Written by new-contact on Mar 2, 2012. Posted in Uncategorised

Editor’s Weekly

This week we’ve covered commercials filmed in a bay off the coast of Miami, and in the California desert. Meanwhile, filming incentives in British Columbia drive business away from San Francisco and appeals have been made in Scotland and the wider UK for improvements to national incentive programmes.

Caviar filmed a quirky new music video in Santa Clarita, California, with alternative rock band OK Go. The band’s renowned for its creativity and the joy of this spot comes from turning a Chevy Sonic into a pick and making music from a stunt driving course. The location is inevitably more of a background element, but the dusty setting creates a nice rally feel to everything that adds to the overall comedy value.

Filmmaster’s new commercial for Italian fashion brand Freddy looks like a water tank shoot, but was actually filmed in the sheltered, shallow waters of Biscayne Bay in Miami.

Filmmaster’s new commercial for Italian fashion brand Freddy shows models waking up on furniture drifting in an ocean. It looks like a water tank shoot, but was actually filmed in the sheltered, shallow waters of Biscayne Bay in Miami. The mood piece is nicely shot with eye-catching visuals that’s almost-but-not-quite pretentious and shows what you can do with reliably calm waters.

In the UK the filming industries are calling for incentive changes ahead of the Government’s 2012 Budget that’ll take place in late March. Alan Clements of STV in Scotland has called for Scotland to have its own specific set of filming incentives to help boost the country’s on-screen presence rather than just using it to double for American cities all the time.

Meanwhile, many British producers are supporting calls for a separate TV incentive scheme that would help the UK capture some of the high-end glossy TV dramas that at the moment find places like Ireland and Eastern Europe more fiscally appealing.

Many British producers are supporting calls for a separate TV incentive scheme that would help the UK capture some of the high-end glossy TV dramas that at the moment find places like Ireland and Eastern Europe more fiscally appealing.

Offering tax credits to TV productions may be lucrative in the long run, but it’s unlikely that the UK Government will be willing to feed any more money into new filming tax credit schemes anytime soon. The future of the UK’s film tax credit was considered touch-and-go until only a few months ago, and cost-efficiency was the reason the Government gave for closing the UK Film Council and launching the British Film Commission (BFC).

It could be that the producers calling for change already know this and are just looking for the debate at this stage. Once the Olympics are out of the way and the BFC and Creative England have had a year to sort themselves out and establish their specific roles, improvements are more likely to be forthcoming from the Government.

In North America the Canadians continue to steal business from the US. A recent high-profile example is the JJ Abrams-produced TV show Alcatraz. As the name suggests it centres on San Francisco’s iconic prison island, but Vancouver’s more generous TV filming incentives meant the show has only shot in San Francisco when it has absolutely had to for exterior scenes presumably focusing on the prison itself.

California is not viewed as a place that’s committed to new TV production at the moment. With this being an election year, it’s unlikely there’ll be any major legislative changes with the state’s filming incentives before 2013.

California is not viewed as a place that’s committed to new TV production at the moment. With this being an election year, it’s unlikely there’ll be any major legislative changes with the state’s filming incentives before 2013.

Also this week Gopi Darmaratnam, of The Film Team Sri Lanka, gave us a great account of how Sri Lanka is re-establishing its location filming appeal after the country’s long civil war. We also spoke to Laura Thoel, of Smuggler LA, about her location filming experiences.

As ever, our Film-Friendly Locations database continues to grow. If you manage a building or a location that you think qualifies as film-friendly, or you’ve filmed somewhere recently that you think should be listed on our website, please contact Ewa.

If you’ve got some great location filming stories to share and you’d like to be part of our profile section, or you have an idea for an article please contact Murray.

If you've been working on location anywhere in the world and you're looking for some press coverage, please contact Nick. We’d all be happy to hear from you.