Location International 2014

LOCATION2014 SHOWCASING THE INTERNATIONAL PRODUCTION INDUSTRY

PUBLISHED BY BOUTIQUE EDITIONS LIMITED

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Picture 1,000 locations within a distance of only100x35 miles.

Action, you're in Puerto Rico!

OUR WEALTH OF EASILY ACCESSIBLE LOCATIONS are only matched by some of the most favorable incentives in the world and a solid film industry infrastructure with top of the line equipment, experienced crews and top technology post-production facilities.

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PRODUCTION TAX CREDIT

ON ALL PAYMENTS TO PUERTO RICO RESIDENT COMPANIES & INDIVIDUALS

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ON DEVELOPMENT OR EXPANSION COSTS

Visit the Puerto Rico Film Commission exhibitor's booth for more information. www.puertoricofilm.pr.gov

PUERTO RICO FILM COMMISSION

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1000’s of locations, 8 Sound Stages, 3 Water Tanks...

1 choice for your next Production.

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With 10,844m 2 (116,727sq ft) of stage space

Past Productions include:

plus 3 heated and filtered water tanks totalling

• TV Series Terra Nova - Fox Television

9.4 million liters (2.48 million gallons), full

• Nim’s Island - Walden Media

support facilities and a comprehensive network

• Narnia: Voyage of the Dawn Treader -

of service companies to provide valuable

20th Century Fox / Walden Media • Railway Man - Pictures in Paradise/ Archer Street/Lionsgate • Unbroken - Universal Pictures

experience and equipment for your Production, Village Roadshow Studios is Australia’s premier facility for water themed film and television

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Recent movies created using the Village Roadshow Studios’ tank facilities

NIM’S ISLAND

Warner Bros.

Walden Media

Directed by: Andy Tennant

Directed by: Mark Levin & Jennifer Flackett

THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA: THE VOYAGE OF THE DAWN TREADER

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Twentieth Century Fox and Walden Media

Director: Alister Grierson

A Great Wight Production and Universal Studios

Director: Michael Apted

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FOOL’S GOLD

Queensland: Entertainment Road, Oxenford, Gold Coast, QLD Australia 4210. Tel +61 7 5585 9666 Fax +61 7 5573 3698 USA: Village Roadshow Pictures, 100 N. Crescent Drive, Suite 323, Beverly Hills, CA 90210. Tel +1 310 385 4300 Fax +1 310 385 4301

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MAKE it inAUSTRALIA We offer WORLD-CLASS FILM STUDIOS, a wide range of INSPIRING LOCATIONS, depth of experienced crew, Oscar® winning talent and COMPETITIVE PRODUCTION INCENTIVES.

JOIN US TO LEARN MORE AT AUSFILM WEEK 2014 Connect with leading Australian Filmmakers at Ausfilm Week 2014 to discover the incentives Australia has to offer international production partners.

LONDON: 20th - 23rd October 2014 LOS ANGELES: 27th - 31st October 2014

For more information about Ausfilm Week contact us at LondonWeek@ausfilm.com.au or LosAngelesWeek@ausfilm.com.au

Ausfilm – Head Office Sydney, Australia T: +61 2 93834192 E: info@Ausfilm.com.au Ausfilm – LA Office Los Angeles, USA T: + 1 310 229 2362 E:info@Ausfilm.com.au

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THE GREAT GATSBY © 2013 BAZMARK FILMS PTY LTD / © WARNER BROS. ENTERTAINMENT. INC THE LEGO® MOVIE © 2013 WARNER BROS. ENT., VILLAGE ROADSHOW PICTURES, THE LEGO GROUP. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED THE RAILWAY MAN © 2013 PICTURES IN PARADISE THE ROVER STILL BY MATT NETTHEIM © ROVER FILM HOLDINGS 2013 THE WOLVERINE © 2013 TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX FILM CORPORATION. & © 2013 MARVEL ENTERTAINMENT, LLC AND ITS SUBSIDIARIES

WWW.AUSFILM.COM

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INTRODUCTION - MASTHEAD

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LOCATION2014 SHOWCASING THE INTERNATIONAL PRODUCTION INDUSTRY

EDITOR JULIAN NEWBY MANAGING EDITOR DEBBIE LINCOLN CONTRIBUTORS CLIVE BULL, SARAH COOPER, MARLENE EDMONDS, GARY SMITH PUBLISHER RICHARD WOOLLEY ART DIRECTOR CHRISTIAN ZIVOJINOVIC - WWW.ANOIR.FR PUBLISHED BY BOUTIQUE EDITIONS LTD - 117 WATERLOO ROAD - LONDON SE1 8UL - UNITED KINGDOM - T: +44 20 7902 1942 F: +44 20 3006 8796 - WWW.BOUTIQUEEDITIONS.COM ADVERTISING SALES JERRY ODLIN INTERNATIONAL SALES DIRECTOR - JODLIN@BOUTIQUEEDITIONS.COM LISA RAY SALES MANAGER (EMEA+ASIA) LRAY@BOUTIQUEEDITIONS.COM NICKI WEBBER SALES MANAGER (NORTH AMERICA) - NWEBBER@BOUTIQUEEDITIONS.COM KAREN WATTS SALES MANAGER (SOUTH AMERICA) - KWATTS@BOUTIQUEEDITIONS.COM. THE PAPER USED BY BOUTIQUE EDITIONS IS A NATURAL, RECYCLABLE PRODUCT MADE FROM WOOD GROWN IN SUSTAINABLE FORESTS. THE MANUFACTURING PROCESS CONFORMS TO THE ENVIRONMENTAL REGULATIONS OF THE COUNTRY OF ORIGIN. INFORMATION IN THIS PUBLICATION IS EDITED FROM SUBMISSIONS PROVIDED BY THE INDIVIDUAL COMMISSIONS AND ORGANISATIONS. ALTHOUGH A REASONABLE EFFORT HAS BEEN MADE IN COMPILING THIS INFORMATION, BOUTIQUE EDITIONS LTD ASSUMES NO RESPONSIBILITY FOR ACCURACY. THE PUBLISHER ASSUMES NO LIABILITY FOR UNSOLICITED MANUSCRIPTS, PHOTOGRAPHS AND ARTWORK. COPYRIGHT ©2014 BOUTIQUE EDITIONS LTD. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. REPRODUCTION IN WHOLE OR IN PART OF ANY TEXT, PHOTOGRAPH OR ILLUSTRATION WITHOUT PRIOR PERMISSION OF BOUTIQUE EDITIONS LTD IS STRICTLY PROHIBITED

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INTRODUCTION - CONTENTS

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THE HONOURABLE WOMAN Maggie Gyllenhaal talks about the new BBC spy series

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SHOOTING THE PAST How does a filmmaker make the new look old?

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KEVIN SPACEY The actor, director and producer talks about his new documentary

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WE’RE SURROUNDED! The logistical challenges of filming on islands

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AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY A house becomes a home, and a location

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IN PICTURES A collection of images of stunning locations around the world, some famous on the big screen, some yet to be discovered

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TV MADE THEM FAMOUS How a TV show can boost the local economy

NIGHT TRAIN TO LISBON The Portuguese capital is central to a new film starring Jeremy Irons

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ROAD MOVIES Examining the cinematic technique of throwing characters together in a vehicle

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THE ROVER A road movie from Australia

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40 YEARS A SLAVE A new TV series brings The Book Of Negroes to life

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ASIA What attracts productions to this part of the world?

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THE 33 Shooting the real-life drama of the trapped Chilean miners

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ADVERTISERS INDEX

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THE GREAT WALL OF CHINA, CHINA Our cover photo shows part of The Great Wall of China. The Wall is a series of stone and earthen fortifications which was built, rebuilt, and maintained between the fifth century BCE and the 16th century to protect the northern borders of the Chinese Empire during the rule of successive dynasties. The current Wall was built during the Ming Dynasty. This photo shows the Jiayuguan fortress in Gansu province on the western end of The Great Wall (Photo, courtesy Barbara J Miller)

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! t o l a n a th e r o M

HOLLYWOOD

ATLANTA

STAGES PRODUCTION SERVICES OFFICES GRIP LIGHTING

PLAYA VISTA

ONE NUMBER WORLDWIDE

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DESERT CALM MAKING A SCENE AFTER A LONG SHOOT IN LONDON, CAST AND CREW FOR TV SERIES THE HONOURABLE WOMAN MOVED TO MOROCCO. SOME WERE WARY OF WHAT TO EXPECT, BUT WHEN THEY GOT THERE, ALL WAS CALM. JULIAN NEWBY MET THE CAST AND CREW

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MAGGIE GYLLENHAAL ““IF YOU’RE ON A HOT AND TESTING SHOOT LIKE THAT, I CAN’T THINK OF MANY MORE WELCOMING PLACES TO BE””

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HE HONOURABLE Woman, starring maggie Gyllenhaal, is a spy drama series produced for the BBC and Sundance by fledgling UK independent Drama Republic.

The seven-part series is produced by Abi Bach and Hugo Blick, who also writes and directs; Drama Republic’s Greg Brenman is executive producer.

The series opens in flashback as Nessa Stein (Gyllenhaal) witnesses the assassination of her father — a Zionist arms procurer — by the armed wing of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation. Now in her late thirties, and honoured as a Baroness for her campaigning work, Nessa is playing a key role in the middle East peace process. But after she awards a lucrative contract to a Palestinian businessman, her life, and the lives of those closest to her, are suddenly in danger. When the businessman is found dead, she and her brother Ephra (Andrew Buchan) come under the close scrutiny of Whitehall and the Secret Intelligence Service.

Of the 97-day shoot, 75 days were spent in London, three in the south of England and the remaining 19 days in morocco, which doubles for the middle East. Abi Bach planned the shoot so that crew and ensemble cast could spend as much time in London as possible before uprooting to morocco. “I wanted the crew to be in one particular place long enough to get to work well with each other before the long journey,” Bach says.

And the plan worked. Cast and crew speak of a ‘family feel’ that developed during the shoot, with even the unit drivers keen to read the morning’s script to see how the story would unfurl on any given day. “After about two weeks everyone had settled and we were starting to realise that this is a special project,” Bach says. “They all really loved working with Hugo. He expects a lot of everyone and of himself and is very conscious of the crew, and the need to finish on time. And if sometimes it looked like we were slipping behind schedule, he would just re-think everything in order to get it back on track.”

Gyllenhaal was wary of Blick at the start, unfamiliar with his writing and directing style and uncertain whether or not she could work

Maggie gyllenhaal “it’s like this exquisitely put together thriller, all formed by this genius mind”

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HUgO BLick filming The honourable Woman

with him. “But after a few days I had changed my mind,” she says. “When I read the script, it was so exceptional. I had never read anything like it before. It was complete and that doesn’t happen, well certainly not in America where you will see new material each week. But when you read this, it’s like this exquisitely put together thriller, all formed by this genius mind.” She adds: “Working with Hugo was the most wonderful experience. I can honestly say this is the piece of work I am the most proud of in my career.”

And Blick got a lot out of Gyllenhaal and the rest of the cast. Her film credits may include The Dark Knight (2008), but stunts don’t appeal to Gyllenhaal; one sequence in the first episode in which her car is attacked in the desert and the screen is suddenly filled with blood and glass, looks particularly harrowing. “At one point in the production I did ask, ‘How many of my stunts do I really have to do?’,” she says. She did them, nonetheless.

The shoot switched from London to morocco within the space of 24 hours, with some crew members continuing work on the very day they arrived.

“We were all exhausted by the time we arrived,” Bach says. “Everybody was a little apprehensive because we had established our own way of working and had hit our own pace — and suddenly we were working alongside a foreign crew. We went straight into the desert for the first three days and if we had suffered any delays out there for whatever reason, it would have been problematic for the rest of the production.”

But on meeting local crew members Bach was confident that they would be able to carry on without a hitch. “They may have a different way of working but they were really

good at it. The crews in morocco have worked on many of the big Hollywood films that have gone out there, a lot of war stuff and biblical stuff, so they’re experienced.” she says. “And it’s funny, because although most of the crew members are muslims, they said they probably knew more about the Bible than any of us! They were such lovely people, they speak three languages, and working with them in their own country was just so easy.”

In morocco the British team worked alongside local firm K Films Productions, and producer Khadija Alami (Captain Philips, 2013). “She has got such a good reputation for being the right person to go through and her team was just so professional.”

Shooting began in the desert outside marrakech and three days later the production moved four hours north to El Jadida, base camp for the remainder of the shoot.

Bach says morocco is hot on security. “The authorities want to know exactly where you are, at all times, and you had to have permission to shoot anywhere. So you can’t make last-minute decisions about where to film — everything has to be planned. And they are very careful about things like what specialeffects ammunition you might be using. That sort of attention to detail made us feel very safe. It felt relaxed and we were happy bringing a crew here. So morocco ticked all the boxes.

Gyllenhaal took her family with her to morocco and said the people of marrakech could not have been kinder. “They were wonderful with my children, the local people were playing with them for hours at a time,” she says. “They showed such friendship and kindness. If you’re on a hot and testing shoot like that, I can’t think of many more welcoming places to be.”

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WE’VE GOT SPAIN COVERED We have been successfully providing production services to the Film, TV and Advertising industries for over twenty years.

For more information on shooting in Spain, contact: TRENT WALTON - EXECUTIVE PRODUCER trent@palmapictures.es | T +34 971 226 232

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FEATURE - HISTORIC

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F E AT U R E

SHOOTING THE PAST HOW DOES A FILMMAKER MAKE THE NEW LOOK OLD? ARE THERE PARTICULAR LOCATIONS THAT LEND THEMSELVES TO TALES OF YORE? AS JULIAN NEWBY DISCOVERS, THE ANSWER IS ‘YES’

MOROCCO STANDS IN FOR ANCIENT PERSIA IN THE FILM THE PHYSICIAN (2013)

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HE YEAR is 1951, and a blacklisted Hollywood writer is in a car accident. He loses his memory, but eventually settles into a new life in a small town where he is mistaken for a long-lost son and war hero.

America in the Fifties is a very recognisable place. Post-war optimism and a growing affluence among the middle classes, together with the beginnings of the emergence of a youth culture and the growing influence of African and Hispanic cultures, give a certain sheen to everything and everyone. We all think we know what America looked and felt like in the Fifties.

So how does a filmmaker get that look and feel, on location, in the year 2000?

“The whole story was written around this guy [Jim Carey] who comes back to a community, but he is someone else, someone the community has lost to the war,” says Rory Enke, location manager on The Majestic (2001).

“So we needed a whole street and a theatre and a hotel and a gas station — various things, all close to each other, so in one shot you could grasp this whole community. Part of the brief was the work of Frank Capra — they were really taking his lead in the way those movies were laid out and designed.”

Everyone who has seen Capra’s It’s A Wonderful Life (1946) knows what

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Enke is talking about. As that film opens we very soon know who everyone is, and where everything is: a cheery walk down Main Street with James Stewart and we very soon feel part of the community. But that was shot in 1945 when life was like that.

Well it so happens that life is still like that in Ferndale California, which was good news for Enke and the creators of The Majestic. “Ferndale is one of those places on the planet where time doesn’t move at the same pace as everywhere else. I lived up there for six or seven months while we did the film and I used to say that, if a doctor only gives me a week to live, I’m going up to Ferndale because there it’ll feel like three years.”

Ferndale sits at the northern gateway to an area known as California’s Lost Coast, on the west side of the Eel River. “It’s a community of people who have been there for generations and they haven’t changed a lot,” Enke says. “It’s a Victorian village and they’re very proud of it. And they take great pride in the fact that they have maintained this community in a downtown area that is /// just a step back in time.”

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RoRy EnkE “Ferndale is one oF those places on the planet where time doesn’t move at the same pace as everywhere else”

The MuskeTeers get down and dirty “away from the glossy clean world that so many musketeers have been portrayed in”

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so Main street Ferndale provided the core of the set for the movie, and then new elements had to be built according to the script. the street is lined with old buildings, one side interrupted by a parking lot — which is where the crew built the Majestic, the theatre that is one of the stars of the movie.

A modern-style bank stood out among the rest of the buildings so city hall was built there to cover it up. “We did it in a way that used wire walls that we could fold back on hinges so that people could still drive through to do their banking — they drove right through our set actually!”

An old gas station that Enke describes as a “wreck” was another eyesore, but eventually the crew was able to build Mabel’s Diner — a crucial building in the script — to hide it. “We finally made a deal with the owner. it was very tricky, that was one of the hardest things to deal with, that guy, persuading him to let us build our diner over there.” the conservative but “very friendly, wonderful people” of Ferndale eventually warmed to the presence of the film in their town and wanted the crew to leave some of the buildings up after they’d gone. “But we couldn’t. it was built as sets, it was not built with any integrity. And especially not in Ferndale, as it’s lined up to the sea and it gets some weather. they would have hated it in the big scheme of things.” the historical backdrops used for television’s latest incarnation of Alexandre Dumas’ the three Musketeers are part off-the-peg and part construct.

With so much of its striking historic architecture intact, the series settled on Prague for 17th-century Paris. A co-production with BBc Worldwide and BBc America, the Musketeers begins with the arrival of d’Artagnan in Paris, to avenge the death of his father. he soon impresses royal bodyguards Athos, Aramis, and Porthos with his bravery and skill and he quickly becomes a part

of this band of renegades who, partly for honour and partly for fun, rampage through Paris seeking violent adventure after violent adventure.

Meanwhile in the background is a studious production designer, Will hughes-Jones, meticulously creating the period backdrops which the foursome boisterously bash their way through, leaving death, destruction, heartbroken women, adrenaline and testosterone in their wake.

“When i was brought in to the project i was on a plane the next day to the czech republic to see whether it fitted in with the ideas that i had,” hughes-Jones told Location. “We looked at quite a few locations and where we ended up really offered so much more than any of the others.” the city of Prague provided plenty of backdrops for the Musketeers to swashbuckle their way through but the principal location — where hughes-Jones built streets, the garrison, docks and even a small stretch of coastline — was an abandoned monastery and brewery which had fallen into disrepair. “it was the last place that the Germans were in the czech repulblic during the World War ii, and there are all these little secret hideyholes and rumour has it that the retreating Germans were holed up there for a week hiding and nobody knew they were there.” today there is a convent attached to the site but the nuns are pretty much hidden away. Known as the Doksany Monastery, situated in the village of Doksany 45 minutes north of Prague, heading towards Germany, the producton took it over and build a semi-permanent set on the site. “it was built to stand for three years and it has a metreand-a-half thick concrete foundations holding it up,” hughes-Jones says. “Basically it’s a standing set on a back lot and i’m sure once this series has gone out, the BBc may well rent it out. When we were there last year i know that [Atlantique Entertainment, canal+ tV series] Borgia (2011-) was asking to use it. But it has stood unused since we finished in september 2013 and at the start of this year it was being patched up because it had to go through a czech winter.” hughes-Jones’ brief was to create a set that looked like 17th-century Paris. “one thing i was very keen on was getting away from the glossy clean world that so many Musketeers have been portrayed in. i wanted to get back to the dirty, gritty reality of what it would have been like. the muted tones, textures and things — so those were the buzzwords for myself and the costume designer [Phoebe De Gaye]. so we worked together very closely to come up with the very limited palette of colours and a lot more textures than we would generally ///

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Will HugHes-Jones “ One thing i was very keen On was getting away frOm the glOssy clean wOrld that sO many musketeers have been pOrtrayed in” use. Beyond that it was reading the script and thinking that we need one street, two streets, and a garrison, and when we were building it — because of the nature of how we built it, with the streets at an L-shape — it seemed sensible that we built a town square as well, on the inside of the right-angle created by the L-shape.” this initiated new scenes as in the first scripts there wasn’t any action in a town square. “But because we’d built one Adrian [hodges, producer] started to write more scenes set in a town square to get some use out of it. And we put constance’s [Dumas’ heroine constance Bonacieux] house there too because we needed somewhere to put that. it gave us a way in which to go very wide in a scene that otherwise would have been very tight around a front door.”

