Location California 2024

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SHOWCASING CALIFORNIA’S PRODUCTION INDUSTRY

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Fi l m Commi ssi on

THE 405 TO NY

IN 20-MINUTES

Announcing the Grand Reopening of New York Street • Neighborhoods inspired by Chinatown, the Lower East Side, and the Village • Iconic diner and alley with more room and new design enhancements • All-new apartment and interior multi-purpose 3-story open floor plan with rooftop • Additional 50 feet of street with taller camera angles And more to come in 2024

SCOUT TODAY!

CALL 310.369.2786 RESERVE YOUR TOUR NOW! foxstudiolot.com

The wor l di n one pl ace (323)860-2960

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•Neighborhoods inspired by Chinatown, the Lower East Side, and the Village • Iconic diner and alley with more room and new design enhancements • All-new apartment and interior multi-purpose 3-story open floor plan with rooftop • Additional 50 feet of street with taller camera angles And more to come in 2024

SCOUT TODAY!

CALL 310.369.2786 RESERVE YOUR TOUR NOW! foxstudiolot.com

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C A L I F O R N I A 2024 SHOWCASING CALIFORNIA’S PRODUCTION INDUSTRY Published by Boutique Editions Ltd in association with the California Film Commission. Additional copies are available upon request from the California Film Commission. Requests may be sent via email: filmca@film.ca.gov EDITOR Julian Newby MANAGING EDITOR Debbie Lincoln CONTRIBUTOR Andy Fry PUBLISHER Richard Woolley PRODUCTION MANAGER Roger Hall ART DIRECTOR Christian Zivojinovic

PUBLISHED BY Boutique Editions Ltd 117 Waterloo Road, London SE1 8UL, United Kingdom T: +44 20 7902 1942 www.boutiqueeditions.com

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ADVERTISING SALES INTERNATIONAL SALES DIRECTOR Jerry Odlin jodlin@boutiqueeditions.com SALES DIRECTOR (NORTH AMERICA) Nicki Webber nwebber@boutiqueeditions.com The paper used by Boutique Editions is a natural, recyclable product made from wood grown in sustainable forests. The manufacturing process conforms to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. Information in this publication is edited from submissions provided by individual film commissions and organizations. Although all reasonable efforts have been made in compiling this information, Boutique Editions Ltd assumes no responsibility for accuracy.

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Copyright ©2024 Boutique Editions Ltd. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part of any text, photograph or illustration without prior permission of Boutique Editions Ltd is strictly prohibited

LO C AT I O N C A L I F O R N I A 2024

MONTARA STATE BEACH, MONTARA, THE SAN FRANCISCO PENINSULA

SHOWCASING CALIFORNIA’S PRODUCTION INDUSTRY

C A L I F O R N I A2024

S H O W C A S I N G C A L I F O R N I A’ S P R O D U C T I O N I N D U S T R Y

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Just minutes south of the city, The San Francisco Peninsula is easily accessible from major transportation hubs, including San Francisco International Airport and several highways. Renowned for its natural beauty — with breathtaking vistas, stunning sunsets and picturesque landscapes — the peninsula serves as a captivating backdrop for filming.

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The Pacific Ocean here effortlessly transformed into the Sea of Japan in Memoirs of a Geisha (2005), and close by, the coastal city Half Moon Bay was a location for Chasing Mavericks (2012).

PHOTO, COURTESY OF THE SAN FRANCISCO PENINSULA BY JEFF REGAN

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12

CONTENTS 12 THE HEAT IS BACK ON Eddie Murphy is back as Axel Foley in Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F, shot on the streets of L.A.

20 THE MAGIC IS BACK After a challenging 2023, the movie capital of the world is back in business

42 A SAFE PLACE TO SHOOT

A tour of California's remarkable network of movie ranches

38

20

48 & 92 IN PICTURES

We visit some of the many striking and diverse locations on offer in The Golden State

38 WHAT'S YOUR BEEF?

Showrunner Danny Cho turns a true-life road-rage experience into a series for TV

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L A ’ sP r e mi e rI n d e p e n d e n t S t u d i o •2 4 / 7s e c u r e dc a mp u s •L E DV o l u meo nS t a g e •S o u n dS t a g e s •E n c l o s e dS t r e e t s •S t a n d i n gS e t s •T u r n k e yO f fi c e s •N e a r1 0 , 1 1 0 , &1 0 1f r e e wa y s •F u l l s e r v i c ea me n i t i e s

