Written by James Peak on Dec 21, 2009. Posted in On Location

Morocco as a filming location

Morocco has long been the go-to destination for all your high-end historical epic needs, and the list of assets is pretty mouth-watering. Deserts. Mountains. Bustling ancient and modern cityscapes. Highly skilled and experienced crews. Incredibly cheap production costs. A permanent 20% VAT reduction for shoots.

This North African hotspot does a wide spectrum of locations that have proved popular with Hollywood for at least the last thirty years. Indeed, most of Hollywood’s legendary directors, (Hitchcock, Lean, Hathaway, Welles, Huston, Scorsese) seem to have touched down in Casablanca at one time or another.

Ridley Scott filmed Gladiator here in 2004, and then followed up with Black Hawk Down, Kingdom of Heaven, and then a fourth time for the Leonardo DiCaprio vehicle Body Of Lies just this year.

But recently, competitive new production-centres in Dubai, Egypt and southern Spain have threatened to slow the Moroccan film industry right down. Morocco lost out to the Ciudad de la Luz studios in Spain for Francis Ford Coppola’s Tetro, so, has Morocco has come out fighting?

Well, it seems not to need to. There are no new government subsidies in the pipeline, but there is so much established international goodwill, and such a depth of experience within the country that the projects keep on being green-lit. Morocco was recently voted the top global place to shoot in an October 2009 Variety poll, which puts this success down to:

“The solid cinema infrastructure, the experienced and bilingual crews, the full gamut of productions services and the low location fees.”

This popularity is borne out in the glut of recent high-budget shoots, including Babel, Troy and The Mummy franchise. Then there is Bruckheimer/ Disney’s new videogame franchise Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, Paul Greengrass' Green Zone for Universal, and Sex & The City 2, which wraps at the time of writing. Also in the pipeline are Christopher Nolan’s Inception, the USD15 million Brazilian-Spanish co-production Dreammaker, and the USD30 million mini-series Ben Hur, filmed at CLA Studios Ouarzazate.

Edmon Roch, of Ikiru Films, behind Dreammaker and the John Goodman project Pope Joan which both also shot at CLA studios, has said that working in Morocco is:

“A fantastic experience! What we can do in Morocco is unthinkable in Europe!”

These glowing reports explain why Moroccan commercial producers have never been busier. Oliver Lefevre, of long-established commercial and features specialist Videorama, based in Casablanca, explains why Morocco is having a very busy time of it:

“Morocco is very useful for lots of locations you would expect, like deserts, mountains, shoreline and of course old towns and medinas, but also lots you would not expect, like modern cities, cedar forests, and beautiful unspoiled beaches. It is a very versatile place. A lot of expensive European campaigns are shot here.”

Fred Fantun, of Fred Fantun Productions agrees:

“From October to June is international filming season. It’s very long, very busy. We have recently had commercial shoots with Segue in Italy, Alexon in the UK and Harpers Bazaar in the US.”

Fred Fantun’s take on why Morocco keeps gaining business is simple:

“We are a cheap but stylish cheat for anywhere you like! We shot a campaign in a modern house with a pool, for Lancaster a while back, and it was indistinguishable from Miami or LA. Crews know exactly what they are doing, and that helps with the disguises. Recently we have been doing a lot of Iraq and Afghanistan set-ups, as we can do desert and mountains like no-one else.

The Moroccan government makes sure that for these shoots, that military assistance is available. Authorisations for import of weapons for shoots are relatively easy to organise, as is the hire of helicopters and the mass-casting of well-trained Moroccan soldiers as extras. Moroccan-bound executives may well begin to lobby for extra rebates and incentives, given the new competition for business from Spain, Egypt and Dubai, but clearly Morocco occupies a special place in the heart of Hollywood, and will keep busy for that reason, let alone all the other reasons for shooting there.