Nearby Prague, meanwhile, proved a tough shoot. “We didn’t really film in the centre of Prague very much because it is very busy. We shot a lot of scenes there initially but after that we only went there for the big set-pieces — in the big library, for example. the strahov Monastery in Prague has got this amazing library, where we couldn’t wear shoes, couldn’t put anything down, no tracks, no dollies, so it is quite limiting how you shoot it. But it’s such an amazing place, it was worth it.”

Just a couple of years back over on the other side of the world, yet another movie about Frankenstein needed the ambiguous, eerie historical setting that all viewers would expect from a movie reflecting elements of Mary shelley’s classic story. the film was in fact adapted from the graphic novel of the same name by Kevin Grevioux, co-creator of the Underworld film franchise (2003-). Described as a modern-day gothic thriller, it tells the tale of Dr Frankenstein’s creature Adam, who centuries after his birth finds himself in a Gothic city, caught in a war between two immortal clans.

Writer and director stuart Beattie’s i, Frankenstein (2014), filmed in Melbourne, Victoria from February to April 2012. the production was based at Docklands studios Melbourne and filmed at several locations around the city.

Australia was chosen as a filming location partly because the country is home to Melbourne-based Beattie. Brisbane and sydney were among the cities considered, but the period architecture in Melbourne was the final deciding factor.

Key locations included Melbourne’s ormond college, the regent theatre, and the Argus Building, which had been abandoned for 15 years. Another important location was Montsalvat, Australia’s oldest artists’ community, set in unique grounds and buildings that cry out to be filmed. Founded by Australia artist and architect Justus Jörgensen in 1934, it has always been a place where every kind of art and craft has been taught and encouraged.

For this modern-day Gothic thriller, Montsalvat was transformed into Dr Frankenstein’s laboratory. its quirky architecture, which features archways, stone stairways, spires, chimneys, towers and turrets, passageways and walled courtyards, along with its wooded, secluded surroundings, made Montsalvat the perfect place for the doctor to carry out his ghoulish experiments.

Written and directed by Beattie and starring Aaron Eckhart, Bill Nighy and Miranda otto, and produced by hopscotch features, Lakeshore Entertainment and sidney Kimmel Entertainment, the film took a critical hammering despite taking over $70m at the box office. A complex plot spanning some 200 years might have dazed the critics but nobody could dispute

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that the producers chose the right location when it came to creating the doctor’s Gothic laboratory. i, Frankenstein saw more than A$35.5m spent in Victoria and employed 1,176 local people, including more than 400 extras. it engaged more than 670 local companies and employed 18 Victorians in head-of-department roles including visual effects (VFX) and stunts. the film employed cutting-edge production technology which, according to investment agency investVictoria, “provided major skills transfer and development opportunities for Victoria’s local film industry”.

Back in Europe and Germany is able to provide a wide variety of backdrops for more recent historical projects — particularly those set during World War ii and the cold War. “one advantage we have is that a lot of parts of the old East Germany have not yet been fully developed,” says Andrea Giesel, a location manager based in Lower saxony’s largest city hanover. “so you can find parts of the country where the buildings have not been updated and there are no wind turbines on the horizon.” high-profile productions that have used Germany as part of the location plan for World War ii dramas include riva Film’s An Enemy to Die For (2012), which used hamburg’s high court building, or oberlandesgericht; and Beta Film’s Generation War (Unsere Mütter, Unsere Väter), a ZDF mini-series that

IN tHe atlantic Pyrenees region in southwestern france stands the Chateau d’arcangues, the ancestral home to a family that traces its Basque roots back to the 12th century, and up to the present day with the current Marquis Michel d’arcangues. the imposing building and gardens host a range of events and for the 2007 french movie enfances it became a film location. the film comprised segments from different directors that captured moments in the childhoods of famous filmmakers. Subjects included fritz Lang, Orson Welles, Jacques tati, Jean renoir, alfred Hitchcock and Ingmar Bergman.

Christine Saint-Cricq from the Pyrenees-atlantiques film commission, which covers the Basque and neighbouring Bearn region, says that her office was able to help the production source the location and local crew and actors. “the production used many of the 40 rooms. When they used the same room for different scenes, they dressed them differently with furniture and accessories from other rooms in the castle,” Saint-Cricq says. the current Marquis has a background in production and is open to promoting the Chateau as a film-friendly location, and is looking to educate the film community about the region. “Our region is not well known, but it’s going to change,” Saint-Cricq adds. enfances comes from tara films, a co-production with arte and uMedia, with the support of CNC, aDaMI, PrOCIreP and aNGOa-aGICOa.

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scored huge ratings during 2013.

A real treasure when it comes to historical locations is capital city Berlin, where it is possible to find beautiful art deco buildings, baroque palaces and post-war East German tower blocks within close proximity to each other — and where wide streets and a surprising lack of crowds for a major city, make filming comparatively easy. Especially interesting is the area around Karl Marx Allee, home to a unique array of Fifties and sixties socialist-style architecture. Nearby Alexanderplatz, for example, featured prominently in Matt Damon movie the Bourne supremacy (2004). Berlin also provided the backdrop for the 2013 tV mini-series hotel Adlon, which followed the life of the famous hotel from its construction in 1907 through its partial destruction in WWii up until its rebuilding in 1997. And in 2006, Florian henckel von Donnersmarck’s highly-acclaimed film the Lives of others provided a fascinating insight into Berlin during the soviet-controlled cold War era.

George clooney’s the Monuments Men — about the Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives group, which went to the frontlines to save art treasures from the Nazis — provides another clue as to Germany’s appeal. in that case, the production could combine great locations around the country with state-of-the-art facilities at Babelsberg studio in Potsdam, just 45 minutes outside Berlin. shot almost entirely in Germany, with a few days in the UK for coastal settings, the Monuments Men’s storyline required scenes in Austria, Belgium, France and the Us. important was to try to limit as much as possible the travel schedule of a huge cast and production team — and to stay within Germany to take advantage of the film funds available there. “initially they thought they could shoot 30-40% of the film in Germany and it ended up being 80%,” says production executive Markus Bensch. “that was very much

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Stuart beattie directs AAron eckhArt in i, FrAnkenstein Melbourne’S MontSalvat, AustrAliA’s oldest Artists’ community, the locAtion For FrAnkenstein’s lAborAtory in i, FrAnkenstein

down to the vision of production designer Jim Bissell, and good teamwork.”

George clooney is more direct about why the production remained for the most part in Germany. “Yes we would have loved to have travelled to Belgium as well,” he says. “But it was a big production and it would have been expensive to start moving it around. it was a matter of economics.” so three core locations were selected for filming: southern and southeastern England in the UK; the city of Berlin and the area in and around Babelsberg, Germany — including the 100-year-old Babelsberg studios and the adjacent countryside in Potsdam; and the harz Mountains, the highest mountain range in northern Germany. there were many sub-locations within those two countries which had to double for a variety of places — including Washington Dc, New York city, chicago, Paris, Great Britain, Belgium, Germany, Austria and italy ///

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— while representing a number of specific settings: churches, cathedrals, museums, castles, salt mines, hospitals, airfields, a military training base and field headquarters, country roads, offices and living quarters.

Bissell redesigned the interior of the cathedral of st. stephen and st. sixtus in halberstadt, the capital of the harz district. the halberstadt cathedral was made to double as the saint Bavo cathedral in Ghent, Belgium, the rightful home for the Van Eycks’ Adoration of the Mystic Lamb, also known as the Ghent Altarpiece. “it was really challenging to make Germany work for France and Belgium, and to a certain extent, to make the UK work for Germany,” Bissell says. “Fortunately, Gothic cathedrals have a scale and style that sort of transcends national identities. so, we were able to be a bit more generic in the way we approached them.”

And shooting on location can help the acting process, according to one of the film’s stars, French actor Jean Dujardin (the Artist, 2011). “imagine being in a place with 300 extras, jeeps, tanks, and an intense story. We shot in every kind of weather: snow, rain, wind, sun. of course, it inspires you a lot,” he says. “i remember one scene with John Goodman. We’re in the jeep and i’m wounded, lying in John’s arms. Behind us, it’s drizzling and incredibly foggy. i believe it does add to the picture and all the emotion.”

GeorGe Clooney “It was a bIg productIon and It would have been expensIve to start movIng It around”

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Ancient history, recent history, and now. GeorGe clooney directs the MonuMents Men

the film required a number of scenes to be shot inside and outside mines — several were chosen by the Nazi’s to hide their stolen treasures. the principal mine used in the film is dug deep into the rammelsberg mountain on the northern edge of the harz mountain range in the north German state of Lower saxony, just south of Goslar and some 200km west of Berlin. “the harz Mountain area has the exteriors of all of our mines in the film,” Bissell says. “We found some great old period mines. some of them were derelicts; others were abandoned but picturesque enough that we could fix them up and make them work for us.” one of the biggest challenges for Bissell was in conveying the sheer size of the caches of stolen art and artifacts. “reading about the scale of the Nazis’ thievery, the sheer volume is mind-boggling,” Bissell says. “it’s very important that our audience understands what our Monuments Men found — even they were surprised at the extent, the scale of the theft. We needed that dramatic impact.” though some filming was done in real mines, most of the tunnels were built on sound stages at Babelsberg studios. “that’s a lot of stuff to shift around — paintings, crates, sculptures — and in order to get the scale you have to have large rooms that are accessible by one or two tunnels, 1,500 feet underground,” Bissell says. “that’s not where you want to send a shooting company. so, we made the decision early on to make a large mine set that was modular in a way where we could shoot it from dif-

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Payne (Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day, 2008) as the young physician, Ben Kingsley (Schindler’s List, 1993) as his eastern mentor, and Stellan Skarsgård (The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, 2011) as the crude English barber-surgeon.

“You could definitely say that the novel The Physician would also be suitable for a 20-hour HBO series, but we decided to make a feature film,” says the film’s producer, CEO of UFA Cinema, Wolf Bauer. And with a definite international feel to it “from the very beginning. The book is ideal for this. The Physician is a bestseller all over Europe, and for that reason we worked from the beginning to make an international film production.

In English and with an appropriately high budget, in order to be able to guarantee attractive production values.”

The exterior shots of the desert and Isfahan sequences were filmed in Morocco, and the corresponding interiors in the studio in Cologne.

“The scenes set in England and the interior shots involving the Jewish

NICO HOFMANN “YOU BRING ANOTHER WORLD TO LIFE”

ferent angles and it could be different art caches. We built those at Babelsberg Studios. They were large, but they had to be large.”

Morocco was one of the locations for The Physician, adapted from the first of a trilogy of novels by American writer Noah Gordon about the young English healer Robert Cole, who embarks on an epic search for knowledge amid war and plague in 11th-century Persia.

A co-production of UFA Cinema, ARD Degeto and Beta Cinema, the stellar cast includes up-comer Tom

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THE MAJESTIC THEATRE BUILT ON A PARKING LOT IN FERNDALE, FOR THE MAJESTIC (2001)

sequences were filmed in Thuringia [central Germany] — for example, in the ruins of a castle at Hanstein, and in and around Querfurt, where we built the sets for the Stratford Market in London, the synagogue, the Jewish camp in England, the tavern, the bathhouse, and the village where you meet little Rob Cole at the beginning of the story,” says production designer Udo Kramer. “In the end, the sets had to be exceptionally detailed for filming in the high-definition format. We thought it was very important to use as many historical components as possible and combine them perfectly with simulated surfaces. High-definition images in this quality don’t forgive any of your mistakes, which was one of the biggest challenges of this project. We wanted basically to create an authentic fantasy world, fairytale-like and at the same time historically exact with an epic flair, but without an obvious studio look.”

Attention to detail was in the minds of everyone working on the production. “You bring another world to life,” producer Nico Hofmann says.

“On different continents. Everything has to be right. We had advisors on the history of medicine before and after production. The Physician is a fictional historical adventure, but the fundamental things have to be correct, of course. Every detail is important. Whether it’s the landscape and the buildings in Isfahan or the surgical tools. And the surgical tools were different in Isfahan than the ones in England or those used by Jewish doctors. When we stood on the sets sometimes we had the feeling we were in a history museum.”

•

25/04/14 10:27

Kevin Spacey aS RichaRd iii

making a scene

making a scene - now

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EvEr pushing at boundariEs, KEvin spacEy tooK an a-list cast to thEatrEs around thE world to pErform sam mEndEs’ intErprEtation of shaKEspEarE’s richard iii — and madE a documEntary about it at thE samE timE. fEw documEntariEs havE travEllEd to so many locations.

KEvin spacEy spoKE to Julian nEwby

The world’s a sTage

T

HE DOCUMENTARY, now: in the wings on a world stage, takes the viewer on a 10-month world tour of shakespeare’s richard iii. Kevin spacey stars in the title role, and the play is directed by sam mendes. the film, directed by spacey’s long-time collaborator Jeremy whelehan, follows mendes’ bridge project — claimed to be the first transatlantic theatre company — as the play takes shape, with 20 british and american actors, travelling through 12 international cities — starting in london, then greece, the deserts of doha, the great wall of china, through istanbul, sydney, naples, san francisco, and ending up in brooklyn. spacey delivers a remarkable performance as the mad King richard, and the film demonstrates clearly how he and director mendes get the best out of a group of actors while travelling and performing in different parts of the world. “people often ask me, ‘what’s your favourite part about being in a play?’” says spacey. “‘is it the applause? is it the laughter?’ and my answer to that is, ‘no, it’s neither of those: it’s the silence.’ it’s when you know that you have a thousand people who have just all leaned forward and are holding their breath, because of something that just happened in front of them on that stage. that you know you brought that audience together and they are one. and that’s what you’re always trying to achieve in the theatre — to bring it together so it’s a collective experience.” the idea behind now: in the wings on a world stage is to show the audience how

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that experience is achieved. ‘now’, also, is the first word in shakespeare’s richard iii. “this film is an insider’s look backstage at the experience of being an actor in a company — going to rehearsal every day; beginning to create a role with your director, crew and fellow actors; spending 10 months together, first at our home theatre the old vic, finally at our sister home the brooklyn academy of music, and in between — six months on the road in many different cultures and countries while forming a company,” spacey says. helping to get the message across to the layperson was editor will Znidaric, who approached the project as a filmmaker rather than somebody who was knowledgeable of, or in love with, the theatre.

“Essentially, a very well-made home movie was not what i was interested in making,” spacey says. “i was actually interested in setting out to make the theatre inviting and compelling to people who just don’t go to it. and one of the great things about having will, our editor, come in, was that will was not like a theatre guy at all. so it was great to have an editor who’s perspective was just that of a regular person, not a theatregoer, someone who doesn’t get the colloquialism or the inside jokes. he was a great choice because he was the first guy to come in and say: ‘you know you’ve got to cut your babies in the editing process.’ that was a very valuable voice to have.” “as the scope and ambition of the world tour began to emerge, i started to understand that this film could tell a wider story about live theatre against a rich backdrop of time and international culture,” whelehan says. “in shaping this film i wanted to

24/04/14 12:56

23 making a scene - now

submerge our audience into that live theatre moment as much as possible. Putting us there, in the wings, in the theatre, in the present tense — to describe cinematically the power and fleeting nature of this particular kind of magic.” whelehan began shooting rehearsals in May of 2011 at The old Vic in London, where the play ran to sold-out houses for four months. He then followed Richard III to nine of the 12 cities on the tour. “In each city we’d begin with the arrival of the audience and take it all the way to the curtain call,” whelehan says. “we’d be in the wings recording the actors’ rituals and preparations, covering the backstage activity, and revealing what the play looked like from the perspective of the cast and crew.”

Kevin Spacey “ThaT’s whaT you’re always Trying To achieve in The TheaTre — To bring iT TogeTher so iT’s a collecTive experience” The leadership role Spacey takes on in the company is something he says was passed on to him by his mentor, Jack Lemmon, with whom he appeared on Broadway at the start of his career. “Jack was a joker,” Spacey says. “He was an incredible wit. He could make you laugh until you cried. But the other thing that Jack always believed, and he passed down to me, was that when you’re playing the leading role, it’s not just a leading role, it’s a leadership role.

You can have a lot of influence on the environment, by doing your best, and always being there and always being ready and always being prepared, because that’s what a company needs to see. And part of doing all those things I just described is having a great time, being a bit of a prankster, and making people laugh — to never forget that what we do is play. what we do is pretend. And what a remarkable thing we get to do with it.”

•

• Now: In The Wings On A World Stage is directed and produced by Jeremy Whelehan, and executive produced by Kevin Spacey. The film is a Treetops production, distributed worldwide by Ro*co Films and available for download at kevinspacey.com

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f e at u r e

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We’re surr

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Filming on an island will give a Film a backdrop like no other. to be surrounded by water gives a light and a mood that is diFFicult to Fake. but what oF the logistical challenges posed by being surrounded by water? Debbie LincoLn Finds out why Filmmakers want the real thing

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rrounded!

Dylan Baker as Gary Bethwaite, James NauGhtoN as FraNk ChurCh, ZaCh GreNier as DiDo ParsoNs aND ChristoPher walkeN as Curtis Pelissier, oN set iN turks & CaiCos. CoPyriGht Š CarNival Film & televisioN ltD 2013

///

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24/04/14 12:32

NORTHERN IRELAND The moST compacT 5,196 Square mIleS of back-loT IN The world.

With its strong crew base, stunning locations, studio facilities and financial incentives, Northern Ireland is becoming one of the most sought-after filming locations for both film and television productions.

Northern Ireland Screen is here to help facilitate your project and provides free hands-on assistance and guidance.

Please contact us for more information. info@northernirelandscreen.co.uk www.northernirelandscreen.co.uk

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24/04/14 10:42

ISLANDS+D+J+Z.indd 27

turned-director Tony Kearney.

Bannan follows the story of Mairi who returns to the island she left eight years ago for a funeral, and is confronted by the ‘bannan‘ — the Gaelic word for the emotional ties that, in this case, bind Mairi to both her family and to the island. shooting on islands brings a practical complexity to a production — but there is also the consideration that many islands are places of natural beauty that need to be protected. “Filming in a beautiful location such as skye leant itself to a mindfulness of the surrounding environment and our subsequent effect on it, therefore production vehicles were kept to a minimum,” says Mairead Hamilton, development executive at Young Films.

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I

N THE middle months of last year, scotland’s isle of Mull became the location for the movie The silent storm (2014).

Written and directed by Corinna McFarlane and starring andrea Riseborough and damian lewis, the film is set in the Fifties and follows a 30-year-old woman (Riseborough) who is torn between her minister husband (lewis) and a charismatic 17-year-old petty criminal (Ross anderson) who stays with them as part of a rehabilitation scheme.

The island’s dramatic cliff and coastline scenery and period buildings were the perfect backdrop for the story, the island setting enhancing the film’s heavy, moody atmosphere. sitting off the west coast of scotland, Mull is the second-largest of the inner Hebrides, after skye.

Homeland star lewis — whose packed schedule dictated up to a point when filming could take place — approved of the setting. “There is nothing so rewarding for a film actor as the intensity of an intimate shoot like this, isolated away in a beautiful part of the world,” lewis says. “He is a man of a bygone era, beaten down, pent-up and repressed, so he crushes the women around him. it is a tempestuous, brooding drama, just one of those magical pieces.”