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70 76 CONTENTS 70 THE FEELGOOD FACTOR

California has so many perfect backdrops to offer TV and cinema commercials

76 ‘I WANT TO SMELL THE CHLORINE‘

In the movie Night Swim, a typical backyard swimming pool becomes something to fear

85 ACTION!

California continues to lead the world with its world-class studio facilities

100 REGIONAL FILM OFFICES 112 ADVERTISERS INDEX

80 GOT TO BE THERE The Tax Credit Program gets another five-year extension

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Located in the Santa Clarita filming community of Los Angeles, CA., Rancho Deluxe is a premier movie ranch location with over 200 acres of property nes tled in the mountains of Placerita Canyon near Melody Ranch, Sable Ranch, and Disney's Golden Oak studios.

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M AKING A SCENE BEVERLY HILLS COP

The heat is back on EDDIE MURPHY IS BACK AS AXEL FOLEY. IT’S BEEN NEARLY 30 YEARS SINCE WE LAST SAW THE FAST-TALKING DETROIT COP, BUT HE’S FINALLY HEADING OUT ON A NEW CASE. BEVERLY HILLS COP: AXEL F SEES FOLEY BACK IN THE EXCLUSIVE L.A. NEIGHBORHOOD. JULIAN NEWBY REPORTS

HAS IT really been 30 years? Well yes it has. But according to Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F producer Jerry Bruckheimer: “Eddie's such an incredible artist. He can do drama, he can do comedy — he can do anything. And he’s the same Axel Foley.

He’s still on the streets. He’s still doing what he does. Obviously with age you get wiser. But he still has the twinkle in his eye.”

Detective Axel Foley (Murphy) is back on the beat in Beverly Hills. After

his daughter Jane’s (Taylour Paige) life is threatened, she and Foley team up with new partner, detective Bobby Abbot (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), and old pals Billy Rosewood (Judge Reinhold) and John Taggart (John Ashton) to turn up the heat and uncover a conspiracy.

Axel’s been back to Beverly Hills a few times since he was first seen on those gold-paved streets back in 1984, but the place hasn’t changed much, and neither has he. “As we were scouting going from Detroit to Beverly Hills, the cultural contrast that made Axel a fish out of water in the 1980s still is so vivid,” director Mark Molloy says. “They might just be the two most opposite places in America.”

Bruckheimer adds: “Detroit is a much different city than Los Angeles and

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MAKING A SCENE BEVERLY H ILLS CO P

Bria Murphy as officer Renee Minnick and Eddie Murphy as Axel Foley in Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F. Photo: Melinda Sue Gordon/Netflix. ©2023

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SANTA ANITA PARK

THE HOMESTRETCH OF HOLLYWOOD

Santa Anita Park is a prime location for filming and events.

Covering 320 acres our vast parking lots, beautifully manicured grounds, art deco decor and picturesque mountain backdrop are a location scout’s dream.

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MAKING A SCENE BEVERLY H ILLS CO P

Eddie Murphy as Axel Foley and Taylour Paige as Jane Saunders in Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F. Photo: Melinda Sue Gordon/Netflix. ©2024

EDDIE’S SUCH AN INCREDIBLE ARTIST. HE CAN DO DRAMA, HE CAN DO COMEDY — HE CAN DO ANYTHING JERRY BRUCKHEIMER

especially Beverly Hills. He still has the same kind of wonderment at the things you see walking down Rodeo Drive.”

The film took Location Manager of the Year and Location Team of the Year awards in the Studio Feature category at the 2023 COLA Awards. Location manager is Dan Cooley.

“And here’s a fun fact: we shot more in Beverly Hills on this film than all of the other movies combined,” Cooley says.

That’s because, historically, shooting in Beverly Hills has not been as easy as you would think — especially given that it’s a city in Los Angeles, the movie capital of the world.

“I think in the past Beverly Hills has always been very difficult to film for a lot of reasons,” Cooley says. “It’s a difficult process. Things that you would do in Los Angeles, that you do every day, that are very cut and dried — like street closures for example, a simple process in L.A., but in Beverly Hills you have to do a presentation to the council, and the mayor

sits in on it — it’s quite a spectacle.”

