How “Kandahar” Location Manager Félix Rosell Mapped Out Gerard Butler’s Afghan Escape
The road to filming Kandahar had to be built, literally. Directed by Ric Roman Waugh (Angel Has Fallen, Greenland), the espionage thriller stars Gerard Butler as CIA operative Tom Harris turned Afghanistan’s Most Wanted after his operation is exposed by a whistleblower. Though the movie title references the Afghan city, it was Saudi Arabia that ...
Heading Abroad With Charlie’s Angels Location Manager
After a sixteen-year hiatus, the sorority, camaraderie, and crime-fighting of Charlie’s Angels is back, newly helmed by Elizabeth Banks, who also wrote the script and plays one of the movie’s chief supporting roles. No longer reporting to a Los Angeles-based Charlie, the Angels are taking on lawlessness around the globe for the Townsend Agency, supported ...
The Girl in the Spider’s Web‘s Location Manager Shares Secrets of Swapping Cities
Later this fall, Stieg Larsson’s Lisbeth Salander, defender of women, computer hacker, and iconic pale Swede, returns to American cinema via Sony Pictures’ The Girl in the Spider’s Web. Claire Foy succeeds Rooney Mara and Noomi Rapace in the role, and Fede Alvarez replaces David Fincher in directing the sequel to the American adaptation of ...
Seeing (and Saving) the World With Mission: Impossible – Fallout‘s Location Scout
Jaunty banter, truly insane stunts and Tom Cruise’s seemingly superhuman inability to slow down aside, one of the most arresting aspects of Mission: Impossible — Fallout are the film’s environments. As IMF agent Ethan Hunt, Cruise is chased down, on a motorcycle, through the middle of Paris, crashes through London offices only to end up ...
Behind-the-Scenes of Rogue One on a Deserted Island in the Maldives
While a good chunk of any Star Wars film will be filmed at the colossal Pinewood Studios in Buckinghamshire, England, there are still quite a few crucial set pieces that take place all across the world. For Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, that includes films shot in Jordan, Iceland, the Isle of Dogs, and, a deserted island in ...
The Real Locations Used to Bring The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2 to Life
To bring the Capitol to life in the final installment of The Hunger Games, director Francis Lawrence and production designer Philip Messina knew they needed to up the ante and look beyond Atlanta, where much of the production had previously taken place. They found locations in France and Germany that provided the unique combination of both ...
Veteran Location Manager S. Todd Christensen
Like so many location managers before him, S. Todd Christensen’s journey began in the fine art world. He was showing his work at his studio when a guy he was acquainted with came in to poke around among his paintings. “He was driving a nice car,” Christensen remembers. He also watched Christensen interact with people at ...
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Shelled Out Big Bucks in New York
New York City is in trouble once again (just once it would be fun if the city in peril were, say, Charleston) and it’s up to four heroes (really five, counting reporter April O’Neil) to save the city, and mankind, from a remorseless villain and his minions. We’re talking about Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, of ...
Dawn of the Planets of the Apes Location Manager on Filming in Rainforests
It has been ten years since the last human and ape contact. That last contact was combat, and it took place on the Golden Gate Bridge in a frenzied battle between a recently intellectually enhanced ape faction, led by the chimpanzee Caesar, and the bewildered humans who were not prepared for the coordinated assault of ...
Breaking Down Rom-Com Master Richard Curtis’s About Time
Richard Curtis wrote three of the most beloved romantic comedies of the mid 90s and early 2000s—in a remarkable string, he penned Four Weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill, and Bridget Jones Diary (which he co-wrote with Helen Fielding and Andrew Davies). His directorial debut in 2003, Love Actually, which he also wrote, was an international ...
How’d They Do That? Building 1920s New York in The Great Gatsby
Digital FX firm Animal Logic helped craft the extravagant, hyper-vibrant world of New York in the roaring 20's for Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby. But how? They lovingly refer to themselves as “animals,” but the staffers at Animal Logic, based at Fox Studios in Sydney, Australia, are really masters in special effects and animation. The ...
Homegrown: How Star Trek Left the Galaxy Without Ever Leaving California
As Star Trek: Into Darkness basks in the space-age glory of an $84.1 million opening week, the blockbuster can take pride in an even more impressive accomplishment: from ever-growing Paramount Studios in Hollywood to Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory east of Oakland, every frame of the J.J. Abrams blockbuster was shot in the state of California. ...
The Surfer King: A Conversation With Chasing Mavericks Surf Coordinator and Big Wave Expert Grant Washburn
Making a great biopic can be a high stakes game: How do you do tell an enthralling story about a real person, while keeping the audience entertained and also maintaining authenticity when it comes to the subject in question? For Grant Washburn, the Surf Coordinator on Chasing Mavericks, the story of iconic big wave surfer ...
50 Reasons to Love James Bond
Last week marked the highly anticipated arrival of BOND 50 – the complete James Bond film collection showcasing all 22 classic titles on Blu-ray together for the first time ever, in one sleek collectable box-set. This Limited Edition set marks the debut of nine James Bond films previously unavailable in high definition Blu-ray and comes ...
The Film Industry Heads For The Bayou: Introducing Hollywood South
In recent years, Louisiana has become one of the fastest growing film production states in the country. Playing host to projects like True Blood, The Host, and Ender’s Game, many of Hollywood’s biggest productions are opting for a change of scenery; from LA’s traffic-addled freeways, to the South’s bountiful bayou. Thanks to generous film tax ...
On Location: EUE/Screen Gems Studios Atlanta
ScreenGems from The Credits on Vimeo. The Credits recently traveled to Atlanta–home of Coca Cola, the Braves, and one of the most dynamic movie and television studios around. EUE/Screen Gems Studio Atlanta is a 33-acre, state of the art lot that hosts some of the biggest projects in film and television–from USA's Necessary Roughness to Columbia ...
On Location in Albuquerque: The Film Industry Drives a Creative and Economic Resurgence
If you ask Ann Lerner when the film industry landed in New Mexico, she’ll say it all began in 1898 with a one-minute silent documentary called “Indian Day School.” Then she’ll laugh and tell you that even though Hollywood has been shooting in the state for more than a century, it wasn’t until 2003 that ...