The team behind The silent storm includes neon Films, Eon Productions (producers of the Bond franchise), with Cacti Films, Red & Black Films and in association with Reel Roots. WestEnd Films is handling international sales. scotland boasts a wealth of islands — nearly 800, in sea, rivers and lakes — so for filmmakers looking for a range of island environments this could be a one-stop shop. “scotland’s islands offer dramatic remoteness that is unsurpassed in the UK with some islands so exposed they’re treeless. Others are fringed with gloriously white sandy beaches that stretch for miles,” Brodie Pringle, locations manager at Creative scotland, says.

Time has passed some locations by, making them perfect for period films, with only moderate budgets needed to adapt them. “There’s also a real juxtaposition with the mainland that can be jaw-dropping. The view looking back from skye to the Kyle of lochalsh, for example, gives a real ‘we’re on an island’ credibility on screen, as well as the most stunning backdrop of mountains rising up from the water,” Pringle says. “The light on the islands can at times offer an otherworldly effect and this, matched with some of the incredible barren landscapes on offer, could make you feel as if you are on another planet.” With water and islands so integral to the country, unsurprisingly scottish location professionals are unfazed by working on island shoots, may of which have to be put together over a short period of time — for commercials for example.

“We have film offices that cover the islands, some with officers on the islands themselves, that continually strive to ensure that incoming film makers are aware of how much the islands can offer in terms of support while in production, Pringle says, adding: “The economic benefits of incoming films is clear to the islanders and over the years a great deal of knowledge has been gained as to what kind of services films may require locally, as well as an awareness as to the speed at which productions work.” skye has seen a lot of location shooting in recent years, including: Ridley scott’s futuristic thriller Prometheus (2012) starring Charlize Theron, Michael Fassbender and idris Elba; samurai film 47 Ronin (2013) which stars Keanu Reeves, and where skye doubled for Japan; and Fassbender returned to shoot shakespeare’s Macbeth, along with Marion Cotillard, due for release in 2015 and directed by Justin Kurzle. shetland has recently hosted a second series of TV cop show shetland, and children’s TV series Katie Morag is filming on the islands of lewis and Harris. skye is also the location for a project that is an example of home-grown production. instead of waiting for film crews to visit skye, this television project is aimed at reinforcing local culture and employing local people.

The three-part drama in production from the Gaelic [native scottish language] TV channel BBC alBa, Bannan, The Ties That Bind is a collaboration between BBC alBa and Creative scotland. it is produced by Christopher Young of Young Films which is based in sleat on the isle of skye. Joining Young on the drama project is Gaelic screenwriter Chrisella Ross and actor-

Mike Brett “This meanT shipping abouT a dozen peli cases of cinema-grade camera gear To one of The world’s mosT remoTe islands” “We had drivers to transport cast and crew to location in order to ensure minimal traffic and ease congestion, as space was often very limited. We also ensured that all locations were within a 20-mile radius of our base at Fàs in sleat to ensure we made the most of the daylight and shooting time.”

Filming on an island means equipment and facilities are not easy to get hold of at short notice, which is where the expertise of local people comes in handy. “in the case of Bannan many of the crew were adept at forward-planning necessary for such a shoot, as a large proportion were from the Highlands and islands of /// scotland,” Hamilton says. and those who weren’t from the area — those imported onto the island for the production — the environment in which they found themselves provided a real education. “For the city-based crew, skye provided a continuous source of amazement with its spectacular sunrises, sunsets and sights,” Hamilton says. “The second was fortunate enough to encounter a school of porpoises at the point of sleat, playfully leaping out the ocean and racing alongside the boat at the end of a hard day’s shoot. next Goal Wins is a new debut feature documentary from directors/producers Mike Brett and steve Jamison. Their london-based commercials company, archer’s Mark, has had experience working with sports brands and their mutual love of football has borne fruit in this film which they are producing alongside agile Film’s Kristian Brodie. What took two young football fans half way around the world to a remote island to make an inspirational film about a famously bad football team? What they say is that the film has all the feel-good appeal of a traditional underdog story, but with the tribal flavour that elevates it into a south Pacif/// ic fable.

24/04/14 12:33

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american samoa is in the south Pacific Ocean, southeast of samoa itself, and the territory includes five main islands and two coral atolls. in 2001 this beautiful island’s soccer team suffered a world record 31-0 defeat at the hands of australia, resulting in headlines across the world hailing it as the worst football team on the planet. after that they scored only twice in 17 years, and have lost every competitive game they have ever played.

The task of turning this record around in the run-up to the 2014 World Cup has fallen to maverick dutch coach Thomas Rongen. The woeful level

Damian Lewis: “There is noThing so rewarding for a film acTor … isolaTed away in a beauTiful parT of The world” of football is reflected in a line-up of unfit players that includes the emotionally scarred goalkeeper and a member of samoa’s traditional third gender, the fa’fafine — generally born biologically male, yet embodying masculine and feminine gender traits and living as a woman. On top of that the team’s best player is 6,000 miles away in the Us military. The film follows the month-long task taken on by Rongen to get the team battle-ready. “i’d been knocking around the idea for a documentary about the american samoan national team ever since i read about their defeat back in 2001,” producer Kristian Brodie says. “it was actually a chance introduction to Mike [Brett] that kick-started the production process. He instantly responded to the idea, and said ‘Right, we’re going to american samoa’. He and steve [Jamison] decided to co-invest through archer’s Mark alongside agile Films, and we very quickly found ourselves trying to work out the quickest route from london to [the territory’s capital] Pago Pago.”

“We certainly didn’t go through the conventional development and pitching process, but i think that is what made it so exciting,” Mike Brett says. “Because it was 100% self-funded, it became a truly independent project that moved at breakneck speed. it was actually only a matter of a few weeks between our first phone call with the FFas [Football Federation of american samoa] and heading out there to film.”

Jamison says that although they had permission from the FFas to film the team and coach up-close, and spend time to get to know them, there is still the issue of setting up an island production. “it‘s worth mentioning that on a practical level this meant shipping about a dozen Peli cases of cinema-grade camera gear to one of the world’s most remote islands, and then operating and maintaining this state-of-theart equipment with a skeleton crew of sleep-deprived, sunburnt, first-time filmmakers. not exactly by-the-book filmmaking,” Jamison says.

Brett agrees: “They say idiocy and genius are closely related, but the idea of taking an ultra-high-definition camera that was essentially in beta mode at the time [the REd Epic-M, the camera favoured by Peter Jackson, david Fincher and steve soderbergh] to a place that remote, and with absolutely no chance of getting any technical support or spare parts, was probably erring towards the kamikaze.”

“We were also acutely aware that the idea of turning up on a remote island with a full-blown crew was both completely unaffordable and totally at odds with what we wanted to achieve creatively,” Brodie says. “ironically, if we’d had more money to spend and been able to bring additional crew, i think the film would have been worse for it. i just don’t think the team would have responded as well to us as they did, and we couldn’t have so effectively embedded ourselves in the players’ daily lives.”

The team felt that making a movie that did the island and the story justice required extra effort, and they pushed themselves to the limit to get a cinematic quality documentary. “american samoa is a very long way to go

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if you’re only interested in telling a one-liner. Making a joke film about the worst team in the world just didn’t feel like it had any real mileage or drama to it. When we turned up on the island, the FFas’ media officer told us that he genuinely didn’t think we’d ever come to visit them — hence he hadn’t bothered to meet us at the airport as agreed,” Jamison says.

That the film finished in good time and happily is testament to the production team and the footballers, and proves that what might seem a speck in the ocean on the other side of the world can be a welcoming location. “it’s quite touching that we’re still known as ‘the london samoans’ when we correspond with the boys back on the island,” Brett says.

Better connected and with a well established production infrastructure when compared with up-and-coming american samoa, the indonesian islands known as Bali are in many ways a filmmaker’s paradise. indonesia itself stretches over 5,000km where there is a wealth of untapped resources, hidden filming locations, rich story ideas and a talented pool of creative people. “There is very little visual background that cannot be provided for any action or era somewhere among the country’s vast, geographically and culturally diverse 18,110 islands with modern cities, colonial buildings, deserted pink sand beaches, tropical rainforests and tribal villages,” says deborah Gabinetti of the Bali Film Commission. “indonesians are born performers and some of the most talented, creatively diverse, technically skilled and innovative people in the world.”

Recent features shot on Bali include 2010’s Eat Pray love, based on a best-selling novel set on the islands. director Ryan Murphy shot there in order to stay true to the book. The BFC’s main role in Eat Pray love was providing production services and casting key indonesian roles. “it was the first major studio film shot in the country so the producers gave us three months prep time to work on logistics with line producer neil Ravan,” Gabinetti says.

The overall filming was four weeks principal photography and two

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Damien Lewis on Mull. IMage courtesy of sIlent storM ProductIons ltd nicky saLapu (Left), aMerIcan saMoa’s goalkeePer, conteMPlates hIs teaM’s unenvIable losIng record

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weeks shooting with the second unit. Filming locations included Padang Beach and Benoa Harbour in Badung district in southern Bali, Kintamani Volcano and lake Batur in Bangli district in central Bali and nusa lembongan island off the east coast.

“Casting began in May 2009 and we had every principal role cast except for the main character of Ketut liyer, a short, almost toothless 80 year old man. so we put out a casting call throughout indonesia that continued up until two weeks into filming necessitating several schedule changes. “director Ryan Murphy wanted someone to resemble the actual Ketut liyer. He also needed to have good English language skills plus an excellent memory,” Gabinetti says. “after exhausting all possibilities, we finally went back and reviewed some of those shortlisted from earlier auditions. With the help of second-unit director alfonso Gomez-Rejon, we found our Ketut – Hadi subiyanto – with the real Ketut lyer acting as a hand model when the scene required the character to perform Balinese prayers or prepare religious offerings.”

There was also a last-minute cast change for the role of Wayan nuriasih. acting opposite someone of Julia Roberts’ calibre would be demanding for anyone but indonesia’s Christine Hakim was able to step into the role with very little preparation.

“From the start, cast and crew commented on how very comfortable and relaxed they felt on Bali,” Gabinetti says. For example, when actor Javier Bardem arrived at the Bali airport one of the first questions he had for them was ‘is there a lot of paparazzi?’. “We told him ‘no’, and not to be offended that the Balinese weren’t even aware of his celebrity status, which made him extremely relaxed. Many of the 100 international cast and crew brought their families over with some extending their stay and even exploring other parts of indonesia after filming completed.” located in the atlantic Ocean, not the Caribbean sea, the Turks & Caicos islands nonetheless embody so much of the beauty we imagine the Caribbean has to offer. set 550 miles southeast of Miami, Florida, just below the Bahamas chain and just to the east of Cuba and the island of Hispaniola (dominican Republic and Haiti.), the larger group of Caicos islands and the smaller group of Turks islands constitute a British Overseas Territory, part of the larger antilles island grouping.

The islands are also the location for the second of three films featuring British actor Bill nighy in the role of British secret service Mi5 spy Johnny Worricker. david Hare’s Emmy-winning spy trilogy — Page Eight, which aired on the UK’s BBC Two in 2011, Turks & Caicos and the upcoming salting The Battlefield — is co-produced by Carnival Films, the company behind hit period drama series downton abbey, with Heyday Films, BeaglePug, Masterpiece and in association with nBCUniversal, for the BBC. in Turks & Caicos, Worricker has walked out of Mi5, and at the airport chooses his destination at random.

But his presence on the islands brings him a new problem: he is being forced by the Cia to deal with a group of ambiguous americans who are there for a high-level conference on the world financial crisis. at the same time, a former girlfriend, Margot Tyrell, is being ///

25/04/14 10:34

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labour and 35% on other local expenditures. “What makes this incentive even more appealing is that we have such good local talent. Trinidad and Tobago has a very strong domestic media scene which has helped us develop a hard-working, cost-effective production services community that is experienced in film, TV, commercials and corporate videos,” she says.

Being based around two islands might suggest that Trinidad and Tobago is hard to get to. But Foderingham says one benefit of the oil and gas business is great transport links: “We’re three-and-a-half hours direct from Miami and nine hours direct from london. Once you’re here there’s a good transport infrastructure around and between the islands.”

Trinidad and Tobago offers rainforests, mangroves, rolling hills and, of course, a stunning coastline. “We have everything from rocky bluffs on Trinidad to superb beaches on Tobago. Places like no Man’s land, Pigeon Point and nylon Pool are beautiful and untouched.”

There’s also a wide range of contemporary, modern and industrial architecture. “Trinidad is the more developed island and has something of the look and feel of Miami in the capital city Port of spain,” Foderingham says.

“But both islands also have a wide range of colonial architecture reflecting the fact that the British, French and spanish all came and built here at some point in our history.”

Foderingham says she has been pitching Trinidad and Tobago from two perspectives: “Firstly, we have some fantastic locations which have not been seen much on film or TV. so for producers who want places that haven’t been over-used it makes sense to look at our locations database. secondly, we have locations that can double for countries like india, Vietnam and Brazil. That’s a real advantage for producers that want to get a lot of different looks into their film, especially as it is so easy to get between locations across the two islands.”

The country’s colonial past has also resulted in a fantastic ethnic mix, she adds. “it’s only a small country, with a population of just 1.4 million, but from a casting perspective there’s a wide variety of looks here. aside from the European and african influences, there are, for example, indian, Chinese and lebanese communities to call on.”

Being in the Caribbean has the obvious climate advantages of warm weather and sunshine, she says, but without the region’s one obvious disadvantage — hurricanes. Being so far south, it is not affected by the extreme weather season that affects the northern Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico. it’s early days for Trinidad and Tobago in terms of getting on the audiovisual industry’s radar. But there are signs that momentum is building. around 85-90 film crews have visited the islands since 2011, including the 2012 movie production Home again, which used Trinidad as a double for Jamaica. Foderingham says: “We’re starting to see more interest. i have four scripts on my desk at the moment from producers considering filming here. so we’re very positive about the impact that the incentives are going to have.”

asked to betray her boss in london in order to establish an illicit connection between the prime minister and dark goings-on in the ‘war on terror’.

The cast also includes Christopher Walken, Winona Ryder, Helena Bonham Carter, Ralph Fiennes, Rupert Graves, Ewen Bremner, James naughton, dylan Baker and Zach Grenier. The decision to film here was down to a previous visit by writer and director david Hare, when location became integral to the story.

“One of the things that appealed to me about Turks & Caicos was that nobody had really heard of it. it’s a place that’s been on the fringe of public consciousness,” Hare says. “i came here for a holiday a few years ago, and it just struck me as quite an extraordinary spot. it seemed a peculiarly modern place that had a lot to say about what was going on in the world today… whereby the rich and privileged are simply absenting themselves from normal standards of decency. They’re not just avoiding tax, they’re avoiding all responsibility to the societies they make money out of.”

The film’s producer Celia duval adds: “a challenge was filming in Turks & Caicos where we had no infrastructure. But i was confident we could do it because that was where david wanted to shoot. We were all aware of the problems and we all took it as a challenge.

One of the assumptions i made was thinking that it is always sunny. day one of the shoot on the beach — it rained. That completely threw me and threw the schedule, which was very difficult as we had 18 days to shoot almost all of the film.” another paradise with two names, the two-island nation of Trinidad & Tobago, actually is in the Caribbean — and prides itself on being one of the region’s best-kept secrets. But now, this creative, commerciallydynamic and politically-stable nation has decided the time is right to share its cherished assets with the international film and TV community. Carla Foderingham, CEO of the Trinidad and Tobago Film Company, told location that: “The country’s economy is largely based around oil and gas exports, but we’re looking to diversify into areas such as tourism and media. To support that effort we have introduced very attractive incentives for shooting here.” at the heart of the incentive programme is a cash rebate of up to 50% for expenditure on qualifying local

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making a scene -august: osage county

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House and Home making a scene

the house that was chosen as the principal set for oklahoma-based movie august: osage county, was so perfect for the film that the producers decided to make it home for the duration of the shoot.

Julian newby and lindsay flowers report

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A

UGUST: osage county (2013), tells the dark, moving but often funny story of the strong-willed women of the weston family, who have gone their separate ways but come together again when a family crisis brings them back to the midwest house where they grew up. the film is based on tracy letts’ pulitzer prize-winning play of the same name which made its broadway debut in december 2007. directed by John wells (the company men, 2010) it features an all-star cast including meryl streep, Julia roberts, ewan mcgregor, chris cooper, abigail breslin, benedict cumberbatch, Juliette lewis, margo

martindale, dermot mulroney, Julianne nicholson, sam shepard and misty upham. “i was very fortunate to see the play on broadway. i saw it a couple of times actually, and really admired it,” wells says. “i never really imagined i would be involved in it at all though. one day i was having lunch with harvey weinstein (with whom wells had worked on the company men) and we ended up talking about casting and the actors we liked. i mentioned an actor who had ended up not being in the company men, and harvey said: ‘he’d be great in august: osage county. we have rights to that and you should do it.’ and that was that.” meetings then took place with letts, then

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“One Of the centerpieces Of the screenplay is a 19-page dinner scene with all the family members. it became really sort of a play as we were doing it. there was this sense of ‘i have been at this dinner before’ — this dinner that sort of attempts to celebrate someone’s life after they’ve passed that turns into kind of something completely different than what you thought it was going to be when it began,” director john wells says photo credit: claire folger. ©2013 the weinstein company. all rights reserve

streep and Roberts and very soon a film was in the making. and although a-list, assembling the cast was not a problem. “We were obviously very fortunate to have this wonderful cast that came together to make the film. Part of that is that a number of people had seen the play and were attracted to the parts — they’re wonderfully written. tracy is an actor as well as a writer, and that helped him to write these wonderful parts,” Wells says. “It was one of the simplest casting processes — not a quick one, but the simplest one in the sense that people really wanted to be in it, and so all these wonderful actors kind of came through the door.” oklahoma is one of the keys to the

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authenticity of the film. “In telling the story of the struggles of the Weston family as they cope with the disappearance of their patriarch, author tracy Letts returns to his oklahoma roots,” says Lindsey Flowers of the oklahoma Film & Music office. “By filming on location in Pawhuska, oklahoma, the film adaptation of his Pulitzer Prize- and tony award-winning stage play captures the reality and authenticity of the lives it was intended to portray. Home to the osage Indian Reservation, osage county showcases the tall grass prairies of northeastern oklahoma where the wide-open sky and autumnal palette exist in the latter months of the year, in which the film takes place.”

Wells and producers Jean Doumanian and

steve traxler scouted the area north of the town of Pawhuska with the oklahoma Film & Music office. “It was there they first saw the Boulanger House perched on 27 acres of oklahoma prairie, surrounded by picturesque barns,” Flowers says. “all the right settings fit into place, from being on a county road to having a great exterior,” says the film’s location manager Joe guest. “the movie scouts and director John Wells looked at different places throughout the country, like Louisiana and georgia. [oklahoma’s] rebate came into play, but ultimately the location was a deciding factor.”

“I never really thought that we would be /// shooting in oklahoma or in osage

24/04/14 12:20

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35 making a scene -august: osage county

county specifically, simply because it’s a bit remote from a lot of the film industry and I wasn’t familiar with the area,” Wells says.

“I’d driven through oklahoma since I’m from colorado, so I was kind of familiar with the plains, and the idea of the plains. I went there first to see what it was like so that when we went to other states to scout locations, I would know exactly what I was looking for.” He was instantly taken with the “beautiful and rugged” landscapes. “I suddenly realised by being there that there was something so specific about the people who were here — the way that they spoke, the way the country actually looked — that it would be extremely difficult to duplicate. so we started to seriously think about going there and doing it.”