But it’s a tricky balance because Beverly Hills, especially coming out of COVID, relies on commerce. “Even though they have a lot of wealthy residents, they still want it to be that destination, because if people don’t go and spend money and shop in Beverly Hills, it doesn’t have the same ‘je ne sais quoi’ that they want it to have.” So on the one hand the powers that be want the place to be seen in the movies; but on the other, they want their mansions with their trimmed lawns to be left alone.

But Cooley is experienced, a local and doesn’t take no for an answer — and he and his team achieved some extraordinary things during the film’s production.

For example, they managed to get the world’s fashion-shopping mecca closed down for the day. “We went and closed down Rodeo Drive for a car chase,” Cooley says. “That was through presentations to the city council and approval of the mayor. We even landed a helicopter on the steps of the City Hall, for which we had to

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MAKING A SCENE BEVERLY H ILLS CO P

basically change the law — the Civic Code — for the day, because they don’t even allow helicopters in Beverly Hills airspace.

Because if they did, then everybody would have one on their roof! So we did a lot of really cool things in this movie, that were not just unique to L.A. or Beverly Hills, but unique to anywhere.”

But a lot of that was just because director Mark Molloy wanted the movie to “look real. He wanted it to feel authentic — we wanted to shoot the movie like it was 1984 and do a lot of these stunts practically, and not with CGI, just to give it that nostalgic feel, like you’re watching a 1980s movie.”

When Cooley got the call it was like a dream coming true. “I was a huge fan of not only Eddie Murphy but of those films,” he says. “To me it felt like that was the birth of the action comedy. Producer Ray Angelic said, ‘I want you to take a look at this script because we’re trying to do things that either haven’t been done before or haven’t been done in 30 years in L.A.’. We do a lot of action in Los Angeles, that’s kinda my specialty, that’s why they brought me in.

But a lot of the stuff that we wanted to do, because we’re doing it without CGI, it was a tall order — almost every day we had some crazy thing going on.”

For example, they shut down highway

10 to launch a car off a parking structure.

“We had lots of different things happening — tasks that would be difficult to do anywhere. People think ‘Oh L.A., movies have been done there for years…’ But it’s still very difficult and we often have to find ways to cheat things, making it believable for the audience. But this was different, this was practical, so when I came in and they said, ‘I wanna shoot it like it’s 1984 and I just want to do everything practically with as little effects as possible', I just pitched some ideas of where we could do things, how I would do it, how I wanted to approach City Hall and just let them know that I felt like it was doable — just that it would take a lot of politicking to try to get it done.”

Working on the TV series Entourage, which ran from 2004 to 2011, helped Cooley get through doors that others might have found firmly closed. “I had a background. For Entourage, we did a lot of filming in Beverly Hills. I had a good reputation with the city, I had a good resumé. But there was a new mayor and council people change quite rapidly — and we no longer had the film liaison Benita Miller, who was there for many years. So there was quite a lot of trying to figure out who the players are — and then not just approaching the permit office and

ALMOST EVERY DAY WE HAD SOME CRAZY THING GOING ON DAN COOLEY

saying ‘This is what we wanna do’, because I knew they immediately say ‘No’ because they say ‘No’ to everything,” he says. “So instead of going to the permit office, I went to the merchants’ association for Rodeo Drive and got them on board, as a huge marketing opportunity — having a car chase and seeing all the shops in the movie would make it like a commercial.

Once we had that partnership in place, I then approached the city and said ‘Oh by the way the merchants’ association is signing off on it'. And then I had to just give a presentation to City Council for the logistics of getting the closure in place.”

Then something happened that had never happened before in his entire career: “The city asked to read the script, to have script approval! It’s a very unique

Bronson Pinchot as Serge in Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F. Photo: Netflix. ©2024

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M AKING A SCENE BEVERLY HILLS COP

experience to have a city kind of making notes on a script.”

The helicopter stunt was the most difficult scene to set up, according to Cooley. “You tell anyone that you landed a helicopter in Beverly Hills and they say, ‘You did what?, You really did that?’

People on the outside don’t always understand how difficult, and how big an ask that was.”

