Lights. Camera. REALT OR®: A Day in the Life
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REALTOR® State’s film office reaches out to agents in quest for TV, movie and commercial advertising locations By Bill Kozar, Content Marketing Specialist
Illinois REALTORS® can help one of their listings get a starring role by listing properties in a state database used by location scouts for TV, commercial advertising and movie productions. It’s a move that officials with the state’s film office say can financially benefit property owners, provide bragging rights and maybe even give owners a chance to meet the stars. The Illinois Film Office, which is part of the Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity, says it is looking to encourage awareness of the database for homeowners as the state hosts a growing number of productions in Illinois. “We never have enough properties in our database,” says Louis Ferrara, assistant deputy director, Illinois Film Office. “Properties change, owners change and buildings get torn down. Our goal is to constantly review our information and update it. We’re always looking for fresh ideas. Always.” The types of properties needed vary widely, from empty industrial and busy commercial sites to older houses, apartment complexes, upscale condos, farms, wooded properties, riverfront businesses, lake cottages and luxury homes. And for those who think producers only want property in Chicago, portions of the movie Legally Blonde 2, for example, were shot in Springfield. Compensation depends on many variables, such as the location, length of time the property is needed and the project’s budget. Representatives of the Illinois Film Office said they believe the brief investment of time can be very worthwhile. “My home has been used to film Chicago P.D.,” says REALTOR® Jill Hare, vice president of sales and a broker associate for Jameson Sotheby’s International Realty in Chicago. “We had an amazing experience with Chicago P.D. It was really a seamless process and extremely lucrative. I would Hare highly recommend it to anyone.” REALTOR® Brett P. Holmes leased his Wicker Park warehouse residence to movie producers for five weeks for a project titled “Landline.” “The whole experience of booking it with a production team was fairly 24 www.IllinoisRealtors.org
easy and came about naturally,” says Holmes of Krain Real Estate in Chicago. “My main concern was how potentially disruptive the filming might be to my neighbors with young children. But the producer agreed to reasonable shooting hours (8 a.m. to 8 p.m.), reasonable noise levels and limiting the number of Holmes people inside. The only problem that arose was from the crew gathered outside the building during filming. But I spoke to the producer, and he quickly resolved it.” Opportunities would seem to be plentiful with several popular television shows regularly filming in Chicago this season: four by NBC (Chicago Fire, Chicago P.D., Chicago Med and Chicago Justice) and three by FOX (Empire, APB and the Exorcist). Movie producers also come to Illinois, says Ferrara. For example, one movie titled “Captive State,” with John Goodman and Vera Farmiga, filmed in February, while another titled “Widows” directed by Oscar winner Steve McQueen, is scheduled for filming in April.
‘I’m anxious to check out what they did with my place’
“It was awesome to see what they had done to our home,” Hare said. “While they explained everything beforehand, it was really cool to see the transformation. They put a ton of time and effort into what turned out to be only about 10 minutes of screen time in our home.”
Filming of Fox Network’s Empire in Chicago. Courtesy of 20th Century Fox