DAVID CRONENBERG AND RIAN JOHNSON HAVE SPOKEN VERY POSITIVELY ABOUT GREEK CREWS

PANOS KOUANIS

According to Jonathan Mees of the Netherlands Film Commission, doubling for Dunkirk in Northern France — for Christopher Nolan’s 2017 flm Dunkirk — was one of the biggest challenges his team has had to face in the last few years: “It required a complete rewrite of the airworthiness certifcates for the original Spitfres to have them be allowed to fy in Dutch airspace. On top of that, the approach routes for civil aircraft landing and taking of from Amsterdam Schiphol Airport go right over Lake IJsselmeer where the Spitfres would be fying. Following consultations with the various responsible ministries and authorities, we had their full co-operation and they issued the ofcially required documents without a problem.”

Unsurprisingly, Amsterdam as a cityscape is the most sought-after location in the Netherlands, both for general shots and specifcally for scripts in which Amsterdam serves as a backdrop for the unfolding story. “Amsterdam ofers totally unique architecture dating back to the early 17th century,” Mees says. “But since the city is nearly always congested with tourism, conferences, delivery vans and flm shoots, the mayor of Amsterdam has drawn up a new Protocol

Swarm Over Puglia

“THANKS to its richness of colours, Puglia — a southern region of Italy that forms the heel of the country’s “boot” — has reproduced a range of very diferent places and periods, for example for the international thriller series The Swarm. It was flmed in various countries including Italy and, specifcally, in Puglia, in two Apulian cities," Apulia flm commissioner Toni Cavalluzzi, says. "Trani doubled for a French seaside village and Otranto for scenes set both in Norway and in Scotland’s Shetland Islands. The Promised Land, the upcoming flm by Michael Winterbottom, is set in Palestine in the late 1940s and Puglia was chosen for most of the scenes. It’s a region with many diferent looks including an enchanted place for fantastic stories such as the TV series The Wheel of Time, or for Matteo Garrone's Pinocchio. Puglia has also been the wasteland in which the Western series That Dirty Black Bag is set. Puglia has also showcased its castles in Tale of Tales and Wonder Woman. The scene in No Time to Die, where James Bond falls from a bridge, was flmed on the bridge of the aqueduct at Gravina in Puglia.” for Filming in the city, with fewer permits being issued due to the high impact on residents and businesses. This has led to the new policy, where the Netherlands Film Commission is now working alongside the city authorities to make the most popular and requested flming locations in Amsterdam's central canal district available in a virtual production studio.”

And while Amsterdam is genuinely a unique place, it’s the skies above that Mees and many flmmakers love the most. “Everyone knows Rembrandt, Vermeer and Van Gogh. And one thing that inspired them all is the magnifcent and uniquely luminescent Dutch light,” he says. “Those painters are no longer with us, but the Dutch light is still an inspiration for flmmakers and DoPs from around the world. Over the IJsselmeer, you fnd skies that are interspersed with soft light and cloud formations the likes of which you never see anywhere else. And down below, there’s the IJsselmeer, a non-tidal lake that’s only 12 feet deep, making it the largest freshwater outdoor studio in Europe.”

The Gods Blessed Game Of Thrones

YOU OFTEN hear the term otherworldly in relation to Iceland, so no surprise that Game of Thrones shot multiple scenes there. "HBO came to Iceland for seven years in a row to shoot big scenes and sometimes also plate shoots, so Iceland's locations featured in many episodes" Elli

Cassata of Pegasus Pictures says. "Of all our clients, they were the luckiest with weather and 99% of the time got what they wanted. Even when it had been dry for weeks, suddenly three days prior to their arrival snow fell. Somehow the gods were looking out for them."

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