Initially they weren’t even going to try to do the scene there. “But once we started getting approvals to close major intersections for a shootout, and then

YOU’RE TRYING TO CAST AXEL FOLEY’S DAUGHTER. THAT’S A REAL CHALLENGE MARK MOLLOY

they approved our car chase and closing Rodeo, it was like, ‘OK maybe we should try and at least ask to do this and come up with a plan'. We were going to cheat and use another location in L.A., but we got so far with everything else, we thought — we'll just give it a shot.”

Cooley and his team almost lost the chance to film a shootout scene that was planned for L.A.’s busy Wilshire Boulevard. “The city is putting a metro line underground down Wilshire, obviously a huge project for the city.

They’re getting ready for the Olympics in 2028 and they have all these deadlines.

A couple of months out we had gotten approval to close Wilshire for the shootout. We had the dates set out for the end of October to film. The city was also closing down intersections and the work progressed further and further towards Santa Monica from downtown, so it just so happened that they wanted to be right at our intersection at the same time as us. We found this out a week prior to filming, it was at the end of our schedule

Eddie Murphy as Axel Foley and Kevin Bacon as Captain Grant.

Photo: Netflix. ©2024

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Eddie Murphy as Axel Foley, Taylour Paige as Jane Saunders, Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Detective Bobby Abbott and Bronson Pinchot as Serge in Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F. Photo: Netflix. ©2024

and we couldn’t change our dates — we were filming on a weekend — so I had go and plead to the metro and the city of Los Angeles, saying ‘Skip over us, do the intersection over us, then the following weekend you can come back and start working on our intersection'. So we got, this huge conglomerate, the construction company, to sign off and agree to skip over our intersection so we can film our shootout and then come back and do their work after.”

Very little of the film was shot in the studio — crew, producers and director preferring location filming whenever possible. “We were based out of Los Angeles Center Studios and I think, in terms of being on a set, we probably shot six days for the whole film. We did some pick-up work around the stage for a few days,” Cooley says. "Los Angeles Center is just on the other side of Downtown, on the other side of the 110, which could not have been a better location for us, because we did a lot of work Downtown and Beverly Hills is just a short jump from Downtown.

It really all worked out pretty well."

Back to Beverly Hills and, of course, the city’s plush mansions had to have a role in the movie. The script required four

different opulent Beverly Hills homes and even that location scout wasn’t as simple as you might have thought. “They were all pretty high-end so that made things a bit trickier,” Cooley says. “One of them was being renovated and they were getting ready to put it on the market; they’d had it on the market previously and it hadn’t sold so we talked them into letting us be there.” And the others were lived in: “One was very over-the-top, very opulent inside — and we were looking at it to play in the movie as a joke. The owners were very proud of this opulent home and we’re kinda making fun of it. They showed up once and we’re messing around and poking fun.”

The other two were Beverly hills style, but one was actually in Tarzana, a suburban neighborhood in the San Fernando Valley region of Los Angeles; and the other in Monrovia, a city in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains in the San Gabriel Valley region of Los Angeles County.

Beverly Hills Cop fans will enjoy the return of past characters to this new addition to the series, including Murphy, Judge Reinhold as Billy Rosewood, Paul Reiser as Jeffrey Friedman and Bronson Pinchot as Serge.

Newcomers include Taylour Paige as Axel’s daughter Jane. “You’re trying to cast Axel Foley’s daughter. That’s a real challenge,” Molloy says. “I saw that same glint in Taylour’s eye, that infectious spark and energy that Axel has, but also someone who could go toe-to-toe with Axel, which is a hard thing.”

Alongside Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Detective Abbott, Kevin Bacon plays Captain Cade Grant.

For Dan Cooley, he looks back on the experience as “one of those things where, when I think about it, I say: ‘Don’t let anyone ever tell you something can’t be done, nothing is impossible and you can’t always take ‘No’ for an answer'. With time and money and a lot of hard work you can try to make somebody else’s dream come true.”

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F E AT U R E

S H O OT I N G I N CA L I F O R N I A

THE MAGI C BARBIE: "DID YOU BRING YOUR ROLLERBLADES?" KEN: "I LITERALLY GO NOWHERE WITHOUT THEM"

Margot Robbie as Barbie and Ryan Gosling as Ken in Warner Bros. Pictures’ Barbie.

Photo: ©2023 Warner Bros.

Entertainment Inc. / Atsushi Nishijima

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California will look back on 2023 as a challenging year.

But the Golden State has survived numerous downturns in its 100-year history and has always bounced back.