When Wells finally saw Boulanger House, the decision was made. “I thought, ‘that’s exactly what I imagined’,” he says. “We went inside and even the interior of the house was laid out exactly the way that we needed it to be with these beautiful big porches and the land around it.” august oc Films actually bought the house from the owners who had put it on the market at exactly the right time.

“It was a great experience for everybody because you feel very much that the house has become part of the family. People really have lived in it,” Wells says. “one of the things we did during the rehearsal process was have the actors stay in their childhood rooms. the adults went into their spaces, and lived in those spaces. People ate in the dining room. It gave everyone a sense of what the surroundings were, and I think it made a huge difference in the way that people interacted with their surroundings in the film.”

“With rich history permeating every floorboard, panel, and shutter, it’s no wonder this location was chosen,” Flowers says. “the Boulanger House takes a dominant role in the film, which revolves around a dysfunctional family whose members gather there after the family’s patriarch disappears. When the family makes the return to their childhood home, the structure is there, as it always has been, to embrace its occupants and provide a place for the family to re-connect, display their emotions and remember the past.”

When the crew arrived on location, a number of modifications had to be made to the house in a limited amount of time. “though the paint on the exterior of the Boulanger House had been perfectly worn by time, other aspects had to be manipulated to achieve the desired effect,” Flowers says. “since the previous owners traditionally used the back entrance to enter the home, slight modifications were made to direct attention to the more remarkable front entrance. all electrical lines along county Road 4680 were buried and the road resurfaced with gravel, a

Boulanger house, Osage COunty. PhOtO: Jeremy Charles

THe OkLaHOma Film & music Office signed into law in april, 2014, House Bill 2580, which preserves the $5m per year in funding for the Oklahoma Film enhancement Rebate Program and extends the Program’s sunset date to July 1, 2024. “The film rebate has helped to create jobs and bring millions of dollars in investment to the state of Oklahoma,” governor mary Fallin says. “i am pleased to sign the extension of this program into law and to send a message that Oklahoma continues to be ‘open for business’ when it comes to the film industry.”

significant undertaking considering it all had to be exhumed and replaced to its original condition after filming.” a tree weighing several tons was uprooted and re-planted in a different location on the property, a process that took two large cranes and hours of labour to complete. electrical services were added to the property, and a lean-to shack was built to hide this necessary wiring and equipment. a gazebo was built behind the property, and was made to appear as if it had aged along with the house. the barn was the only structure that needed few cosmetic adjustments, while the barn’s hayloft was turned into a functioning production office for day-to-day business. “the interior of the Boulanger House was generally left to its original condition with the exception of a few alterations. Location scouts were especially sold on the natural lighting that floods the home,” Flowers says. “a few cabinets were installed to create the appeal of a craftsman-style home. a window that had been boarded in the upstairs bathroom was re-opened and painted, and period wallpaper was installed around the home.”

and after all the modifications, the property was in excellent condition at the end of filming. “the location will likely remain a landmark in oklahoma and generate new interest as a tourist attraction,” Flowers says.

Wells says that the work of cinematographer adriano goldman was key to capturing the atmosphere of the house and the beauty of the surrounding areas. “He’s done some wonderful work over the last few years, and I’ve gotten familiar with his work. I called him to ask him what he was doing, and he was available and sparked to the material,” Wells says. “We wanted to get that sense this was really a beautiful place. It’s beautiful country, it’s easy and it’s interesting. I talked to people as we finished filming, and while everyone was ready to get home, we all felt we’d miss the beauty of the place where we had been and the people we’d met. We were going to miss the scope of the place: how big it was, how the horizon was so far, how you could stop at the side of the road and find things to look at for hours. that’s what adriano brought to all of the cinematography — not only just the beauty of the interior space and the way in which it was lit, but also the sense of the world around it that we saw.”

•

• August: Osage County is presented by The Weinstein Company, a Jean Doumanian/ Smokehouse Pictures production in association with Battle Mountain Films and Yucaipa Films. Produced by George Clooney, Grant Heslov; executive produced by Jeffrey Richards, Jerry Frankel, Ron Burkle, Claire Rudnick Polstein, Celia Costas, Bob Weinstein and Harvey Weinstein

24/04/14 12:21

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25/04/14 10:44

LOCATION IN PICTURES

37 showcase - location in pictures

showcase

location international has teamed up with film and tourist offices, location scouts and photographers to bring you images of stunning locations around the world. some are well used by film crews, others are still to be made famous on the big or small screen

Saint-tropez international airport LA MOLE, FrAncE The airport is located close to Saint-Tropez on the Mediterranean coast, and near the village of La M么le in the middle of a forest called the Massif des Maures, enabling the area to double for any airport in the world surrounded by nature or a wild park. The staff welcomes film crews, and the airport can be closed to adapt to the needs of a production. The TV series Saint-Tropez/Sous Le Soleil (1996- 2008) shot here, as did German movie Desaster (2013) and numerous commercials (Photo, courtesy Michel Brussol, South of France Film Commission, Var)

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Port of ValParaiso Chile The port city of Valparaíso lies northwest of Chile’s capital Santiago. Special features of the location are its colourful and artistic neighbourhoods precariously clinging to the hills surrounding the harbour, and it’s vibrant downtown with beautiful plazas, grand avenues, and streetcars. Chile boasts a stable pro-business economy, talented and experienced local crews, and opposing seasons to North America. Movies shot there include US TV series The Amazing Race (2001-), The Motorcycle Diaries (2004) and Aftershock (2012) (Photo, courtesy Kent Matsuoka, LMGA)

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Sun Valley California, US The Pink Motel is in Sun Valley, California, 20 minutes north of downtown LA, and has appeared in many features going back 40 years. Recent examples include House Of Sand & Fog (2003), The Whole Ten Yards (2004), Drive (2011) and The Social Contract (2014). Many TV shows have also used this location, including MacGyver (1985-1992), The Rockford Files (1974-1980) and Law & Order (1990 -2010); as well as numerous commercials, photo shoots and music videos (Photo, courtesy John Hutchinson, LMGA)

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Huntingdon gallery Pasadena, California, Us This is the South Terrace of the Huntington Gallery, a 1911 Beaux Arts mansion that was originally built for Henry and Arabella Huntington, at The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens, located in San Marino. The Huntington has a variety of filming locations; this spot is popular for its combination of architecture and garden features. Peter Bogdanovich made extensive use of it in At Long Last Love (1975), even parking a vintage town car askew mid-terrace.

Recent credits include Captain America: The First Avenger (2011) and TV series CSI: Miami (2002-2012). The location is frequently used for stills and commercials, especially for fashion, bridal and liquor products (Photo, courtesy Dinah LeHoven, Š The Huntington Library)

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City of Gold Coast Queensland, australia As a top Australian tourist destination, this area is famous for its sub-tropical climate, 57 kilometres (35 miles) of coastline and 260 kilometres (161 miles) of beautiful waterways, flanked by hinterland mountains boasting world heritage-listed rainforests.

The diverse range of accessible locations means almost any landscape can be replicated within the region. From beautiful sandy beaches, lush sub-tropical rainforest with rivers, creeks and waterfalls, sugar-cane fields, swamps and dairy farms, to the city landscape with a unique blend of architecture, scenic roads and infrastructure, all in close proximity to Village Roadshow Studios.

Productions include: Ghost Ship (2002), Scooby Doo (2002), Peter Pan (2003), The House Of Wax (2005), Fool’s Gold (2008), Nim’s Island (2008), The Chronicles Of Narnia: The Voyage Of The Dawn Treader (2010), television series Terra Nova (2011-), and most recently Angelina Jolie’s Unbroken (2014) was filmed in the city; and San Andreas (2015), starring Dwayne Johnson (Photo, courtesy Murray Waite)

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SunSet Strip West HollyWood, California, Us The world-famous mile-and-a-half (2.4 km) LA thoroughfare Sunset Strip is lined with night clubs, hotels and businesses that allow filming. In the centre of the picture is the Chateau Marmont hotel, built in 1927 and loosely modeled on the Château d’Amboise, a castle in France’s Loire Valley. The TV series Californication (2007-) used this view of the Sunset Strip for one of its sets; Sofia Coppola’s Somewhere (2010) shot in the hotel; James Franco created a replica of the hotel for his Rebel Without A Cause exhibition at the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art in 2012; and indie film The Canyons (2013), starring Lindsay Lohan, shot here (Photo, courtesy Gina Vreeland, LMGA)

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United StateS Virgin iSlandS the caribbean This group of islands in the Caribbean consist of Saint Croix, Saint John and Saint Thomas, along with the much smaller but historically distinct Water Island and many other surrounding islands. The three main islands offer a stunning range of settings from pristine beaches and dramatic West Indian architecture, to tropical mountains and glistening harbours. The area has been used in many shoots including The Shawshank Redemption (1994), and numerous commercials for companies such as Victoria’s Secrets, Gillette and Samsung (Photo, courtesy Barbara J Miller)

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PioPio, Waikato, NeW ZealaNd Piopio is a small village surrounded by dramatic and picturesque landscapes of water-eroded limestone formations, rugged hills, prehistoric forest and rolling farmland in New Zealand’s North Island. Piopio lies between Hamilton and New Plymouth, and is just 2.5 hours by road from Auckland, one of New Zealand’s main production hubs. The area was recently used to portray Middle Earth’s Trollshaw Forest in Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012) (Photo, courtesy Michael O’Neill © Film New Zealand)

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Petra Jordan This image was taken on the steps leading up to the The Monastery which is Petra’s largest monument and dates back some 2,000 years. Carved directly into the steep wadi walls Petra is a unique architectural blend of Greco-Roman, Syrian and Egyptian styles. Bedouins are known to pitch their tents along some of the canyons, and the multicoloured rocks are lit-up by the desert sun. The many movies shot here include: Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade (1989), Mortal Kombat: Annihilation (1997), Passion In The Desert (1997) and Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen (2009) ( Photo, courtesy Rebecca Puck Stair, LMGA )

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Boca Beach cluB Boca Raton, FloRida, US Boca Raton is the second-largest city in The Palm Beaches and located in the southern-most region of the county, covering 30 square miles with five miles of golden beaches. The Atlantic Pool at Waldorf Astoria Resort the Boca Beach Club, attracts a multitude of fashion shoots for names including Brooks Brothers, Jantzen swimwear and Vera Bradley. Feature films Caddyshack (1980) and Parker (2013) shot here as well as the show finale of The Glades TV show (2010–2013) (Photo, courtesy Thomas Shelby)

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THE FOUR ACES PALMDALE, CALiforniA, US The Four Aces is a movie rental set located in the desert east of Palmdale, one hour northeast of LA, which comprises a classic Route 66-style diner, gas station, and Fifties motel with a working vintage rooftop neon sign. The location was used in feature films The Devil’s Rejects (2005) and Julia (2008); as well as the TV series Moonlight (2007-8). It has also provided a backdrop for numerous commercials and photo shoots (Photo, courtesy John Hutchinson, LMGA)

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Telluride Colorado, US At the heart of San Miguel County are two unique communities: Telluride and Mountain Village. Each with its own charm, the two towns are connected by a gondola, the only transportation system of its kind in North America. Telluride is a bustling and historic ski town. Clapboard storefronts house independent art galleries, old-time bars and eateries. Neighbouring Mountain Village offers a modern appreciation of nature and features expansive views and world-class accommodation. During winter, Mountain Village features convenient access to the slopes of Telluride Ski Resort. Among numerous movies and commercials shot in the region are Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid (1969) and The Prestige (2006) (Photo, courtesy Barbara J Miller)

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Santa Monica Pier Santa Monica, california, US Productions like to film at Santa Monica because the pier can double as any other up and down the coast and the fairground rides, restaurants and beautiful scenery can be used for glamorous beach scenes and photo shoots. Movies shot here include The Sting (1973), Rocky III (1982), Ruthless People (1986), Forrest Gump (1994), Iron Man (2008) and Hancock (2008).

Among many television productions using this location are The Incredible Hulk (1978-1982), Gilmore Girls (2000-2007), 24 (2001), Grey’s Anatomy (2005-) and Modern Family (2009-) (Photo, courtesy Mike Flores, LMGA)

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Placer county California, US

(Photo, courtesy Beverly Lewis)

51 SHOWCASE - LOCATION IN PICTURES

This area is near Northstar ski resort just north of Lake Tahoe in Placer County and is popular for car commercial shoots. This image was a summer shot but in winter this is a closed road and often covered with snow, which provides certain advantages because traffic control is minimal or not required. The area’s stunning vistas and abundant recreational activities, coupled with its diverse terrain, means it is regularly used for feature films, commercials and photography

Painted desert Coober Pedy, SoUth aUStralia Located towards the northeast of Coober Pedy, in the Flinders Ranges region (850 kilometres north of Adelaide), Painted Desert is just a few miles away from Arckaringa and is notable for its distinctive mesas, mountains and geological formations. Sediments originally laid down by the ancient inland sea have eroded away over time, which combined with the leaching of minerals from the soil, creates this magical area whose colours change during the day. Coober Pedy has many different natural landscapes, including the Painted Desert, the Moon Plain and the Breakaways. These desert locations have attracted filmmakers from around world, for movies including Fire In The Stone (1984), Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome (1985), Ground Zero (1987), Pitch Black (2000) and Red Planet (2000).

(Photo, courtesy Coober Pedy)

chateau chambord loire Valley, franCe The royal Château de Chambord, the largest in the Loire Valley, was built as a hunting lodge for François I, though never completed. The architecture of the chateaux in the Loire Valley offers many fine examples from the Age of Enlightenment, a period of western thought and culture from the mid-seventeenth through the eighteen century. A particular feature of Chambord are the magnificent double-helix staircases that ascend three floors without each staircase meeting, lit from a light source at the highest point of the building. Many films, documentaries and TV series have been shot here, including the Jacques Demy film Donkey Skin (1970), starring Catherine Deneuve and Jean Marais (Photo, courtesy Dow Griffith, LMGA)

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Guanajuato Mexico

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Lying in a valley, Guanajuato is a state capital and municipality in central Mexico. The city contains numerous narrow, winding streets — including some that consist of long sets of stairs up the mountainside and others that a car-free. Many of the thououghfares are partially or fully underground. The historic central area has many small plazas, colonial-era mansions, churches and civil buildings, many constructed with pink or green sandstone (Photo, courtesy Lori Balton, LMGA)

Lake tahoe california, US Lake Tahoe is an area of outstanding natural beauty and an outdoor sporting mecca with great locations including ski resorts, incredible vistas, private estates, mountain roads, film-ready communities and four seasons. For filming, diverse environments are available, from Midwest flatlands and agricultural to snowy mountains, small towns and high-tech locations, all within 90 minutes of each other. Films that have shot on the north shore of Tahoe include: A Place In The Sun (1951), The Godfather: Part II (1974), Cobb (1994), Jack Frost (1998), and The Deep End (2001); plus scores of commercials and TV shows (Photo, courtesy Denise V Collins, LMGA)

Grand Canyon nevada, US At the time this picture was taken the photographer was scouting for TV series Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey (2014), and the show ended up shooting at Guano Point which juts out into the Grand Canyon, providing a stunning view of the whole area (Photo, courtesy S.Todd Christensen, LMGA)

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The STockTon Sand duneS New South waleS, auStralia The Stockton sand dunes stretch approximately 34 km (21 miles) from Anna Bay in Port Stephens to Stockton in Newcastle, New South Wales. The unvegetated dune system is up to 4 km wide and is 4WD accessible. On May 26, 1974, Port Stephens experienced the worst storm in living memory. Winds of up to 185 km/h forced the Norwegian vessel Sygna aground on the beach on her maiden voyage. Despite numerous salvage attempts, the ship still rests there today. The dunes provide 80% of Australia’s glass-mining sand and is the major source of the mineral rutile in the world. This unique location is a favourite with film crews.

Recent productions include feature film Orange (2010) and Beyoncé’s Mine music video clip (2013) (Photo, courtesy Screen NSW)

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f e at u r e

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TV made Them famous These days, casTing a major TV show’s locaTion is as imporTanT a decision as casTing iTs lead acTors. and for a locaTion, The resulT of winning a cenTral role in a TV hiT can boosT local indusTry, Tourism and profile.

Clive Bull reporTs

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LANDMARK TV series can have an astonishing effect on the area in which it is set. for many around the world, the streets of san francisco was their first glimpse of that amazing city. for millions of tv viewers, a mention of dallas will immediately conjure up images of southfork Ranch and oil rigs. and at the mention of hawaii, who doesn’t think of the dramatic opening montage of the classic police drama hawaii five-o? these productions, and many more, have not only created an international reputation for the series’ setting, but they have also brought a host of benefits to the location in question. a worldwide tv hit can give a huge boost to a city or region’s tourism sector, local economy and, in particular, film industry. the global hit amC series Breaking Bad (2008-2013) recently completed its fifth and final season, winning numerous awards along the way. the drama, which follows the story of a struggling chemistry teacher drawn into a life of crime, is set and filmed in albuquerque (aBQ), New mexico, and has had a significant impact on the region. “the attention we are receiving from tourism is phenomenal,” says ann Lerner, who heads up the aBQ film office. “It’s surprising just how many tourists come here to find the locations, to eat at Los Pollos hermanos [in reality a twisters], to visit the octopus Car Wash or the dog house or the Grove...” the albuquerque Convention and visitors Bureau details a host of Breaking Bad-inspired tours and hotel packages, and proudly quotes star Bryan Cranston, who said in a recent radio interview: “albuquerque itself has become a character in our show. a really important character in our show. It gave it a justifiable location. a sound, solid place that not many

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people have related to. they’ve seen Los angeles, they’ve seen New York, but they haven’t really seen albuquerque and New mexico.” and it’s not just tourism: local industry in albuquerque and the surrounding area has also been given a boost by the success of the series. “the direct spend per episode — each of which was shot in eight days — was a million dollars to the greater aBQ area,” Lerner says.

“Ninety per cent of the crew were New mexico residents. many local businesses benefited from the filming, such as lumber companies, hotels, restaurants and travel agents. It provided creative, non-polluting jobs to our citizens.”

It is not only about where the show is set, of course, but how it is portrayed and to what extent the production includes exterior shots that reflect the region. In the case of Breaking Bad, creator vince Gilligan was able to show albuquerque in its full glory, with ultrawide landscapes, majestic desert scenes, huge skies and the frequent use of outdoor locations, such as the red rocks out at the to’hajiilee reservation. “michael slovis, the director of photography, did an amazing job capturing the look and feel of our area, with time-lapse photography of our clouds,” Lerner says. “We get 310 days of sunshine,” she adds. the New hampshire scenes were shot in the region as well — the east side of albuquerque is bordered by the sandia ///

Breaking Bad, set and filmed in albuquerque, new mexico, the hit series has had a significant impact on the region. © 2008 sony pictures television inc. all rights reserved

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mountains, which rise 10,600 feet.

But what was the original appeal of albuquerque to the producers? “the 25% film rebate — make no mistake about it,” Lerner says. “vince Gilligan wrote it originally for California, but the studio brought it to New mexico because of the incentives that we offer. vince came out here to scout and fell in love with the big sky and wide open spaces.” albuquerque actually has a long history of filmmaking — the edison company was there in 1898 to shoot Indian school day — but there is no doubt that Breaking Bad has pulled new productions into the region. Good Kill (2015) has been shooting in albuquerque with Zoe Kravitz, January Jones and ethan hawke. the forthcoming Lionsgate tv series manhattan is filming in New mexico, as is the fox pilot hieroglyph and the NBC pilot messengers. as Lerner says, incentives are clearly part of the attraction. the state offers up to a 30% film rebate on all New mexico goods and services — and a unique film Crew advancement Program under which, besides the 25% rebate, the state will reimburse 50% of a crew member’s wages for 1,040 hours if the individual is moved up to a higher crew position. But ultimately, it is the depth and sense of scale in the desert that have put albuquerque on the film-location map.

