HBO’s new TV feature Hemingway & Gellhorn filmed entirely in and around San Francisco, but the city doubles for locations around the world. It stars Clive Owen and Nicole Kidman and charts the true-life relationship between Ernest Hemingway and famous war correspondent Martha Gellhorn.
[slideshow id=263]Caviar has brough organised chaos to the streets of Prague in a new commercial for epic sci-fi video game Mass Effect 3. The spot is mostly live-action and shows carnage on the streets, as civilians take shelter from the horror of invasion and a soldier takes on the attackers amid the rubble.
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.
Scotland should offer its own specific filming tax breaks, a Scottish TV executive says. Alan Clements is Head of Content at STV and spoke this week at an Edinburgh conference, The Scotsman reports. He argued that filming tax breaks for Scotland could help the country compete with Ireland.
San Francisco may be the setting for new TV show Alcatraz, but Vancouver is the main filming location. The JJ Abrams-produced show filmed exteriors in San Francisco for a few weeks last year, but the bulk of the first season’s shoot took advantage of British Columbia’s filming incentives.
Major shoots for Brad Pitt’s World War Z and Cloud Atlas helped feed more than GBP20 million into Glasgow’s economy throughout 2011, according to figures from the city’s film office. World War Z delivered nearly GBP3.5 million when it turned the city centre into Philadelphia for nearly 20 days.
Banking giant Santander has chosen the Farnborough International Venue & Events (FIVE) building near London to film its new commercial. The spot shows McLaren F1 drivers Jenson Button and Lewis Hamilton helping a team build an oversized Formula One racing car out of Lego bricks.
MJZ and Prettybird were honoured last week at the 2011 Ciclope International Advertising Craft Festival in Buenos Aires. Gran Prix prizes went to Smuggler for its Puma project After Hours Athlete and to Prettybird for The Simple Orchestra. MJZ won Production Company of the Year.