Andy Fry looks back at a tough year, and beyond

I C IS BACK

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N

Netflix sci-fi thriller Atlas, starring Jennifer Lopez

OW that the talent strikes have been resolved positively, we’re witnessing a return to business as usual across the state,” says California Film Commission (CFC) executive director Colleen Bell.

The start of 2024 was slow, she adds, “because an event of that scale, which disrupted so many major productions, is sure to shake things up. It has been quite a jigsaw puzzle working out talent schedules and studio availability and financing. But we are creative problem-solvers, so we’re observing a significant pick up in volumes of production now.”

And while we are talking of bad times past, nobody should ever forget the breath of fresh air brought by 2023’s Barbie. Released in the U.S. in July of that year, at time of writing, Barbie had grossed nearly $1.5bn at the box office and became the highest-grossing movie of 2023, the highest-grossing global release in Warner Bros.’ history, and the 14th highest-grossing film of all time.

And yes, it’s true that most of Barbie World was built at Warner Bros. Leavesden Studios in the U.K., but the film’s spirit was pure Golden State. And when Barbie and Ken

did venture out into the real world, well it was real-life L.A. that they chose.

L.A. locations in the film include the Skate Dance Plaza at Venice Beach; Venice Beach's famed basketball courts; the Lucky Venice Store at 1501 Ocean Front Walk; Santa Monica City Hall; and Tongva Park at 1615 Ocean Ave. Director Greta Gerwig was clear that she wanted a different feel for the characters when out in the real world. For Barbie and Ken’s arrival in Los Angeles, she used the reference of 1969's Midnight Cowboy to illustrate how she wanted them to appear, specifically the sequence when Jon Voight is walking through New York City, clearly out of place.

"Barbie is a property we all know, but to me she felt like a character with a story to tell, one that I could find a new, unexpected way into, honoring her legacy while making her world feel fresh and alive and modern,” Gerwig says.

And as everyone gets back to business, producers are being reminded of all the factors that make California such a magnet for projects. First up is a generous tax incentive.

Upcoming big-budget films that are part of the program include Under My Skin, an untitled Netflix project, Quentin Tarantino’s 10th and final film, a Michael Jackson biopic and a recently announced Star Wars project. It's a similar story in high-end television, with 33 series having relocated production to California since 2015 because of the tax credit.

Colleen Bell says the CFC made the shrewd decision to keep its tax incentive application windows open during the

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Resurrections

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FEATURE SHOOTING IN CALIFORNIA

2023 strikes — allowing productions to join the program then claim ‘force majeure’. “In practice, this stopped the clock ticking on the requirements of the tax-incentive program,” Bell says, “buying producers time until the end of the strikes. When the disputes were over, we alerted all of our projects that it was time to get a schedule from them.

So immediately it meant there were 60 projects ready to go.”

While the availability of tax credits is often a crucial for production hubs wishing to secure international business, Bell says that the enduring appeal of California is down to so much more.

“It starts with the locations,” she says. “With its mountains, coastline, deserts and forests, California is like an entire nation in one state. The richness of built landscape also means we are great at doubling — for other U.S. states, for Anytown, America and for other countries.”

Climate is also a crucial factor, with the state boasting 300 days of sunshine a year, Bell says. “When time is money you need a predictable climate — and that is something we offer.”

In addition to all of this is a filming infrastructure that is unrivaled anywhere on the planet, with its combination of studios, ranches, crews, service providers and network of local film commissioners. “The truth is that our customer service is excellent,” Bell says. “Even aside from the tax credit, California offers great value. We know there is a lot of competition out there, but in this business you really can’t put a price on the expertise, innovation and access to creative talent we offer.”

The proof, of course, lies in the calibre of productions coming out of the state. And while 2023 was an anomaly, there is evidence that California is still able to service productions at scale. One high-end project which managed to avoid the 2023 strike period was Netflix sci-fi thriller Atlas. Starring Jennifer Lopez, shooting took place in various Southern California locations including L.A., Orange County and Ventura County. Franchise reboot Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F was also based in the state.

Breaking the state down by region, the largest proportion of film and TV work takes place within the L.A. thirty-mile zone — where productions benefit from advantageous crewing costs, and the fact that so much A-list talent lives in the area.