Back in the seventies, the streets of san francisco (1972-77) broke new ground in television police drama, and also introduced the real-life city to an international audience. filmed entirely on location in san francisco, the series made its mark because of its authentic look and feel. the two stars — Karl malden and michael douglas — prepared for their roles by spending time with the san francisco Police department (sfPd)and, unlike many tv shows of the period, the production went to great lengths to integrate itself into the fabric of the city. a warehouse on Kearny street was converted into an interior-scenes soundstage, but it was the street scenes that were to capture the imagination of millions of tv viewers. Later, Nash Bridges (1996-2001) would follow suit, with don Johnson and Cheech marin starring in the drama about sfPd’s special investigations unit, shot largely on the streets in the san francisco Bay area. susannah Robbins, executive director at the san francisco film Commission, believes it was these two series that established the city as a destination for filming, and says exposure in film and television has without doubt attracted tourists to san francisco. “I know this is true from my own experience of meeting an owner of a B&B while I was in a small town

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Bryan Cranston “Albuquerque itself hAs become A chArActer in our show. A reAlly importAnt chArActer in our show”

Cheers, on Beacon Hill, Boston. tHis Bar, featured in exterior sHots tHrougHout tHe series, Has Been renamed cHeers and is said to Be one of Boston’s top-five tourist attractions. pHoto, J. miers

in Wales [the uK]. he told me he came to san francisco years ago because he wanted to see where the Bullitt [1968] chase scene was filmed,” she says. “the productions that shoot here convey to the world the beauty, charm and feel of san francisco and people then want to experience that for themselves.” until the streets of san francisco came along, it was the norm to shoot in hollywood and edit-in stock shots of san francisco — Ironside (1967-1975), for example, although revolving around the sfPd, used mostly studio-based scenes, even when characters were apparently in a moving vehicle. Notable landmarks would be added later to establish the setting. filmmakers are still eager to capture the instantly recognisable side of san francisco. favourite locations include hyde street and Lombard street, with their views of the cable car, hills and alcatraz; filbert street and Coit tower; twin Peaks, with its panorama of san francisco, the bay and the Bay Bridge; the marin headlands looking back across the Golden Gate Bridge to the city; montgomery street and union street looking on to the transamerica Pyramid; and the financial district, with Bay Bridge in the background. there has been, however, a notable shift towards filming the everyday side of the city. “We love to see these icons in films, but we also love to see the unexplored parts of san francisco featured, such as in Woody allen’s Blue Jasmine [2013] and Looking [hBo, 2014],” Robbins says. “the fact that hBo chose san francisco for filming, rather than shooting the series elsewhere and just doing beauty shots here, will hopefully have an impact on other productions that might have wanted to shoot in san francisco, but didn’t think it was economically feasible.”

Looking explores the complexities of modern-day gay life. It aims to show the unfiltered experiences of three close friends, with real-life san francisco locations as the backdrop. “We wanted to show a grittier, rawer side of san francisco,” says creator michael Lannan. “that was one of our big goals — to show the city that people actually live in, not just the postcard version.”

Lannan says it was hard to avoid the hills, but they stayed away from the bridges, as they wanted to get away from the traditional scene-setting landmarks.

“You will see them,” he adds. “But we always shot them in passing rather than as giant establishing shots. We focused on some of the bars and clubs that the everyday folk go to.” and this new focus of the other side of the san francisco appears to be boosting interest in the city as a location. Looking has been renewed for a second season, and Robbins is anticipating a busy year ahead. “We are excited about a potential Netflix series coming our

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way, as well a portion of three blockbuster films, which should be filming here,” she says. as always, incentives are important. on a city level, there is the scene In san francisco film rebate programme, which refunds up to $600,000 per film or per television episode. moreover, the city incentives can be combined with the California film & television tax Credit Program. ‘filmed entirely on location in hawaii’ was the bold statement attached to almost every one of the hundreds of episodes of hawaii five-o (19681980). the long-running police procedural is generally considered to have set up the hawaii film industry as we know it. While most police dramas of the time were set in Los angeles or New York City, hawaii five-o stood out because of its exotic setting. and while similar shows tended to be studio bound and largely filmed on sound stages and backlots, the hawaiian series shot most of each episode on location.

Right from the start, the opening titles told the viewer that the location was one of the stars of the show — the surfing, the beaches, the sunsets and high-rise buildings were all given pride of place. the ocean-front Ilikai hotel became recognisable around the globe thanks to the dramatic zoomin to the 27th floor, as steve mcGarrett (Jack Lord) swung around to face the camera. the series kick-started what is now a flourishing film industry on the islands and, to this day, there are still hawaii five-o tours attracting visitors to the region. another hawaii-based show, magnum PI (1980-88), made use of the same extensive production facilities that had been set up for hawaii five-o — and the revival version, hawaii five-0 (2010-) also makes much of the hawaiian exteriors and has been renewed for a fifth season. the hugely successful aBC series Lost (2004-2010) also chose hawaii as its home. Part of the attraction was the wide variety of settings all within

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Shot in hawaii, ABC’s six-seAson drAmA Lost Aired ALL over the worLd, kept the isLAnds’ fiLm industry Busy, And Lost LoCAtion tours Are stiLL popuLAr todAy

close range. Beach scenes were shot on the island of oahu, with honolulu standing in for numerous urban areas around the world, including New York, miami, Paris and Berlin. Interior scenes were filmed on a soundstage built at a former warehouse and later moved to the hawaii film studio. the six-season drama aired all over the world and, as well as keeping the islands’ film industry busy, it also helped the tourist industry, with Lost location tours still popular today.

In Washington state, seattle has had its own share of worldwide television exposure. But ironically, the series that really put it in the limelight was frasier (1993-2004), the long-running comedy that was almost entirely filmed in hollywood, except for establishing shots of the city. despite that, seattle is present almost constantly throughout the show, from the cartoon seattle skyline of the opening titles to the stunning view of the city through frasier’s apartment window.

While there is doubt that any seattle apartment has such a spectacular view of the city’s skyline, there is no question that it helped to establish an image of seattle in the minds of millions of international viewers, some of whom travel to the city to see the sights and search for frasier’s non-existent apartment.

Jessie Wilson, programmes and communications co-ordinator at Washington filmworks, which handles state-wide film production support and financial incentives, recognises that big-name series have contributed to the state’s growing film business. however, she ///

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feels there is a lot more to offer: “some of the most notable tv shows that feature Washington state only show a small portion of the looks we have available here.

Besides the urban exteriors in shows like the Killing (2011-), frasier and Grey’s anatomy (2005-), and the quaint towns featured in Northern exposure (1990-95) and twin Peaks (1990-91), Washington has a huge variety of other locations to offer productions.”

Washington filmworks has partnered with a number of public and private entities to launch a new initiative designed to draw more production to seattle and Washington state. “Commercialize seattle shows off so many iconic looks: the space Needle, the Pike Place market, a Bavarian village, sand dunes, island life, gorgeous rainforests, national forests and parks, and vast agricultural areas and vineyards,” Wilson says. frasier was, of course, a spin-off from Cheers (19821993), another long-running tv comedy, which itself brought business to its notional setting of Boston. the bar featured in exterior shots throughout the series has been renamed Cheers and is said to be one of Boston’s top-five tourist attractions.

Chicago has been the setting for numerous television shows but, while raising the profile of the Illinois city, not all of them have brought business into town. the two medical dramas Chicago hope (1994-2000) and eR (1994-2009) were both set in fictional Chicago hospitals, but much of the filming took place in studios in California. Likewise, the Good Wife (2009-), although centred on a Chicago law firm, is mostly filmed in New York. In recent years, however, the city’s film industry has been experiencing a boom period — in part thanks to the state of Illinois passing a bill to give filmmakers a 30% tax break. the ongoing filming of Chicago fire (2012-) and its police spin-off Chicago Pd (2014-) has given a considerable boost to the Illinois economy, with the Illinois film office reporting that local spending last year for the two NBC shows reached $87m. Both are shot entirely in Chicago and Betsy steinberg, managing director at the film office, says the series have created jobs for hundreds of actors, electricians, drivers and construction workers. visiting the set of Chicago fire at Cinespace Chicago film studios, Illinois governor Pat Quinn announced that the Illinois film industry generated an estimated $358m in spending last year. “these record-breaking numbers show there is no better place to film than Illinois,” Quinn said. “Productions like Chicago fire are helping grow and strengthen Illinois’ economy by creating thousands of jobs across the state, from actors to painters and carpenters, and the hundreds of small businesses that serve the industry.”

If you search for dallas on the internet, your top result is more likely to be about the tv serial rather than the place itself. the CBs soap (1978-1991), with its legendary cliff-hanger endings, gripped a massive audience with its tales of the feuding ewing family and their oil and cattle-ranching battles. once again, the title and the opening sequence gave the location top billing, although after the first season the production mostly relocated to a Los angeles studio. unlike the original, the 2012 revival of dallas, now in its third season, is filmed primarily in and around the city — something the dallas film Commission was

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Jonathan Groff and Raul Castillo on the stReets of san fRanCisCo in looking.

Photo: hBo

determined would happen. the new series also shoots on location at the actual southfork Ranch in Parker, texas. today, the fictional home of the ewing family welcomes visitors from around the world, with the ranch now a hotel and conference centre, offering tours and an exhibition of memorabilia for fans of the series. further afield, there are other, more remote examples of how a tv series can bring a location to the world’s attention. “there is no doubt that the premier season of original Productions’ Ice Road truckers [2007-] put the Northwest territories, particularly Yellowknife, on the map,” says Camilla maceachern, associate film commissioner for Canada’s Northwest territories. “In fact, when I travel and people ask where I’m from, I often start off my reply with: ‘have you seen the show Ice Road truckers?’ and nine times out of 10, they know exactly where I’m talking about.” omni Productions’ Ice Pilots NWt (2009-), currently in its sixth season, has also had an impact. “the docu-series follows the day-to-day operations of a unique airline, Buffalo air, based in Yellowknife, and has provided really great exposure to our diverse landscapes and ‘living off the grid’ way of life,” maceachern says. and then there is the CBC drama arctic air (2012-), which centres on a maverick airline based in Yellowknife and a group of renegade pilots who fly small bush planes and huge World War II prop-planes on daily missions in the North. “Because the story is set in Yellowknife, they have done a lot of exterior filming, including in some of the smaller surrounding communities, such as dettah and N’dilo,” maceachern says. “they have filmed at our golf course, airport, on lakes — both frozen and open — and in the bush, and they have used actual locations to inspire their sets.” although it is hard to produce solid statistics, maceachern is convinced that these series have boosted tourism, created jobs and drawn more production into the region. “these productions showcase the many locations we have to offer,” she adds. “they also show first-hand that film production is very possible in our territory, even though we are located this far north. In the summer, we have endless daylight, which makes for long, productive filming days — and the magic lasts for hours. the climate is dry and we have some of the most diverse landscapes in the world, offering endless possibilities.”

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Image credits from top to bottom, left to right: © Düsseldorf Marketing GmbH; © filmlocationMV; © opm Fotografie Christina Stihler & Oliver Michel; © Sylt Marketing GmbH / Dominik Träuber; © BBFC / Foto: David Marschalsky; © MDM/Sven Claus; © Film Commission Hessen; © opm Fotografie Christina Stihler & Oliver Michel; © Weltkulturerbe Völklinger Hütte / Gerhard Kassner; © Film Commission Bayern; © Klimahaus Bremerhaven 8° Ost/BTZ; © Jan Meier; © MDM/Bertram Bölkow; © BBFC / Foto: David Marschalsky; © MDM/Sven Claus; FFHSH / M.O. Schulz.

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WHEN LITERATURE COMES TO LIFE

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UBLISHED in 30 countries with over two million copies sold in the German-speaking world alone, Pascal Mercier’s novel Night Train To Lisbon centres around Switzerland-based classics teacher Raimond Gregorius who embarks on a journey to Lisbon following a life-changing encounter with a mysterious young woman who leaves behind a book containing a train ticket to the city.

In Lisbon Gregorius not only falls in love with the city, but is plunged in to a world of political intrigue, as the story moves between the present day and the last years of the Salazar dictatorship in the Seventies, a dark chapter in Portugal’s history.

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Lisbon may not be used to hosting large international shoots, but, according to Günther Russ, managing director of Studio Hamburg FilmProduktion, which produced the film with Peter Reichenbach of Zurich based C-Films, “There was never any question, we wanted to use original locations and we knew we didn’t want to shoot the film anywhere else.”

Shooting took place in various locations across the city for seven weeks in March and April 2012, including the main cemetery, the railway station and a beautiful old palace, which also doubled as the film’s production office.

The city’s stately buildings were used to help recreate some of the film’s historical scenes, while local producers Ana Costa and Paulo Trancoso of Lisbon-based production company Cinemate — which came onboard as co-producers on the project — were able to point the team towards several less-well-known locations.

These included narrow, winding alleyways, which may have been logistically challenging, but meant “there weren’t as many things that we needed to take out”, says Reichenbach, who bought the rights to Mercier’s novel in 2007 after seeing its potential for a big screen adaptation.

Although the production brought its own heads of department, most of the members of the 75-strong crew were local, while the fact that the film’s art director was native to Lisbon helped when it came to sourcing locations, a task that was made even easier by the fact that they had Mercier’s book as a reference point.

“The book mentions exact locations, so we went out and found them,” Reichenbach says.

Gaining the backing of the city’s mayor Antonio Costa and the tourism office, both of whom recognised the potential benefit to the city of being featured in a movie with wide reaching international appeal, was crucial to getting the shoot off the ground.

“Without the support of the mayor it would not have been possible to shoot there, and I would tell any film wanting to shoot in Lisbon to go and see him, he is a fantastic help,” Russ says, adding that while there may not be a tax rebate on offer, Portugal’s fragile economic situation

61 MAKING A SCENE - NIGHT TRAIN TO LISBON

THE PORTUGUESE CAPITAL IS INTEGRAL TO THE PLOT OF BILLE AUGUST’S PHILOSOPHICAL THRILLER NIGHT TRAIN TO LISBON, BASED ON THE BEST-SELLING NOVEL BY PASCAL MERCIER AND STARRING JEREMY IRONS. SARAH COOPER REPORTS MAKING A SCENE

JEREMY IRONS WITH MARTINA GEDECK IN NIGHT TRAIN TO LISBON

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actually worked in the film’s favour. “They gave us lots of locations for less money and our production office was completely free. For the city of Lisbon and Portugal, it was important to show the world that they are able to handle this kind of movie.”

“The movie is called Night Train To Lisbon and it has the same title in every language, so it was in the city’s interest that we shot there and didn’t have to go somewhere else,” Reichenbach says.

For the film’s director Bille August, it was something of a homecoming as he shot The House Of The Spirits — also starring Jeremy Irons — in Lisbon in 1993; in that film the city doubled for parts of Chile.

“We show the most interesting parts of the city and we made great discoveries beyond the major tourist attractions,” says the Danish auteur who won the Cannes Palme D’Or in 1987 for Pelle The Conquerer, and again in 1992 for Best Intentions. “It is not as cinematically grazed as other large cities are and the people here have a kind of charming innocence to them.”

Irons decided to take on the challenge of playing the high-school Latin teacher even before reading the original novel, partly because it gave him the chance to return to Lisbon.

“I had been there 20 years before, and had thought it was wonderful, and I just could not resist. It’s a very unusual film, without explosions, one of those films not much money is spent on nowadays,” says the British actor, who has most recently been seen playing the corrupt Pope Alexander VI in Neil Jordan’s TV series The Borgias (2011-).

The €7.8m film also features an impressive supporting cast made up of some of the hottest actors currently working in Europe, including Bruno Ganz, Mélanie Laurent, Jack Huston, Lena Olin and Martina Gedeck as well as screen veterans Christopher Lee and Charlotte Rampling, all of whom speak English, but with Portuguese accents, in the film.

But as Reichenbach explains, “it was never just about having big names up there on the posters, it was about high-level and precise casting”.

The production also spent a week in the Swiss capital Bern, to shoot the film’s pivotal opening scene where Gregorius encounters a suicidal girl who plans to jump off the city’s iconic Kirchenfeld Bridge. Once again the team was determined to shoot at the actual bridge which featured in Mercier’s novel as opposed to finding a look-alike elsewhere.

“The Kirchenfeld Bridge is like the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, or Tower Bridge in London, it’s a real symbol of the country,” Russ says of the landmark which is also the main entrance into the city via both car and tram.

All the more remarkable, then, that the production was given permission to close it for two whole days.

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GUNTHER RUSS “ THERE WAS NEVER ANY QUESTION, WE WANTED TO USE ORIGINAL LOCATIONS AND WE KNEW WE DIDN’T WANT TO SHOOT THE FILM ANYWHERE ELSE”

“It’s a very unusual thing to block the whole bridge,” Reichenbach says. “But the mayor was very pleased that we were shooting an international movie in Bern and so we got enormous support from the city.”

That extended to help from the city’s fire brigade, which was brought in to hose down the bridge to give the impression of torrential rain.

Another key location that was used was Bern’s main railway station where Gregorius begins his journey to Lisbon. Shooting at the crowded station during the day would have been impossible, says Reichenbach, so “we shot at night, and were able to have our own train, which was given to us by the Swiss railway company”.

While Bern may not be as used to hosting big international shoots as other Swiss cities such as Geneva and Zurich, it is “absolutely” equipped to do it, according to Reichenbach.

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Peter reichenbach: “We shot at night, and Were able to have our oWn train, Which Was given to us by the sWiss railWay company”

featured in his novel. “When I watched the film, the screen mirrored the images I had imagined. It was a hypnotic and powerful experience. During the first scene I lost touch with regular time and at the end it was hard to find my way back. This film allows you to leave behind the scrub and undergrowth of everyday life and step into a clearing. The story evolves using images of immense beauty and poetic force and carries the audience off to distant Portugal, to a time far away.” He adds: “When it was over and the lights went back on, the first thing I said was, ‘When can I see it again?’.”

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63 making a scene - NIGHT TRAIN TO LISBON

“As it is the capital, it also has good hotels and infrastructure. The main thing is, they are very helpful. That is the key,” he says.

Despite not shooting in Germany, Studio Hamburg FilmProduktion was able to tap into state funding from the German Federal Fund (DFFF) thanks to the various German elements of the production including its German co-writer, German cast members and the fact that the novel on which it was based was German. All of the post-production was also done on German soil. The financing ended up being split between Germany (70%), Switzerland (20%) and Portugal (10%).

It took some seven years from the inception of the idea to make the film, to the point at which it was fully funded. Backers included Germany’s Telemünchen Gruppe and its German distribution company Concorde, as well as Swiss distributor Frenetic Films, Portuguese distribution partner Lusomundo and the Benelux’s Paradiso Filmed Entertainment.

The financing partners included the German Federal Film Board (FFA), the film subsidy Hamburg Schleswig Holstein, Medienboard Berlin Brandenburg, the German Federal Film Fund (DFFF), Eurimages, MEDIA, the Zurich Film Foundation, and the Swiss Federal Office of Culture, Portugal’s national ICA and the city of Lisbon, as well as the SRF (Swiss Radio and Television) and Swiss pay-TV channel Teleclub.

