Pinewood Studios has signed an agreement to set up a new centre of excellence that will provide young people with specialist training in the screen industries. Courses will focus on visual effects, videogames and support services.
New Mexico will benefit from longer-term location filming doubling for Wyoming when TV crime drama Longmire returns. Shooting for the show’s second season gets underway in the next few weeks in Santa Fe as long-term Albuquerque resident Breaking Bad comes to an end.
London’s Underground train network remains a popular filming location in the year of its 150th anniversary. A dedicated Film Office liaises between Location Managers and specific stations, and the network hosts around a dozen features every 12 months, plus numerous smaller projects.
Dublin-based Maxfilms has shot a new spot for Bank of Ireland on location in a remote lighthouse in County Donegal. The commercial shows an operator changing the lighthouse bulb on a stormy night as a visual metaphor for the bank’s commitment to its customers.
Alexandra Palace lies in north-east London and offers a great mix of location filming opportunities for film productions. The palace itself is steeped in 140 years of history, while nearly 200 acres of parkland include a deer enclosure and an old race course.
Arctic Air, a fictional Canadian TV drama focussing on the lives of bush pilots, filmed partly on location in Canada’s Northwest Territories for its new series. The show films mainly in and around Vancouver in British Columbia but also travelled north to shoot real arctic vistas.
Moscow-based Metrafilms headed to Finnish Lapland for a winter campaign for Russian telecommunications firm Beeline. The spot shows revellers bringing in 2013 with a mix of snowboarding and a nightclub party.
Commercial location filming in Los Angeles in 2012 grew by 14%, growth that was fuelled partly by an increase in material filmed for the internet. This led to an overall location filming rise of nearly 5% for the city, although this figure masks a big drop in TV drama production.