L.A.’s downtown area experienced a reduction in locationbased production in 2023, with shooting days dropping 32% to 24,873 across the year. Underlining the severity of the situation, FilmLA president Paul Audley says: “History offers no point of comparison to the present. The pandemic year aside, we have to look very far back to find a time when production levels stayed so low, for so long.”

Having said this, 24,873 shooting days is not insignificant when compared to other international hubs. During the strike, for example, there was robust performance from reality TV series and independent features, with some able to move forward under interim agreements with the unions. Projects in this category included Adult Best Friends, Don’t Trip, Eyes in the Trees, From Ashes, Isaac, Lake George and Roses on the Vine. The latter tells the story of a single father and food-delivery gig worker who, with his seven-year-old daughter, daily traverses L.A. on his scooter in an effort to make a living.

Among upcoming projects that finished production in L.A. before the strikes was the much-anticipated Joker sequel Joker: Folie à Deux, starring Joaquin Phoenix and Lady

Joker: Folie à Deux, starring Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga

IN THIS BUSINESS YOU REALLY CAN'T PUT A PRICE ON THE EXPERTISE, INNOVATION AND ACCESS TO CREATIVE TALENT WE OFFER COLLEEN BELL

Gaga. Overseen by location manager Jason McCauley, the film needed to capture the East Coast U.S. vibe that has always underpinned the Batman universe’s gritty, Gotham City aesthetic. To do this, the production used several L.A.-based stages and shut down a major section of the city’s downtown — a task that required close collaboration with city agencies and businesses.

Speaking to the 2023 California On Location Awards magazine, McCauley said the production got all its work done on one Saturday. Underlining the collaborative attitude to filming in the city, the production worked hand in glove with FilmLA and the LAPD, closing down streets at 03.30 and opening them again by 18.00. “It definitely

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involved a heavy amount of work,” McCauley says. “Just the number of businesses, negotiating deals with all of them, not only the single businesses, but the building owners. We were getting signage cleared and covering up businesses and putting plugs over them because maybe they look too modern.”

Another production that underscores L.A.’s chameleonlike ability to reinvent itself for the purposes of original storytelling is Amazon Prime mini-series Daisy Jones & The Six, about a young band that finds stardom but goes off the rails. Loosely based on the story of Fleetwood Mac, the show set out to recreate the magic and mayhem of the 1970s L.A. music scene.

Location manager Jay Traynor, who won a COLA (California On Location Award) for his work on the show, says: “We had a wonderful line producer, Mike Nelson, who really wanted authenticity. He didn’t want to build on a stage, he wanted to go to the real places.” The mandate, Traynor says, “was to be up on Sunset Boulevard for multiple nights”. At one point, the production wrangled permission to close down Sunset Boulevard, something that hasn’t been done since Oliver Stone directed another music-themed project, The Doors, in 1991.

Some of the clubs that existed back in the 1970s don’t exist anymore, but the production was able to shoot at iconic venues including Troubador and The Viper Room (known as Filthy McNasty’s in the 1970s). It also planted its flag at the Andaz West Hollywood Hotel, a famous rock and roll star haunt. “We had to make deals with every one of the venues that we went to,” Traynor says. The responsibility for restoring the venues for the series fell to production manager Jessica Kender and her team.

Veteran location manager Greg Alpert makes a similar point — noting that the finished product is always the result of an entire ecosystem of professionals performing their role seamlessly.

Alpert worked on Showtime’s Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty. Here the story is about L.A.’s iconic 1970s/1980s basketball team — which at first sight may seem like it’s a local show. “But it actually takes place everywhere,” Alpert says, as the team travel to rival venues.

“We were based primarily in Southern California, so L.A. had to double for locations like Palm Springs (where the Lakers used to train), New York and the Pacific Northwest in Portland. We went to the edges of the thirty-mile zone looking for locations that had the right feel — and then, of

course, the art department would take it to the next level.”

CG effects from SPE-owned Pixomondo played a crucial role in the polished look of the production, transforming a parking lot into the exterior of the L.A. Lakers home venue The Forum, and converting a basic basketball court set build into a range of distinctive venues packed to the rafters with fans.

Another well-traveled location manager, Mandi Dillin, says 2023 was a tough year, but adds: “I was fortunate enough to work until July. I finished Season 3 of The Morning Show, then worked on MaXXXine, a feature film I'm very proud of. It's been years since I've had the opportunity to work on a movie and MaXXXine was a perfect fit.”