Night Train To Lisbon world premiered at the 2013 Berlin Film Festival, going on to take over one million admissions in Germanspeaking territories. With K5 handling international sales on the film, it has also sold around the world, opening in the US recently through distributor Wrekin Hill.

Describing the film as a “great example of how to shoot films in Europe”, Russ is currently developing a number of projects with C-Films including Simple, a comedy adapted from Marie-Aude Murail’s 2007 novel about a boy and his brother who has learning difficulties, to be directed by Markus Goller.

As Reichenbach says of the new found partnership: “Switzerland is a small market and it is crucial for us to find co-production partners. We are very much attached to the German culture, so it makes sense for us to work with them.”

Meanwhile the German executive is also looking for the “next story for Lisbon” which will once again see Studio Hamburg FilmProduktion and Cinemate teaming up as co-producers, based on his positive experience of working in the Portuguese capital.

Meanwhile, the film has won approval from Mercier himself, partly as a result of the team’s decision to shoot in the actual locations

Jeremy Irons as Raimond GReGoRius with ChRistopheR Lee as FatheR BaRtoLomeu in niGht tRain to LisBon (2013)

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F E AT U R E

WILL FORTE, BRUCE DERN AND STACY KEACH IN NEBRASKA

ONE MORE FOR THE ROAD FILMMAKERS HAVE LONG USED THE TECHNIQUE OF THROWING CHARACTERS TOGETHER IN A VEHICLE TO DRIVE NARRATIVE — WE CALL THEM ROAD MOVIES. AND AS DEBBIE LINCOLN DISCOVERS, THE GENRE IS AS POPULAR AS EVER

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to me then was that it was humorous and melancholy, like life. I also liked that the writer [Bob Nelson] really lived what happens in this story, so it feels personal,” Payne says. “By the time we made it, all these other things were happening in our society, and it came to feel like a modern Depression-era story. But I think any film takes on the time in which it is made. The winds of the period blow through it, whether consciously or /// unconsciously.”

WHAT MAKES A GREAT ROAD MOVIE? THE GENRE IS BROAD AND POPULATED WITH FILMS THAT RUN FROM ALLTIME CLASSICS TO FORGETTABLE EMBARRASSMENTS. LOCATION MAGAZINE MAKES A SUBJECTIVE TRAWL THROUGH THE YEARS — MAKE NO MISTAKE, AN EVENING WILL NOT BE WASTED WATCHING ANY OF THESE MOVIES. Frank Capra’s It Happened One Night (1934) provided a worthy template for the comedy romance road movie. Heiress Claudette Colbert and newspaper reporter Clark Gable find love on a trip from Florida to New York — though filmed on locations a stone’s throw from Hollywood.

In the 1940 adaptation of John Steinbeck’s seminal novel, The Grapes Of Wrath, the struggle of the extended Joad family to up-root from their for-closed farm in the dustbowl of Oklahoma and trek across the country with the hope of work in the fruit farms of California provides an evocative backdrop to explore the human condition, good and bad.

The 1953 British film Genevieve, sees two couples take part in a veteran car rally from London to Brighton on the south coast of the UK, with the score

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EING on the road is a great narrative technique. It enables filmmakers and actors to develop characters quickly in a confined space, while giving them time to breathe in strange, wonderful landscapes.

It also enables filmmakers to bring characters into contact with strangers and strange events. There are notable films from all over the world that employ this conceit — but it is in countries that have a love affair with the internal combustion engine where the road movie comes into its own. In practice that of course means the US — where once everyone had a horse, and now everyone needs a set of wheels.

Alexander Payne’s multiple Oscar-nominated Nebraska (2013) follows a cantankerous Woody Grant — played by Bruce Dern, Best Actor in the role at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival — who, after receiving a milliondollar sweepstakes letter, persuades his reluctant son David (Will Forte) into taking a 750-mile road trip from his home in Billings, Montana, to claim his fortune at the company’s offices in Lincoln, Nebraska. He is seemingly oblivious to the fact that this fortune is an illusion.

So begins the road trip, and in the well-trodden tradition it becomes a family odyssey, a comic and moving rummage through the baggage of past and present quarrels and misunderstandings. They make a pit-stop in their hometown of Hawthorne, visiting the sharp-tongued matriarch Kate (June Squibb) and son (Bob Odenkirk). When news of their arrival and Woody’s alleged fortune spreads, the skeletons begin to clatter from the closet.

Locations are at the heart of this black and white Cinemascope movie as the road winds through small-town USA, the faded Americana in economic downturn echoing the ragged nature of Woody and David’s troubles.

As producer Albert Berger says: “Alexander casts the locations just as carefully as he casts the actors.”

Plainview, Nebraska, stood in for Hawthorne and according to production designer Dennis Washington did not require much dressing. “Plainview is a vibrant little town — it’s not necessarily like the town in the script — but it has some of that feeling of being set in its own time,” he says, adding: “I don’t know if I’ve ever spent as much time with the director scouting locations. Alexander told me at the start, ‘I’m very particular with locations’, and he puts his money where his mouth is. He was out there with us going to strangers’ doors and saying, ‘You don’t know us, but we’d like to look at your house’.”

“I have been working with Alexander Payne for several years regarding locations for Nebraska,” says Nebraska Film Officer Laurie Richards. “He knew what he wanted and loves the state, so he spent a lot of his own time on the road to find the perfect small town. Local location managers then went to the max to find the other smaller towns to set up the rest of the shots, matching exteriors and interiors from different towns into one location,” she says. “The majority of filming took place in Plainview, 40 minutes north of Norfolk. Other communities used were Elgin, Tilden, Osmond, Hooper, Lyons, Norfolk and Lincoln.”

The film was supported enthusiastically by the local community and Alexander cast many locals in this film. “Those characters add to the overall flavour of the storyline,” Richards says.

Katlyn Richter, media relations representative at the South Dakota Department of Tourism reports that the plot also brought the crew to the South Dakota area in December 2012, to Rapid City and the Black Hills, looking for shots of the road and landscape, hotels and motels. “We helped provide some contact information for partners in the Black Hills area along with other logistic support,” she says. Filming also took place in Billings, Montana, and Wyoming.

All those involved in the production blended well with the local communities — Richards has happy memories of karaoke evenings with Will Forte centre-stage — and the good fortune has continued for the film.

Nebraska has been a commercial and critical success, for it’s classic storytelling and revelatory ensemble cast, a black and white film that has tapped into the mood of modern life.

“I received this beautiful screenplay nine years ago, and what appealed

written and beautifully performed by harmonica virtuoso Larry Adler, an early example of the marriage of music and movement on the road.

French/Italian 1953 film The Wages Of Fear (Le Salaire De La Peur) is a tense drama set in a steamy inhospitable South American landscape — though filmed in France. It follows four men who are offered big money for driving trucks full of volatile explosives needed at an oil fire.

The 1963 Stanley Kramer movie It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World is a wild dash across southern California from the Mojave Desert to Santa Clarita by a hilarious ensemble cast as they scramble by all means to reach a buried small fortune with spectacular failures.

In 1967’s Two For The Road, a Stanley Donen film, Audrey Hepburn and Albert Finney take a trip from the north of France to St Tropez in the south, their relationship examined by flashbacks. Also in France, Jean-Luc Godard’s 1967 black comedy Weekend, includes surreal brutal car crashes peppering the road.

The mixture of romance and killers on the run was perfected in 1967 with Arthur Penn’s Bonnie And Clyde, starring Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway as the depression-era thieves.

If you ask a cross-section of people to name five road movies, Easy Rider will almost always come up. The 1969 film looms large in US pop culture and was directed by Dennis Hopper, who also stars, along with Peter Fonda and Jack Nicholson. It was shot in New Mexico, Louisiana, Arizona, Utah as well as California. The narrative grasps the mood of the times, a mixture of optimism, concern for civil liberties and freedom, drugs and reactionary violence. Two bikers, Wyatt

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another recent road movie, this time playing for laughs, was filmed in North Carolina and New mexico. We’re The millers (2013) stars Jennifer aniston (rose), Jason sudeikis (david), emma roberts (Casey) and Will Poulter (Kenny), as a family on holiday in an rv on their way to mexico. it’s a family with a big secret: david is a drug dealer forced to go to mexico to fetch marijuana for his boss. To make it easier to cross the border david comes up with the ruse of travelling as a family, recruiting stripper rose as his wife, and his neighbour Kenny and friend Casey as their children. in New mexico scenes were shot in Bernalillo county, albuquerque; sandoval county; and in and around santa Fe from the end of september through early october 2012. “We assist with government-related permit issues, helping facilitate communication and alternatives that work for both parties,” Nick maniatis, director and the New mexico Film office says.

The production was also able to participate in the state’s incentive programme.

Location scout rebecca Puck stair came on board with the project in late april of 2012. “We’re The millers was filmed in several states, including Georgia, California and New mexico,” she says. “in New mexico, the film was seeking its mexican locations, including the border crossings, some driving shots and the sinister drug compound. Ultimately, we also filmed both airport scenes in New mexico as well, at the very friendly sunport [albuquerque international sunport airport]. “as always the staff at the New mexico film commission were extraordinarily helpful, spearheading major road closures for the border crossings and sharing known locations. Finding the drug compound was a challenge, as it required a mexican look, high walls, imposing gate, and of course an owner willing to let it be transformed into a cartel stronghold. The location we eventually selected already had a rich history, being one of the oldest schools in New mexico, a WPa project [an organisation overseeing New deal projects from the late 1930s], then a private residence that burned down.” after the crew dressed the location with several tons of fake marijuana and pallets of fake cash, the New mexico Lieutenant Governor John sanchez made a visit to see for himself.

Puck stair reports that under the leadership of supervising location manager robin Citrin, the shoots all ran pretty smoothly. However, a set that was constructed to reproduce a Us-mexico border crossing did cause one incident. “We kept the signs covered to prevent motorist confusion.

But the night before filming, the covers were removed to be ready for an early day. That night, a police officer found a hysterical woman pulled over on the shoulder. she thought she’d crossed into mexico, without id or passport, and was doomed to a mexican prison,” Puck stair says.

Puck stair also worked on 2 Guns (2013) while it filmed in New mexico. The movie tells the story of drug administration agent Bobby (denzel Washington) who believes he can use a proposed bank robbery by stig (mark Wahlberg) to catch him and a mob boss in one swoop. The plan goes horribly wrong when stig turns out to be a Naval intelligence operative who shoots Bobby and takes the money. in the ensuing confusion between agencies embroiled in corruption and rivalry Bobby and stig have to take to the road to work out a way of getting out of their situation while they are hunted by both sides of the law.

For the required desert locations they shot in New mexico, “including Papi Greco’s ranch and both the river and road border crossings. We found everything we sought, but were quite spread out across the state, ranging from two hours north of santa Fe to almost two hours south,” Puck stair says.

The 2 Guns production also took advantage of incentives offered in New mexico, at the time up to 25%, and Puck stair says “it has since risen to 30% for some productions”. in Need For speed (2014) Toby marshall (aaron Paul) and dino (dominic Cooper) have a long-standing rivalry as street-car racers, complicated by arguments over cars, women, accidents and money. The final meet sees them race in exotic high-performance cars from san Francisco, with the California Highway Patrol in hot pursuit. one-by-one cars are forced to leave the race until it is just dino and Toby left.

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HigH performance cars burned up the roads of California for need for speed

Producer mark sourian was happy to be involved in a road movie. “i was excited about was doing a film that involved america, that was a movie about american car culture. i love movies like american graffiti. Car movies are as much a part of the american culture as action movies or thrillers. The car movie is a very distinct american movie and i was brought up on a lot of those kinda movies,” he says.

Need For speed shot right across the Us, from New York through michigan, alabama, Georgia and Utah. much of the climactic final race was shot on the dramatic roads of California. shooting on location in many different states can seem extravagant but it was important to the production team to get a true cross-country feel to the movie — which reaches its climax in mendecino, north Califiornia. “i’ve got to give scott [Waugh, director and executive producer] a tremendous amount of credit for standing firm on the idea that they we can’t shoot the whole film in one big state. and he was able to stand his ground and convince the studios that we needed to — even if it meant more money and not getting the rebate — shoot in places that allowed us to get the scale of the movie. and mendocino was just absolutely beau-

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tiful, especially as it’s the end of the movie and the studio generously understood that,” Sourian says.

“Authenticity was very much a big underlying premise to Scott’s approach to making the movie, and when you see the movie you’ll see that the shots in Mendocino are just stunning.”

As much as Sourian enjoys road movies he recognises the challenges involved.

“The monumental level of logistics with all of these cars, all of these stunts, we were going from location to location to location, and suddenly having to block off roads. I knew we were going to do it but when you actually got in to the thick of it and saw how elaborate it was going to be, it was exhausting, and it would have been very nice for us to just sit in a studio and shoot it on stage, on green screen and do all of the stunts digitally, and that would have been comfortable,” he says. But he deferred to director Scott Waugh: “Because he had experience as a stunt man — he had made Act Of Valor [2012] in a style and approach he was able to bring to this movie.”

Location manager Mandi Dillin also worked on bringing this high-octane story to the screen using the /// California roads.

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the 1977 comedy starring Burt Reynolds, Sally Field, Jackie Gleason and Jerry Reed, follows The Bandit and his buddy who take a truckload of illicit beer on a chase across the highways from Texas to Georgia.

A nightmare future on the roads, this time Australia, is portrayed in the Mad Max franchise, the first two particularly (1979/1981), full of high-octane chases.

Think road, think comedy, think The Blues Brothers (1980) in which Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi reform their blues band to raise funds to save their old orphanage. The Bluesmobile is a 1974 Dodge Monaco ex-cop car, and stars in chaotic car chases in and around Chicago.

Burt Reynolds also starred in The Cannonball Run (1981), another cross-country road race, filmed in Missouri, Arizona, Nevada and Georgia, as well as California, with a Wacky Races-style cast of characters.

Wim Wenders film Paris, Texas (1984) features amnesiac Travis (Harry Dean Stanton) who is found wandering in South Texas. His brother comes to pick him up and drives him to California. Aside from the beautiful desert vistas the movie is known for it’s captivating soundtrack by Ry Cooder.

Rob Reiner’s The Sure Thing (1985) encapsulated some of the atmosphere of It Happened One Night with a couple of ill-matched students reluctantly finding themselves ride-sharing from New York to LA. Fandango (1985), a directorial debut for Kevin Reynolds, exemplifies the now well-trodden tale about young men going wild before responsibility catches up with them, specifically the possibility of draft to the Vietnam War. Locations covered Texas as well as Tulsa in Oklahoma.

Wild At Heart, David Lynch’s 1990 story of runaway lovers Sailor (Nicolas Cage) and Lula (Laura Dern), is a surreal pursuit across California with hitmen hired by Lula’s mother.

In the ‘we didn’t really want to do this trip’ category: Planes, Trains & Automobiles (1987) and Midnight Run (1988). The former sees Steve Martin miss a flight home for Thanksgiving and embarking on a chaotic trip from New York to Chicago with a

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(Fonda) and Billy (Hopper) make for New Orleans, but instead of finding freedom they come up against narrow-minded reactive forces, resulting in tragedy. The soundtrack backed up the counterculture mood of the film featuring The Band, Roger McGuinn, The Jimi Hendrix Experience and Steppenwolf.

Two-Lane Blacktop (1971) is a cult classic, featuring musicians James Taylor and Dennis Wilson as itinerant drag racers who challenge locals to road races as they travel from California along Route 66.

In 1971’s Vanishing Point the vistas took in the American southwest. Barry Newman plays an emotionally troubled car delivery driver who takes on a job to deliver a Dodge Challenger from Denver to San Francisco.

Few films can match the menace conjured up in Duel, which sees Dennis Weaver driving out on a business trip across the California desert and drawn into a deadly game of cat-and-mouse after passing an irritatingly slow-moving truck. Made in 1971 as a TV movie, Steven Spielberg’s atmospheric thriller was later elongated for theatrical release.

Black and white 1973 film Paper Moon has a nostalgia and empathy for mid-western America in the grips of depression in the inter-war years, lovingly recreated under the direction of Peter Bogdanovich and filmed extensively in Missouri and Kansas. Father and daughter Ryan and Tatum O’Neal make a formidable conning duo.

For broody unpredictable violence it is hard to beat the masterpiece that is Badlands, the low-budget 1973 movie written and directed by Terrence Malick.

Starring young lovers Martin Sheen and Cissy Spacek on the run, the almost banal violence influenced a string of movies.

Sam Peckinpah’s violent path across the roads of Mexico in Bring Me The Head Of Alfredo Garcia in 1974 shocked audiences at the time.

Death Race 2000, the 1975 Paul Bartel film, starring David Carradine, Simone Griffeth and Sylvester Stallone, is set in a future America where the Transcontinental Road Race is created for the amusement of society, complete with points awarded for hit-and-run-deaths.

Smokey And The Bandit,

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“We had six permit agencies to contact for the California portion of the film — the California Coastal Commission, Caltrans, mendocino County roads, the Bureau of Land management, the California Film Commission, California state Parks, and the City of san Francisco. although we had a narrow window of time for processing all of the permits, they came through just in time,” dillin says.

Being on the coast a lot of the time meant that the weather was a real issue, especially in medocino. “our representative from Caltrans, Kelley schultz, and our local traffic company, Wipf Construction, adjusted to our filming schedule when we were rained and fogged out of filming on the coast.

Their flexibility and understanding saved the day,” dillin says. so what do road movies do to the local community where they are shot? in this case, to avoid any unforeseen problems meetings were held in town halls even before filming began. “since Need For speed was the largest film to shoot in the area for many years, the community was certainly curious about our potential impact,” dillin says. “each night i would send an email to the local radio stations so they could announce the next day’s location and commuters could allow for extra time. We offered detours for commuters who did not want to wait in our zones of traffic control which gave some locals an opportunity to discover new roadways through their community.”

Concern extended to animals: “We wanted to make sure that people knew to put their sheep, cows and horses inside during filming. on Highway 253 we relocated an entire flock of pregnant goats so they would not give birth prematurely,” she says, adding: “For residents within the areas of our driving shots, we asked permission to place a staff person in their driveway. Because our picture cars were actually racing at high speeds on the roads, we had to make sure that a civilian vehicle didn’t pull out in front of them.” and the hard work paid off: “i am still extremely satisfied we were able to achieve everything we set out to do. When the crew shows up and the road is closed for them, the Highway Patrol is in position, the helicopters are whizzing away above us, and a dozen exotic race cars rumble past you, the sensation is intoxicating and gratifying.” identity Thief (2013) is a crime comedy film directed by seth Gordon, starring Jason Bateman, and shot in Georgia. emily murray, from the Georgia department of economic development says: “We helped them with locations and we helped them with set dressing. We looked at numerous mansions, gas stations, neighbourhoods, office buildings, hotels, motels and shopping malls. They shot at the Colonade, the Cheshire Bridge motel, the archives building, south Fulton Parkway. also shot in Georgia, 2010’s due date, from director Todd Phillips, features robert downey Jr as an anxious father-to-be who is compelled to hitch a ride with an aspiring actor played by Zach Galifianakis. The ill-matched duo makes a mad-dash on the road in order to make it to La for the birth. as well as scenes in Texas, New mexico and California, in Georgia they shot at the Georgia World Congress Center, the Gainesville visitors Center, the Waffle House and Hartsfield.

