Written by new-contact on Oct 16, 2014. Posted in On Location

Santa Clarita annexes California movie ranches to reduce filming costs

Santa Clarita, a city in northern Los Angeles County, has annexed three movie ranches to further reduce the cost of local filming. The city has a series of movie ranches that offer various standing sets within easy reach of the major Hollywood studios.

Blue Cloud Movie Ranch, recently used as a stand-in for Afghanistan in Clint Eastwood’s upcoming true-life drama American Sniper (right), is one of the three latest ranches to be annexed. The location joins a list that already includes Rancho Maria, Sable Movie Ranch and A Rancho Deluxe.

Santa Clarita is within Hollywood’s 30-Mile Zone and the ranches themselves all fall within the city’s Movie Ranch Overlay Zone, which means that permits are cheaper and are processed more quickly.

“The film industry has been a part of Santa Clarita’s business community for more than a century,” said Laurene Weste, Mayor of Santa Clarita: “We are one of the busiest film communities in Los Angeles County and are committed to developing innovative programmes and incentives that help keep the state’s signature industry right here.”

Santa Clarita is one of California’s most popular filming locations, with the number of shoot days having risen in recent years while the rest of the state has suffered from a long-term runaway production problem. This August film days in the city rose by nearly 20% compared to the same period last year.

Melody Ranch Motion Picture Studio is one of the most popular facilities in Santa Clarita and in recent years its Western standing sets have been used for the TV series Deadwood and Quentin Tarantino’s slavery drama Django Unchained.

Location filming in Santa Clarita could get a further boost next year from California’s improved state filming incentive. From 2015 the state's annual fund will be more than tripled and support will be expanded to big-budget films and high-end TV dramas.

(Main page photo: Chevy111 at English Wikipedia)