Major shoots for Brad Pitt’s World War Z and Cloud Atlas helped feed more than GBP20 million into Glasgow’s economy throughout 2011, according to figures from the city’s film office. World War Z delivered nearly GBP3.5 million when it turned the city centre into Philadelphia for nearly 20 days.
Filming the iconic US Capitol building in Washington, DC, could get harder. Anything other than news footage at the Capitol is generally forbidden and so crews usually shoot from a nearby pavement. Now control over this spot has shifted to an agency not known for its film-friendly attitude.
[slideshow id=237]In the turbulent 1990s Sergei left Latvia and headed to London to experience western living and seek out his fortune. He ended up serving cocktails to celebrities and media professionals at Teatro, a club popular with the industry, which in turn led him to Pinewood Studios.
German production company Weareflink and Chinese production house CONTRA have filmed in Beijing to mark Chinese New Year for vehicle manufacturer VW. The spot shows a dragon with VW wheels creeping through a busy Beijing street to mark the event.
In probably the most eye-catching language school commercial in the history of the genre, In & Out has filmed on location in California with Megan Fox and Mike Tyson. The spot shows two twenty-something Brazilian men washed up on a desert island populated by multiple clones of Megan Fox.
[slideshow id=240]Production company Hafzoo has followed French cycling star Christophe LeMèvel on a punishing alpine training session in a new spot for GPS specialist Garmin. The Climb shows LeMèvel cycling a remote Austrian highway as his Garmin device measures his performance.
A new feature telling the true story of a US sea captain’s 2009 encounter with Somali pirates is scouting filming locations in Malta and Morocco. Captain Phillips will star Tom Hanks as the captain who offered himself as a prisoner to the pirates in exchange for the release of his crew.
We’ve covered two doubling projects from the commercials industry this week, with the French Dairy Council doubling Buenos Aires for France and Dr Pepper turning Barcelona into an unidentified US metropolis. Elsewhere there was bad news for Pinewood Studios in the UK as its expansion plans failed to win approval, while Raleigh Studios is expanding to Utah.