM COMMISSION 106 CANARY ISLAND FILMS 60 CREATIVE SCOTLAND 34 EKOME S.A. THE NATIONAL CENTRE OF AUDIOVISUAL MEDIA AND COMMUNICATION FACING TITLE PAGE AND 62 ELSTREE STUDIOS 33 FILM CENTRE MONTENEGRO 56 FILM CENTRE SERBIA 64 FILM FIJI 16 FILM LONDON 28 FORT LAUDERDALE OFFICE OF FILM, MUSIC & ENTERTAINMENT OUTSIDE BACK COVER GLASGOW FILM OFFICE 37

GREEK FILM CENTRE 61 HERO PRODUCTION ICELAND 14, 24 AND INSIDE BACK COVER HOTEL BAYERISCHER HOF 74 HUNTINGTON LIBRARY, ART COLLECTION AND BOTANICAL GARDENS 111 IIFTC INTERNATIONAL MARKET PLACE FOR MEETING INDIAN PRODUCTIONS 134 KENT FILM OFFICE 35 LITHUANIAN FILM CENTRE 72 LIVERPOOL FILM OFFICE 32 LOCATION MANAGERS GUILD INTERNATIONAL 133 MALTA FILM COMMISSION 66 MARIN FILM COMMISSION 109 MISSISSAUGA, ONTARIO 123 MONO COUNTY FILM COMMISSION 112 MONTANA FILM COMMISSION 38 MONTEREY FILM COMMISSION 109 NAVARRA FILM COMMISSION 58 ONTARIO CREATES 121

PALM BEACH COUNTY FILM AND TV COMMISSION 11 PIC PORTUGAL 68 PINEWOOD STUDIOS GROUP 30, 78 AND 122 RIVERSIDE COUNTY FILM COMMISSION 110 SAN DIEGO FILM COMMISSION 104 SAN FRANCISCO FILM COMMISSION 116 SANTA CLARITA FILM OFFICE 102 SAVANNAH AREA FILM OFFICE 76 SCREEN BRUSSELS 101 SCREEN IRELAND 20 SCREENWEST, AUSTRALIA 133 SHOW EAST 82 TULARE COUNTY FILM COMMISSION 114 UNITED STATES VIRGIN ISLANDS INSIDE FRONT COVER AND PAGE FACING VIENNA FILM COMMISSION 73 VILLAGE ROADSHOW STUDIOS 2 AND 3 VISIT SAVANNAH 80 WALLONIA 6 WARNER BROS. STUDIO FACILITIES 22

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Locations, Infrastructure & Incentives. It’s all available at www.filmusvi.com

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