But it’s not all about the Us. a european road movie, coming this year, is a comedy drama that is anything but high-octane. Norwegian film Here is Harold (Her er Harold), directed by Gunnar vikene, tells the story of Harold who, for the last forty years has run his business, Lunde Furniture, with his wife mamy. international corporate muscle arrives in the form of an iKea superstore right next to Harold’s business. This signals the downfall in his fortunes, they lose shop and home

Dennis Washington: “I don’t know If I’ve ever spent as much tIme wIth the dIrector scoutIng locatIons”

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Easy RidER. Just about everyone’s favourite road movie, on location in new orleans

and on top of that mamy begins to lose her hold on reality. Harold gives in to frustration and decides to take revenge by kidnapping the man he identifies as the author of his distress, the founder of iKea, ingvar Kamprad. He arms himself with a pistol and takes to the road in his old saab, his destination almhult, sweden. The first person he meets in sweden is ebba, a lonely 16-year-old girl who is enthused by the plan. against the odds this odd couple manages to abduct Kamprad. Unfortunately for them Kamprad seems quite happy to be kidnapped as an opportunity to boost his public image.

Berit Tilly from the swedish Lapland Film Commission first heard about the project at The Norwegian international Film Festival in Haugesund, in 2012. “it was on a pitch session and i thought it was a great story. Later that year i was contacted by production companies mer Film and migma Film. They also contacted Per-erik svensson at our regional film fund, Filmpool Nord, who decided to co-produce this film in our region,” she says.

They where looking for reliable snow and filmed in mainly in Kalix municipality, and smaller shoots in Boden, Luleå and Haparanda.

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Working in climates like Swedish Lapland has obvious advantages when looking for beautiful landscape and reliable snow, but there can be some side effects. “Everything went very well except when we were to shoot a set that was supposed to burn,” says Daniel Andersson, line producer at Migma Film. “We built the set in an isolated warehouse in Kalix, in a week when it was -5º, and the day we shot it had dropped to -24º. With the result that the water in the sprinkler system that was supposed to put out the fire froze to ice in one second and created a very nice ice-skating rink. So we had to reset the scene by scraping ice instead of mopping up the water.”

There will always be an audience for road movies and more are on the way. An upcoming period road movie, from Leonardo DiCaprio’s Appian Way Productions, shot recently entirely in Colorado. Dear Eleanor, directed

by Kevin Connelly, is a coming-of-age story about best friends travelling across the US in 1962 in order to meet their childhood hero Eleanor Roosevelt.

A To B stars Fahad Albutairi, Yousra El Lozy and Shadi AlFons as three childhood friends who reunite to travel from Abu Dhabi to Beirut in memory of a lost friend. The locations cover Abu Dhabi, Bahrain, Jordan and Lebanon, and the story follows a familiar theme — characters stuck in a car, confronting memories and misunderstandings, and renewing friendships.

And in a new twist, part of the funding for A To Be comes from Jaguar Land Rover. Could this be the start of a long and loving relationship between the cinema and the automotive industry? We shall see …

•

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Straight Story, a war veteran decides to visit his estranged brother after hearing of his stroke.

Without a driving licence, Straight makes the 390-kilometre journey from his home in Laurens, Iowa to Mt Zion in Wisconsin on his lawn mower.

The Coen brothers’ O Brother Where Art Thou (2000), atmospherically filmed largely in Mississippi, was a mishap-strewn road trip loosely based on elements of Homer’s Odyssey. And in a more conventional road odyssey Gael Carcia Bernal, playing a young Che Guevara, and his friend Alberto (Rodrigo De la Serna) take a long trip through South America in The Motorcycle Diaries (2004) during which they develop revolutionary politics.

Alexander Payne’s Sideways (2004) mixes pathos and comedy, following a couple of ill-matched friends on a trip into California wine country before one of them is due to be married.

California is also the setting for Little Miss Sunshine (2006), a trip to fulfil the dreams of pageant success for a young girl whose family is forced to confront some of its deepest wounds with wry comedy.

In the Coen brothers’ No Country For Old Men (2007) blood was liberally spilt across New Mexico and Texas in the chase by hitman Javier Bardem to recover money from Josh Brolin.

A recent example of an extreme road movie would be Sean Penn’s Into The Wild (2007), detailing the travels of maverick young american Christopher McCandless, who sets off on a series of travels up and down the west coast of the US with tragic consequences.

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bumbling salesman played by John Candy. Midnight Run (1988) sees ex-cop bounty hunter, Robert De Niro, delivering an accountant, Charles Grodin, who has embezzled from a mob boss, resulting in an unlikely bromance.

Also in 1988, Rain Man, sees Tom Cruise driving his autistic brother across the country to his lawyer in California, with a view to boosting his side of the family inheritance, and instead finding brotherly love. Locations cross Ohio, Kentucky, Oklahoma as well as Nevada and California.

Escape from a dull weekend — or a dull life — leads to unforeseen tragedy in 1991’s Thelma & Louise, directed by Ridley Scott. Good friends Thelma (Geena Davis) and Louise (Susan Sarandon) decide to take a road trip in Louise’s Thunderbird convertible, but when a bar-stop goes wrong and an aggressive stranger attempts to rape Thelma, Louise looses control and shoots him dead. Who knew the best buddies-on-the-road movie would star two women? The film was shot extensively in Utah and California.

In Natural Born Killers (1994) directed by Oliver Stone, maniac killers Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis leave a trail of blood as they make their way across the southwestern states committing mass killings for fun.

Chaos reigns in Terry Gilliam’s 1998 film version of the notorious novel by Hunter S Thompson, Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas, when Johnny Depp takes a red 1971 Chevrolet Impala convertible on a wild trip — in all meanings of the word — back and forth across the Nevada desert.

In David Lynch’s 1999 true story of Alvin Straight, The

Well it’s a long trek along the long roads of movie history and the best of the best road movies cover every genre from comedy through action, drama and thriller. Some are worthy of being called iconic, a much over-used description, but in these cases true.

Whether it’s seeing the Joad family strapping their possessions on to their overladen truck, the Blues Brothers sitting on the hood of the Bluesmobile, Kit leaning moody and menacingly on a big Cadillac in Badlands, Bonnie and Clyde posing with guns and cigars up against their getaway car, or Thelma and Louise driving over the canyon and into movie history — and perhaps the most iconic of them all, Wyatt and Billy riding their bikes through the landscape of America, changing lanes, looking cool and searching for freedom. What could be better than that?

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Whatever your Film, Television or advertising needs. The regions leading production centre - Fox Studios Australia offers an extensive range of state of the art facilities, stages and a convenient location to help you deliver your project on time and on budget.

Contact the team to discuss your requirements or to arrange a site visit.

For more information visit foxstudiosaustralia.com

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or phone +61 2 9383 4134

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DIRECTOR DAVID MICHOD (LEFT) ON LOCATION IN SOUTH AUSTRALIA FOR THE ROVER, WITH ACTORS ROBERT PATTINSON AND GUY PEARCE.

A DRIVE INTO THE FUTURE MAKING A SCENE A REMOTE AUSTRALIAN TOWN, EXTREME HEAT, NO MOBILE-PHONE NETWORK — THE PERFECT SETTING FOR A ROAD MOVIE...

T

H E LATEST in a long and fine line

of Australian road movies — that includes everything from dystopic thrillers in the Mad Max series (1979-) to the quirky odyssey The Adventures Of Priscilla, Queen Of The Desert (1994) — The Rover is set in a scary and unpredictable near future.

Director David Michôd was keen to set the mood as a conceivable future of social and economic decay, rather than a post-apocalyptic fantasy. He wanted to create a world that “mirrors the American and Australian gold rushes of the 19th century. This isn’t a complete collapse of society, it’s an inversion of presentday global power dynamics. This is Australia as a resource-rich Third World country. This is the

violence and unrest of contemporary Sierra Leone, DRC, Nigeria and Guinea,” he says.

The story follows Eric (Guy Pearce) whose only possession, his car, is stolen. He pursues the thieves and along the way forges an unlikely alliance with the younger brother (Robert Pattinson) of a member of the gang who was left behind after another robbery.

Shot during a hot Australian summer between January and March 2013, the film took in the beauty and starkness of the Flinders Ranges, and visited towns including Quorn, Bruce, Hammond, Parachilna and Leigh Creek. The longest stay (three weeks) was in Marree, a small town of 90 inhabitants eight hours north of Adelaide, chosen when Porchlight Films’ producer Liz Watts and Michôd were souting the area. The Marree Hotel housed the cast and crew and members of the local population even took small roles in the film. The isolated location — there was only one phone line and no mobile phone reception — engendered a sense of camaraderie that developed between locals,

cast and filmmakers. Actor Pattinson says: “You develop a great bond, and I haven’t had that for a while. You don’t get that so much with big studio movies.”

Production designer Jo Ford also recognised the advantages: “In South Australia you can virtually walk up to anyone’s door, bang on it, say, ‘I want to see what you’ve got to offer by way of sets,’ and they’ll only be too happy.

“We’ve made lots of friends and their stories became our back stories for The Rover. If I come back to do another film in South Australia, I’ll be knocking on those doors again.”

A big concern for the production was the weather, which at times can regularly hit 50º in this area, but everyone coped well with the situation. Watts says: “We wanted the audience to be feeling that heat and we’ve really achieved that.”

Of the Flinders Ranges, Michôd says: “I wanted there to be hills yet some parts that felt busted and urban and other parts that felt entirely desolate, while it was still important that some parts were strangely beautiful. It became quite apparent that that sort of variety in a not-toodaunting geographical sphere could best be found in the Flinders Ranges.”

Shooting in Australia meant the production was able to tap into significant investment through federal agency Screen Australia, with state bodies South Australian Film Corporation (for shooting in South Australia) and Screen NSW (for post-production in Sydney) also backing the film.

• The Rover is a Porchlight Films/Lava Bear Films production in association with South Australian Film Corporation, Screen NSW, Yoki Inc and Blue-Tongue Films. Distribution is by FilmNation for the majority of worldwide rights, working alongside UTA Independent Film Group in the US, and Roadshow Films in Australia and New Zealand. Lava Bear also brought in distribution relationships with certain territories.

South Australia: Rover country.

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•

“The ability of South Australia to offer dramatic, unique and stunning landscapes, mixed with towns of distinctive original character, all supported by world class facilities was a major part of our decision to shoot in South Australia,” said Liz Watts, producer of The Rover.

To discuss shooting in South Australia contact Jo Mulcahy – jo.mulcahy@safilm.com.au safilm.com.au • adelaidestudios.com.au

Guy Pearce and Robert Pattinson.

Established 1972.

Image: Flinders Ranges, Outback SA courtesy of the South Australian Tourism Commission. Still by Matt Nettheim © Rover Film Holdings 2013.

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40 YEARS A SLAVE MAKING A SCENE

THE EXTRAORDINARY STORY OF AMINATA DIALLO’S 40-YEAR QUEST FOR FREEDOM IS RE-TOLD IN A TELEVISION ADAPTATION OF WRITER LAWRENCE HILL’S THE BOOK OF NEGROES. JULIAN NEWBY SPOKE TO THE PEOPLE BEHIND THE EPIC MINI-SERIES

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L

OUIS gossett Jr, Cuba gooding Jr, Aunjanue ellis and Lyriq bent star in The book of negroes, a mini-series from Conquering Lion Pictures, out of Africa entertainment and independent studio entertainment one Television (eone) for beT networks in the Us and CbC in Canada.

The series is based on the million-selling, Commonwealth Writers’ Prize-winning novel

by Lawrence Hill, selected by The oprah Magazine as a top 2010 summer read. It tells the extraordinary story of Aminata Diallo, who is kidnapped by slave traders in West Africa and enslaved in south Carolina. she experiences the American revolutionary War in new York, the isolation of nova scotia where she seeks refuge, and the jungles of sierra Leone, before finding freedom in england at the beginning of the 19th century.

Carrie stein, executive vice-president of global production at Canada’s eone, says that when The book of negroes project first came to her the last thing she thought she wanted to see on her desk was a six-hour American slave story. “I thought ‘oh my god, where am I selling this thing?’,” she says. “And then I read it, and the scripts were unbelievable. I read them before I read the book, and they were so compelling that it just got me and grabbed me by the throat and I became determined to find the financing. And when that happens with a piece of material it takes on a whole other feel.” stein was nonetheless uncertain as to what kind of network might buy the series. “I started making the rounds in the Us and pitching my heart out and somebody mentioned to me that beT had aired [Alex Haley’s] roots and had gotten four million viewers. I thought ‘Wow! If you can bring in four million for a 30-year-old project and that kind of event, I should go and talk to them about this.’ And I did and it was one of the easiest sales I’ve made, from that point on, because when you get the right buyer who is looking for an event that speaks to their market it just makes it so much easier.”

The book of negroes started out as a feature film, but the epic nature of the story soon convinced the producers that more time was needed to do it justice. “I’d been tracking the progress of the book with my business partner Clement Virgo, the director of the mini-series,” says Damon D’oliveira, producer on the series and co-founder of Conquering Lion Pictures. “We approached Larry [Hill] to co-write it and he loved that idea as he’d been trying to transition into writing for TV. originally we had contemplated this as a feature film, then we realised part way through it served much better as an epic mini-series. The book is about 500-plus pages, and we felt that it expanded into six

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The LOUrenSfOrd WIne eSTaTe along lourensford road in somerset West doubles for appleby’s plantation in south Carolina

Carrie Stein “I mean I loved Twelve Years a slave, buT IT was unrelenTIng”

very clear chapters. she takes five boat journeys through the course of the miniseries leading her to a total of 10 different locations and countries.”

The series began shooting in south Africa, which D’oliveira refers to as ‘location central’. “We knew about Cape Town because we’d been here to shoot a very low-budget independent film in 2003. so we knew that it has a fair number of older historic locations including The Castle of good Hope, right in the middle of the city where we’ve shot six of our locations — for example it has doubled as period Manhattan, as south Carolina, and as a jail in nova scotia. It’s very versatile, its very accessible, and it’s in the city centre.”

The crew was also able to shoot forests, river banks and the ocean all within easy reach of Cape Town. “It has a bunch of different influences and many, many

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different looks and it’s a very film-friendly environment,” D’oliveira says. “We managed to get great production values out of what we shot there. We actually built a big set-piece for our second episode, which was a big south Carolina plantation house. We were able to do that at Lourensford, one of the lovely wine estates in Cape Town.”

Talented crews were on-hand too, while the co-production treaty between Canada and south Africa smoothed the path further.

Conquering Lion’s African partner on the production is out of Africa Productions, which is headed-up by producer Lance samuels who has joint south African-Canadian nationality. “That was the other determining factor in us coming here,” D’oliveira says. but south Africa wasn’t the production’s first choice. The team was first drawn to the

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Caribbean as it is closer to Canada and also in the same time zone. but “it didn’t quite feel African enough for us”, D’oliveira says. “And after our first scout we were taken across probably 2,000 miles of south Africa, and the diversity of the locations and the geography of the country, there’s so much — especially around the Cape Town area — that we decided that we could find everything we needed here, certainly the African sequences as well as everything for the American south.” kwazulu natal was the chosen location for the series’ jungle scenes, with Port edward as the crew’s base. “That is where our story starts, when our character is captured at a young age and taken into slavery. That’s most of the first episode which takes place in the jungle and the river valleys, and then the coastline which is relatively

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untouched — fantastically pristine beaches — along the coast of kwazulu natal.”

As the story develops Aminata moves to nova scotia. When the black Loyalists sided with british in the American revolutionary War, their reward was free passage to nova scotia. After the revolution several thousand former slaves settled and were given homes and land — and listed in the book of negroes as free men and women.

And so the production moved there too, as many of the required “wintry” scenes were difficult to mock-up in south Africa. “There our story unfolds, between shelburne, which is one of the first booming centres of industry in nova scotia, and birchtown across the bay, a black settlement where our character goes when she first lands in nova scotia,” D’oliveira says. “The great thing about shelburne is that a lot of the historical parts are still standing. They’ve played host to a lot of historical films; for roland Joffe’s The scarlet Letter (1995), they actually went in and rebuilt sections of it and that area is the backdrop for most of the story in the nova scotia section of the mini-series.” stein says there is distance between The book of negroes and two recent movie titles that have focused on the horrors of slavery.

Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained (2012) and steve McQueen’s Twelve Years A slave (2013) sent shock waves through the movie world and each in different ways. “I mean I loved Twelve Years A slave, but it was unrelenting. You just stood there and watched,” she says. “This story is different.

This story is about a woman’s struggle — for 40 years — to be free. And it’s about her survival. she’s someone who had incredible courage in a horrible situation. for example, she had learned from her mother who was a midwife, so she survived in the early stages by delivering babies, for whites and blacks alike. she had a skill and she knew that if she used any skill she had, she would get ahead. she learned how to read and write, she taught kids in new York, she made herself useful and she befriended everyone. so it’s more about her spirit, in the face of adversity.

That is more the focus of our story. obviously you see the circumstances and there are some horrific scenes — she’s raped, her baby is taken from her — so we’re not hiding the reality, it’s just that the focus is a little different.”

Loretha Jones, president of original programming, beT networks, echoes stein’s point: “Aminata and her journey symbolise the indomitable spirit of so many of our ancestors who not only survived the horrible institution of slavery, but also prevailed under trying circumstances,” she says. “It is that legacy that we hope will continue to inspire our young people today.”

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They’re all heading for asia Avengers: Age Of UltrOn shOOting in sOUth KOreA, trAnsfOrmers: Age Of extinctiOn in hOng KOng, her in chinA, mArcO POlO in mAlAysiA, mUsAshi miyAmOtO in JAPAn, the AmAzing rAce in gUAngzhOU, sUrvivOr in the PhiliPPines. WhAt hAs AttrActed these diverse internAtiOnAl PrOdUctiOns tO PArts Of AsiA? Marlene edMunds rePOrts

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A

SIA IS leading a seismic shift in the world of film and TV production and location shooting, not only generating more regional film and TV production locally, but attracting significantly more international productions.

Some signs of the times …

In early March (2014) UK-based Pinewood Shepperton signed a consultancy pact with the Dalian Wanda Group (Wanda) to advise on the design and construction of the $4.9bn Qingdao Oriental Movie Metropolis, set to open in China in 2016.

In September 2013 a coterie of Hollywood heavyweights were flown in by billionaire Wanda group chairman Wang Jianlin for the Movie Metropolis ground-breaking ceremony. There Wang predicted the Metropolis will be the world’s most advanced studio when it is opened. Among attendees was Leonardo DiCaprio, John Travolta, Catherine Zeta-Jones, The Weinstein Company (TWC) CEO Harvey Weinstein, and Lionsgate Motion Picture Group co-chairmen Rob Friedman and Patrick Wachsberger. Forbes magazine calls Wang the richest man in China. More to the point, for tinseltown stars and behind-the-scenes executives, he is the owner of AMC, the second biggest theatrical chain in the US. Pinewood Iskander Malaysia Studios was, at press time, geared-up to embark on its first shoot, Marco Polo. TWC’s $90m-budget TV series is set to be filmed entirely on location at Pinewood’s new Malaysian studios.

The Marvel Studios Avengers shoot is a major coup for South Korea. Kevin Feige, president of Marvel Studios and producer of the film, called South Korea “the perfect location for a movie of this magnitude because it features cutting-edge technology, beautiful landscapes and spectacular architecture”.

