The makers of the Fast & Furious action franchise have asked fans to suggest filming locations for the next movie. Fast & Furious 7 is scheduled for release in July 2014 and the filmmakers have used Facebook to ask for location filming ideas.
Shreveport in north-west Louisiana plans to launch more crew training programmes to help boost the region’s production industry. Louisiana is one of America’s main production hubs but filming tends to focus on New Orleans and state capital Baton Rouge in the south-east.
Santa Clarita, just north of Los Angeles in California, boosted its location filming days by nearly 20% in the 2012/13 fiscal year. The city recorded 1,069 shoot days and local production spending rose nearly 25% on the previous year.
Hallmark will be filming on location in North Carolina for its Hallmark Hall of Fame anthology TV movie Christmas in Conway. The film will follow in the footsteps of Iron Man 3 and the first Hunger Games, and will be based at Wilmington production house Post 1200.
Los Angeles has been promised a film chief – or ‘czar’ – at City Hall to help tackle the city’s persistent runaway production problem. New figures from FilmLA have revealed a fall in the proportion of television pilots filmed on location in Los Angeles.
[slideshow id=370]RSA Films and director Jake Scott doubled Uruguay for a period Cuba in a new series of spots for Bacardi. The ¡Vivimos! campaign recreates the experiences of revolutionary underground leader Emilio Bacardi during the Cuban Wars of Independence at the turn of the 20th Century.
Disney has won approval for a plan to expand its Los Angeles film studio facilities at the Golden Oak Ranch in Santa Clarita. The regional planning commission approved the plan that is set to involve the development of 12 sound stages.
Filmmaker JJ Abrams has revealed he would have preferred to film the new Star Wars movie on location in California, rather than in the UK. Speaking at the Produced By Conference in Los Angeles, Abrams spoke of the inconvenience of moving his family to the UK for the shoot.