As with most of Dillin’s projects, MaXXXine is a period show. “It’s set in 1980s L.A., and it’s funny and gritty and glamorous. I finally filmed on Hollywood Boulevard, closing down the street for three chilly and very strange nights. We dressed it as the Hollywood Boulevard of the 1980s, with great rock and punk posters, and populated it with hilariously over-glossed background actors. It was some of the most fun I've had on a film set.”

MIKE NELSON DIDN’T WANT TO BUILD ON A STAGE, HE WANTED TO GO TO THE REAL PLACES JAY TRAYNOR

On hit series The Morning Show, Dillin says: “We literally used all corners of L.A. County, Orange County and the Inland Empire for our Texas locations. It’s been a long time since I filmed in Orange County so returning to film at a brand new shiny corporate compound near Laguna Beach was a treat.”

The story of the last 12 months has been broadly similar in the thirty-mile zone-located city of Santa Clarita — aka North Hollywood. With filming revenues dropping from a record high of $38.5m to around $22.4m in 2023, Evan Thomason, economic development associate at the city of Santa Clarita, says the last year has all been about “resilience” and “continuing to promote the strength of the Santa Clarita offer”.

Home to state-of-the-art studios, several movie ranches and experienced crew, the city of Santa Clarita has

AROUND THE WORLD IN 207 ACRES

THE HUNTINGTON

Themed gardens, architecture, statuary | 20 minutes from downtown Los Angeles 626-405-2215 | FilmHuntington.org

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established itself as the go-to location for a broad array of productions. Recent examples include big-budget movies Creed III, Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves and Air, all of which were located at the fast-expanding LA North Studios facility. Highly-regarded TV series to have shot within the Santa Clarita footprint include Beef, The Morning Show and Zak Snyder’s Rebel Moon, part one of which was released in December 2023.

“I think we did reasonably well during the strikes,” Thomason says. “We still had a number of independent features, and we are a popular place for commercials and music videos. It was very reminiscent of COVID in some ways.” He agrees with the CFC's Bell that work is coming back. “Some of our regular shows have started back up, popular franchises like SWAT, NCIS and CSI Vegas.”

Santa Clarita’s studios and ranches are probably the city’s major USPs — and both areas are in expansionist mode.

But Thomason says the modestly sized city also benefits from a pro-filming culture that permeates from its leadership through to its population. “We’ve always been film-friendly, because we know what it means to our local economy. Our film office is a one-stop-shop and has great connections with public departments. We’re also here to help with scouting or liaising with property owners.”

Santa Clarita is also a rich source of locations: “The city

has a surprisingly varied look,” Thomason says. “Because we have a mix of older and newer neighborhoods, we can double for just about anywhere. We double a lot for Virginia and the eastern side of the U.S. We also have some really unique rock formations that have been used in sciencefiction franchises like Star Trek and Westworld.”

While the thirty-mile zone takes the lion’s share of film and TV production work, Mandi Dillin says there is a growing willingness among professionals to look further field. “I have spoken with producers recently, all of whom are scouting locations outside the thirty-mile zone. It’s refreshing to know they are open and looking.”

In her own case, Dillin says she has “fallen in love with Ojai over the past few years. It's a 90-minute drive from Los Angeles. On the way you pass orange groves, fields and ranches which serve as a reminder that Southern California was and is still a large agricultural area. Ojai

Mia Goth and Halsey in A24's Maxxxine

I LOVE SHOOTING IN THE DESERT BECAUSE IT IS A BEAUTIFUL, ARTFUL PLACE STACEY BRASHEAR

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is my Mendocino when I don't have time for the 12-hour drive to Mendocino. On The Morning Show we filmed in Santa Paula (65 miles from Downtown L.A.) which I'd never visited prior to scouting and filming.”

Southern California locations growing in appeal include the coastal city of San Diego, which has seen increased interest since the creation of a film office in 2016. In 2023, against the backdrop of the strikes, the city saw a surge in reality TV and commercials, for brands including Cadillac and Nike. Speaking to the San Diego Union-Tribune, the city’s new film office chief Guy Langman said filming has increased exponentially over the last 12 months. “We’ve gone from an occasional national commercial to having those monthly now. Commercials really exploded for us this summer because of efforts courting Hollywood, and those productions come down here as an easier alternative to the Los Angeles area.”