South Korea historically has no track record as a major location shoot for Hollywood productions but it has over the past 10 years put some 11 film commissions in place and built up an enviable infrastructure and invest- ///

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ment backing for media and film. Busan is the largest city in terms of attracting shoots, but Seoul has some 90% of Korea’s film infrastructure and production companies. The Avengers latest shoot in the capital means it could catch up fast. The four-week Seoul shoot of the Avengers: Age Of Ultron began in late March 2014. Locations include Gangnam district, made famous by South Korean K-Pop star Psy; Jamsil and Mapo Grand bridges, both of which were blasted in a terrorist attack in the 2013 local box-office hit The Terror: Live; and other spots in and around the city. The Joss Whedon sequel has qualified for a 30% rebate on production costs, with a $1.87 cap.

Seoul Film Commmission (SFC) offers as much as 25% of the total cost of location production and analysts expect it will run to more with a film like The Avengers: Age Of Ultron because of Marvel Studios’ significant brand and market value worldwide.

Since 2008, SFC has supported more than 1,000 productions, among them the shoot in August 2013 of Full House, a Thai remake of the successful South Korean romantic comedy of the same name starring Mike Angelo and Aom Sushar. Full House, a virtual showcase of Seoul tourist hotspots like Chunggyechon, One Mount Snow Park, Lotte Hotel and Rail Park, is a coproduction between Halo Productions in Thailand and Korea Thailand Communications Center (KTCC), a company with its roots in the tourism, but which in recent years has significantly diversified into film and TV. “We were looking for sites that would be new to Thai people,” says Hong Ji-Jee, CEO of KTCC, who acted as co-producer on the set and chose the locations herself. KTCC was also involved in Hello Stranger, a romantic comedy by Thai horror director Banjong Pisanthanakun. Some 80% of that shoot was also in Seoul.

The prestigious Busan International Film Festival, with its numerous panAsian sidebars, has given the city plenty of cachet worldwide. It is also a home to a growing infrastructure that includes Busan Cinema Studio, Busan Cinema Venture Center and support structures, including grant rebates, to productions and foreign features. Recent shoots include Korean director Yoon Je-Kyun’s Gukje Market and Hong Kong director Jessey Tsang Tsui-Shan’s Fragrance. Both films are using working titles.

Tsang wrapped romantic comedy Fragrance for Beijing production company Flying Vision Film & TV Media Advertising on February 8.

Director Yoon is no stranger to shooting in Busan. His 2009 film The Tidal Wave (Haeundae), shot on Haeundae Beach in Busan, was a major Korean blockbuster, followed up by Quick in 2011. In late December Yoon wrapped principal photography on the CJ Entertainment’s $13.1m production Gukje Market.

The largest traditional market in Busan, Gukje Market began as a place where refuges from North Korea could eek out a living after the Korean war.

Yoon’s film is a tale of one of those refugees.

The shoot began in December and ran into January but it required a hefty prep time for the crew to construct a total of 70 new buildings simulating the market. On the last day of the shoot, all 70 of the buildings were promptly blown up “as part of the script”, according to Busan Film Commission head of production support Phil Choy.

Tsang wrapped romantic comedy Fragrance on February 8. The co-production between China and South Korea is clearly a vehicle for Korea’s Park Si Hu, a major heart-throb in China. The three-day shoot took place in and around the city, including Haeundae Beach and Gwangan Bridge. “Busan’s shooting conditions and its locations fit our needs,” Tsang says, adding “I was looking for locations that amplified the themes of a romance but also of cultural differences between the two lovers. Gwangan Bridge, for example,

Mark Wahlberg, Nicola Peltz aNd Jack ReyNoR iN tRaNsfoRmeRs: age of extiNctioN

is an iconic and powerful symbol in Busan and as such was a perfect backdrop to some of the more romantic scenes.”

Budget constrictions limited shooting days to three but Tsang says: “We got all the shots we wanted and had a great time with the Korean film crew from October Pictures.” October Pictures’ partner and producer Charles Chul-Soo Kim admits the large number of fans showing up wherever the film was shooting was a challenge but perhaps a happy one? “Lead actor Park Si Hu is very popular in Korea, as well as China,” he says.

Hong Kong’s dense architecture, compelling skyline and modern buildings is a powerful lure. So is the fact there is no VAT or sales tax in the territory.

The Transformers: Age Of Extinction shoot with director Michael Bay “left a big footprint”, says October Pictures’ line producer for the film Chu Chen On. On was also the line producer for the Hong Kong leg of Steven Soderbergh’s 2011 film Contagion, but Transformers was a much bigger production, with a bigger crew and over 100 production vehicles used on a daily basis during the shoot. On says that Bay insisted on chase scenes and explosives scenes and personally came over to Hong Kong to check it out. “The decision in the final analysis was to do the explosives scenes and smaller car chases in Hong Kong and do the bigger car chases in Detroit.

We could have done it on the extensive scale that Michael was asking for,” he says, “but it would have been pretty complicated since the location was central Hong Kong and there is a definite limit to how much high-speed chasing in cars or even motorbikes we could do.”

October Pictures also provided production support for a chase scene on the roof, plus aerial filming and scenes on busy streets in Central Hong Kong. During the shoot, on any given day, some 300 to 600 crew were around, depending on the scene, On says. “Michael is used to having all of his equipment, all of his toys standing by for him so the footprint was big in terms of the number of people, equipment and transportation. We also got a lot of support from the Hong Kong film industry in making this shoot.”

One scene in particular involved shooting from ///

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cameras rigged on a bar that was connected to rigging wires situated right above each contestant for a great straight vertical down shot.”

The second episode was filmed at the 500-year-old Chen Family Temple where Kung Fu students practiced.

The contestants’ mission was to find the Master who was holding the next clue.

While there are many newcomers to the industry in Asia, others have made steady and significant contributions to the production of a body of films and TV series over the decades, among them Toei Studios Kyoto, built in 1926.

Toei’s latest shoot is TV Asahi’s 55th anniversary special based on the life of Japanese icon, master swordsman and author of The Book Of Five Rings, Miyamoto Musashi. Musashi is believed to be one of the most skilled swordsmen in history.

The two-episode series of 150 minutes each, directed

by Ryosuke Kanesaki with lead role of Musashi played

by Tayuka Kimura, was shot in early January in and around Kyoto. The series features several very famous fight scenes, among them a shoot at Manpuku-ji Temple, the head temple of the Japanese Obaku Zen sect. In that scene, Musashi fights with monks from the Hozoin-ryu school of martial arts who specialised in spearfighting.

“Musashi won the swordfight but he wasn’t happy about it,” says Ken Takahashi, production supervisor at Toei Studios. Later, Hozoin, the monk warrior who founded the school, told Musashi he needs to learn to be weak.

“The scene has great meaning to Japanese people,” Takahashi says. “It depicts a moment when Musashi realises that he’s been very egotistical and in essence is able to move to another level in what it takes to be a great warrior.”

Takahashi is no stranger to the history of martial arts in Japan. His grandfather was prominent martial arts master Takuma Hisa. Takahashi says: “The scene is important because the Japanese see fighting and sword work historically very differently from the Western point of view. Western filmmakers often see sword fighting as

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helicopters and explosions right in front of the Hong Kong Central Government Office where, among others, Hong Kong Chief Executive C Y Leung works. Clearances were required from the police, the Central Government Office management, and the Civil Aviation Department. “It took over six months from application to receiving final approval for the explosives scene to take place,” On says.

The US special-effects crew worked side by side with Hong Kong specialeffects people on the explosion scenes. “Essentially Michael was doing something that would not normally be permitted in such a densely populated area,” On says. “So the US team designed how the effects were to be done but locally licensed pyrotechnics specialists were required to be present during shooting.”

Prepping for the high-speed chases, including arranging prop cars, road closures and police liaison for intermittent traffic control, took months as well. “Some signature picture vehicles of Transformers were flown in to Hong Kong particularly for the shoot,” On says. “We needed to apply for a special movement permit in Hong Kong as the Transformers are not locally registered vehicles that can be used on the street. Some are worth over $2m.”

The roof chase scene at Quarry Bay involved a 20-storey residential complex that included small stores on the ground floor. “Basically Michael liked it because it had a lot of character. From the outside it looks like one huge edifice but it is actually three to five buildings. For us, it was perfect as we wanted a scene where you had to jump from rooftop to rooftop.”

Most of the time, On says, “people don’t try to do this kind of rooftop chase in real locations. Prior to the shoot, we brought in a structural engineer who advised on building stunt-rigs and a shock absorbing support structure underneath the roof.”

Over on the Chinese mainland, Gung-Ho Films has been leaving a fairsized footprint of its own as Chinese partner for a number of shoots since it launched in 2000. It finished its shooting stint in Shanghai as Chinese partner for the Spike Jonze movie Her and then made tracks in mid-November to the south in Guangzhou.

Jonze won the 2014 Best Original Screenplay Oscar for Her. “He chose Shanghai because its modern interiors and exteriors perfectly fit the director’s vision of what LA might look like in the not too distant future,” says Gung-Ho Films executive producer and founder Michael McDermott.

McDermott adds: “He especially liked the many elevated pedestrian sky bridges in the new business district of Shanghai. The film’s main actor could walk along these bridges above the traffic, and the audience wouldn’t get distracted thinking about the what the cars looked like, and not focus on the story.”

Gung-Ho Films has been the local production partner in China for the Emmy-winning US reality show The Amazing Race (2001-) since season six began filming in 2004. “In all that time, we’d shot in many big cities but not Guangzhou. So in mid-November of last year after a 10-week prep time we shot two episodes, one focused on modern Guangzhou and another on the traditional area. They were aired Feb 23 and March 2 on CBS in the US and in over 50 territories.

McDermott says: “For the episode focused on modern Guangzhou, we shot in and around the brand new Zaha Hadid-designed Guangzhou Opera House; Canton Tower, the tallest building in Guangzhou; and the Asian Games Stadium. In the second episode we captured the traditional side. Formerly known as Canton, Guangzhou is a very old city and was a major trade centre in Southern China for centuries.

“Getting permission to film at the Asian Games stadium wasn’t something granted easily,” McDermott says. “This, combined with our being able to get a professional Chinese group of riggers from Beijing that had been involved in rigging for the Opening Ceremonies for both the 2008 Beijing Olympics, and the 2012 Asian Games in Guangzhou, was a signal to us that we were off to a good start.”

In the stadium, three separate rigs were raised 20 metres in the air and a hook was rigged to the massive lighting grids at the top of the stadium.

“The contestants were hoisted up and essentially had to complete five flips in the air before getting their next clue,” McDermott says. “We also had GoPro

michael mcdermott “[shanghai] perfectly fit the director’s vision of what la might look like in the not too distant future” about strength and competition but in Japan, it is about refinement of spirit.”

Toei needs no licenses or special permission to shoot at Manpuku-ji or any of the other temples in Kyoto. “They trust us. We’ve been here for 88 years so we’re not going to run away,” Takahashi says.

Another famous sword fight featuring martial arts master Sasaki Kojiro was shot at the 17th century Nijo castle, where Kojiro fights some 20 Samurai and wins.

“Essentially this scene is building up to the final scene, which is a very famous and historical sword fight between Kojiro and Musashi.” That scene was filmed at Lake ///

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Biwa, the largest freshwater lake in Japan, near Kyoto.

The two-week shoot used HMI lighting, with camera and crew from both Tokyo and Kyoto. Stunt and action choreography was by Kenji Tanigaki (The Monkey King, 2014; Special ID, 2013), with costumes by Kazuhiro Sawataishi and Japanese Academy Award-winner Takeshi Matsuda.

Another industry veteran, Lope Juban, was a production assistant at the age of 15 on Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now (1979) when he met and worked with Martin Sheen. Nine years later, he worked as a line producer with Charlie Sheen on Oliver Stone’s Platoon (1986). Through the years Juban has worked on facilities and production support for some of the biggest films in Hollywood, including Universal Pictures’ The Bourne Legacy (2012).

Juban is now head of the 35-year-old family owned Philippine Film Studios and was the principal line producer as well as an executive producer on the 28th season of CBS reality show Survivor (2000-). No stranger to the show, Juban had already worked two other seasons of Survivor in the Philippines when in 2012 the producers started talking about doing yet another Philippines shoot.

“My mission was to find a total wilderness, something that had never been shot in before. But we also needed to have accommodation for as many as 300 crew nearby.” It was a tall order, he admits, but adds: “We found what we needed in Palaui, a remote island and protected marine reserve some 15 minutes by boat off the northern coastal town of Santa Ana in Cagayan.” It worked perfectly, Juban says, adding that the castaways were taken undercover to Palaui where they were filmed.

The government cordoned off the area so that they had the feeling of total isolation and had no idea that they were just a 15-minute boat ride away from a five-star hotel or even the tiny community of some 600 residents on the island of Palaui.

The crew of some 300, most from the US and Australia, and some 70 local crew working for Philippines Film Studios, booked into the Cagayan Holiday and Leisure Resort in April and the series Survivor: Blood Vs Water and Survivor: Cagayan wrapped some four months later. The actual shoot took place from July 11 to August 18, 2013.

The people from Survivor Entertainment Group, Mark Burnett’s US pro-

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Aom SuShAr (centre), outside seoul’s lotte Hotel in A scene For Full House, A co-production between HAlo productions in tHAilAnd And KoreA tHAilAnd communicAtions center

duction company, brought all of their equipment with them while Philippine Film Studios provided crew assistants, accountants, art department staff, local transport as well as design experts. Philippine Film Studios also provided security guards, not so much against theft, but to make sure that there were no outsiders filming the castaways or taking photos of the location.

While the Philippines offers no incentives or subsidies — this is under consideration for the future — Juban says that shooting is very cost-effective. “We are not that far from Hong Kong and Malaysia but we are still competitive and a lot cheaper than any other area in Southeast Asia.”

lope juban “my mission was to find a total wilderness. but we needed to have accommodation for as many as 300 crew” Salaries for the Filipino professional crew were comparable to typical foreign rates but Juban says that the local workers on Palaui included some 250 residents, who were paid twice the wages that they might normally make.

Survivor wanted to give something back to the community and so donated the cost of building an Eco Lodge to the island residents. Juban says: “No one is allowed to stay overnight as there were no facilities for that. The Eco Lodge is a very simple guest lodge where they can receive tourists who want to rest up. There are no sleeping quarters on the island.”

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L O V E LY I F T H E B R E A K F A S T I S T H E F I R S T H I G H L I G H T O F T H E DAY.

O R E N J O Y A N O V E RW H E L M I N G V I E W AT YO U R F U N C T I O N .

Led by the French design studio Jouin Manku the breakfast and function room, Roofgarden features a comprehensive re-design and was transformed into a new meeting hot spot: the breakfast buffet will offer an even wider range of products as well as an à-la-carte breakfast area. The addition of a modern lounge and bar area with an open fireplace offers also a large new event space merging with the Blue Spa designed by André Putman to form a new unit.

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Phone + 49 89.21 20 - 0 Fax + 49 89.21 20 - 906

www.bayerischerhof.de info@bayerischerhof.de

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A seemingly increAsing number of reAl-life drAmAs Are feeding the minds of filmmAkers Around the world. some hAve hAppy endings — for exAmple, the 33. gary smith reports

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GreG Brilliant “Because there is no moisture, there is no shade at all out there”

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eatURe film the 33 recounts the harrowing, real-life story of 33 miners trapped 800 metres underground in a Chilean gold and copper mine. the drama and tension of their time underground, and the efforts of their families to force the authorities to keep on trying to find a way through the huge slab of rock blocking their escape, form the twin poles of a film directed by Patricia Riggen (Girl In Progress, 2012) and starring Antonio Banderas, Juliette Binoche, Oscar Nuñez, Gabriel Byrne and Kate del Castillo.

As with any film that has physical separation at its core, the crew had to deal with two very different worlds, each of which presented considerable logistical challenges. Filming began in early December of 2013 in two Colombian salt mines, locations chosen for purely practical reasons.

Chile — as seen in the north of the country on April 1, 2013, when a magnitude 8.2 quake shook the region around Valparaíso — is prone to earthquakes, consequently the producers chose two Colombian mines situated just outside Bogota.

“I don’t think an insurer exists who would underwrite 200 crew and actors being up to one mile underground in an earthquake zone,” Greg Brilliant, the film’s publicist, says. “And in fact, one of the unanswered questions still swirling around this story is whether the collapse which trapped the miners in the first place was cause by an earthquake. the owners of the mine insist that the incident was an act of God.” Director Riggen takes up the story: “the world of the trapped miners was shot within working salt mines located in Colombia,” she says. “We actually filmed — sometimes up to a mile deep — inside two different working mines. this was the darkest place imaginable, with a complete absence of any natural light. From a financial point of view, filming half the movie in Colombia gave us access to a substantial economic incentive programme, which allowed us make the film with the huge cinematic scale and scope that is needed for the story and that audiences will want to see. It would not have been financially feasible to shoot this film in the way we did anywhere else.”

PatRicia Riggen directs the 33

the team behind the 33 THE TEAM behind The 33 includes producers Mike Medavoy (Black Swan, Shutter Island), Robert Katz (Crash, Seabiscuit) and Edward McGurn (Land Of Plenty, Shutter Island). Director of photography is Checco Varese (The Aura, Girl In Progress). Screenplay is by Craig Borten (Dallas Buyers Club) and Michael Thomas (The Devil’s Double). Wardrobe designer is Paco Delgado (Les Miserables, Biutiful). Editor is Ronald Sanders (Crash, Naked Lunch). Director Patricia Riggen says of the production: “The visual effects are stunning and huge in scale and scope as overseen

by Oscar-winning visual effects team Alex Henning and Ben Grossman, who have worked on some of the best VFX films of the last few years, including Hugo, Star Trek Into Darkness, Alice In Wonderland, Shutter Island and 2012. And our production designer Marco Niro has worked on such award winning films as Master And Commander, Jarhead, Troy, Titanic and The Chronicles Of Narnia: The Voyage Of The Dawn Treader. We are aiming to have the film ready to be distributed worldwide by late 2014.”

the contrast with the above-ground scenes shot in Chile could not have been starker: “Our exteriors, including Camp hope, were filmed in Chile’s stunning and remote Atacama Desert — the harshest, driest spot on earth — just a few kilometres from where the actual event occurred at Mina San José,” Riggen adds. “In contrast to our interior location, the Atacama Desert is, perhaps, the brightest place on earth, with not a cloud in the sky, neither a drop of moisture, nor a blade of grass or even a living insect. It was an otherworldly landscape and a dramatically-beautiful canvas

due to its remoteness and harshness.”

It was also utterly devoid of creature comforts. “the local crew was fantastic, and also very involved with the narrative because this is still a huge story within Chile,” Brilliant says. “Although we were above ground, in every other sense this part of the shoot was every bit as challenging as being in the mine, because we were around 14 hours drive from Santiago de Chile, in the driest place on earth, so we had to bring absolutely everything with us. that means there were hydration and safety issues, but also just keeping up the stamina of the crew takes on a whole new dimension. And of course, because there is no moisture, there is no shade at all out there.”

Both shoots presented serious logistical challenges, but much like the local crew, everyone involved had some emotional investment in the outcome: “this project is an important story and I feel a great deal of responsibility in correctly bringing this tale of faith, courage and, ultimately, of triumph of the human spirit to the big screen,” Riggen says. “While we were making an entertaining, thrilling and emotionally dramatic film, one of the reasons we are so enthusiastic about this project is that movies [like the 33] have the ability to not only entertain but to inform and educate a larger audience. It’s only with the world’s support and understanding that certain situations can change.

While mine workers around the world organise to defend their rights and protect their health and safety in the workplace, the painful fact is that miners, like the minerals they produce, are still treated as a disposable resource.”

•

24/04/14 15:12

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(Photo, courtesy Michael O’Neill © Film New Zealand)

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