Colin Simpson is the Principal Tourism & Film Officer at the Highland Council, offering advice to productions to help them choose the best location within the Scottish Highlands to suit them.
Film production in the UK is booming after having taken in over GBP1 billion for two consecutive years, with television productions attracting major investors from around the world. This news can largely be accredited to the success of both the UK Film and High-end TV tax relief systems.
Eight studio features have secured initial approval for filming incentive support from California’s boosted tax credit programme. The highest-profile movie is supernatural sequel Conjuring 2 and several of the approved productions will shoot outside Los Angeles’ 30-Mile Zone.
Filmmaker Bulgaria has serviced a new music video shoot by acclaimed Scandinavian director Martin Werner. The director returned to Bulgaria to shoot a new music video for Danish DJ and record producer Rasmus Hedegaard, featuring the vocals of singer Lukas Graham.
Cable channel Syfy has committed to an extended slate of location filming in Australia. Television dramas Hunters and Childhood’s End are both scheduled to shoot in Melbourne, using Docklands Studios as a base.
The BBC is set to film new period supernatural drama The Living And The Dead on location in England’s West Country next year. Set in Somerset in 1888, the drama will follow a farmer who investigates paranormal activity in a bid to prove the existence of an afterlife.
New Zealand miniseries Hope & Wire filmed on location in Christchurch to tell the story of the lives affected by the major earthquakes that shook the South Island city in 2010 and 2011. The miniseries recounts the real events through the eyes of fictional characters.
British independent movie Jet Trash has filmed on location in Goa in western India. Based on the cult travel novel Go by Simon Lewis, the film follows two young friends who escape London life for India, only to be followed by a vengeful gangster.
Hallmark has cancelled plans to film a period TV miniseries on location in Colorado. When Calls the Heart will instead shoot in Vancouver, where it will have access to British Columbia’s filming incentives, as well as an existing period town suitable for the show’s setting.
Television survival show Naked and Marooned with Ed Stafford left the eponymous adventurer on a remote uninhabited island in Fiji, where he fended for himself for 60 days and filmed his own exploits. TLG talks to line producer Steven Ballantyne about how the production was filmed.