Good news for the UK this week as the location filming tax relief scheme was renewed through to 2015. Also in Europe Julia Wülker of the FilmFernsehFonds Bayern gave us an insight into the Bavarian filming locations used for The Three Musketeers. Elsewhere there’s been activity in Australia and New Zealand.
Entries have closed for this year’s Ciclope International Advertising Craft Festival, scheduled to run from November 14th-16th in Buenos Aires. This is the festival’s second year of honouring the craft of commercial production and there were more than 300 entries from 25 countries around the world.
It’s been an eventful week in South America, with Tiger Beer and Johnnie Walker active in Chile and Brazil, respectively. Further north Spielberg’s been hard at work with his new feature Lincoln in Virginia. On the other side of the US Chevy dropped one of its new cars out of an aeroplane. We also spoke to location professionals in Sweden and Ethiopia.
Cramped and expensive, real aircraft don’t lend themselves as convenient filming locations. Richard Chan runs Aero Mock-Ups, a bi-coastal US company that provides realistic and fully-functional aircraft interiors for use in features, TV shows and commercials.
TLG publisher Jean-Frédéric Garcia will be speaking on commercial filming incentives at the Commercial Film Workshop in Seville on November 3rd and 4th. Other presentations will include a talk on how Location Managers and film commissions can work more effectively together.
It’s been another busy week for the commercials industry in South Africa, Australia and Spain. Meanwhile, several film commissions are looking for ways to boost their international profiles. In addition we’ve had fascinating insight from West Virginia-based Location Manager Tom Trigo, as well as Rex Baldwin.
Filming incentives have been in the spotlight again this week. There have been suggestions at the Abu Dhabi International Film Festival that a filming incentive scheme of some kind is in development for the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Elsewhere, the Colombian President is trying to pass a scheme to help boost his country’s features industry.
Whiskey brand Jim Beam, feature Moneyball and TV show House MD won some of the big prizes last weekend at the California On-Location Awards (COLAs). Gongs went both to individual location professionals and specific teams, with the team categories often involving a dozen or so people.