Langman says San Diego’s ideal weather and remarkable scenery put the city and region in a strong position to

Larry Bird (Sean Patrick Small) and Earvin 'Magic' Johnson (Quincy Isaiah) square off as the Celtics-Lakers rivalry heats up during the 1980s in Showtime's Winning Time.

Photo: Warrick Page, courtesy of HBO

COMMERCIALS REALLY EXPLODED FOR US BECAUSE OF EFFORTS COURTING HOLLYWOOD GUY LANGMAN

attract production. His team is now looking to attract films and high-end TV, by attending trade shows and improving its location database. There are also hints that it might add a local incentive. The city, which regards itself as ‘L.A. without the headaches’ is also seeking to woo producers with low to no permit fees and streamlined approvals. In another recent initiative, it gave a tour of locations to a party of L.A. scouts.

The area around Palm Springs is also working hard to increase production and has secured projects like Olivia Wilde’s feature film Don’t Worry Darling and the Apple TV+ series High Desert. The latter is an offbeat comedy in which Patricia Arquette plays Peggy, a 50-something addict-cum-detective.

Showrunners Nancy Fichman, Jennifer Hoppe-House and Katie Ford initially wanted to set the series in Tucson, Arizona. But Arquette lobbied for the area around Palm Springs. Here, they were able to contrast the lush lawns and golf courses of Palm Springs with the harsh, gravely desert at higher elevations.

High Desert location manager Stacey Brashear unearthed locations all around greater L.A., but also out beyond Palm Springs, to desert locations like Joshua Tree and Yucca Valley. She says: “I love shooting in the desert because it is a beautiful, artful place. I love the sunsets and the long shots you can get.” She says the Palm Springs Film Office and local officials “were really helpful. My favorite location was a beautiful adobe house, owned by a lovely

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Salinas Valley, rural looks

Come capture our picture-perfect film locations.

Carmel Valley, Stonepine luxury

FilmMonterey.org 831-646-0910 Big Sur, dramatic coastline

www.FilmTulareCounty.com (559) 624-7000

TCFilmCommission@TulareCounty.ca.gov Tulare County Film Commission

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weho.org/film Film Coordinator Eddie Robinson (323) 848-6489

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woman who’d never filmed before.”

Away from the southern section of the state, it’s important to reflect that the rest of California is also brimming over with shooting options, the northern Californian city of San Francisco being a major attraction. Some 380 miles north of L.A., the city offers beautiful, distinctive architecture, a well-established infrastructure and access to the magnificent Bay Area.

Film SF executive director Manijeh Fata says: “San Francisco is incredibly cinematic. The city boasts iconic landmarks, sweeping skyscapes, gorgeous architecture, a balance of nature and technology, a robust and skilled production community and a vibrant arts ecosystem.” In addition, she says, “Our Scene in San Francisco Rebate program aims to attract storytellers by returning up to $600k in fees paid to city agencies.”

Like the rest of California, San Francisco saw production activity impacted by the 2023 strikes. For Fata, this period “served as a reminder of the importance of our community and how much we leaned on storytelling during the incredibly challenging time we are emerging from.

Throughout this time, our office continued to facilitate a significant amount of commercial and corporate content as well as independent film. We have seen an unprecedented amount of independent filmmakers that are realizing their projects because of Scene in San Francisco.”

Looking ahead, Fata says there are “a handful of projects in the pipeline gearing up to utilize our rebate program in 2024. Notable upcoming productions include Josephine, written and directed by Beth de Araújo; and Outerlands, written and directed by Elena Oxman. We have witnessed an influx in activity as well as increased energy from the local community.”

Part of the city’s attraction, Fata says, is that it is such a proactive supporter of production: “We are a ‘yes office’ — we love to partner with productions to better understand their needs and help them stretch their dollars and get the most out of filming in this beautiful city. In addition, because of the strong partnerships we’ve cultivated with the local community, we are able to forge industry connections which has helped establish the city as an incubator for upcoming talent.”

Away from San Francisco, the north of the state is home to several vibrant film-friendly locations — often supported by proactive local film offices. Adjacent to San Francisco, for example, are counties including Solano, Marin, Sonoma and San Mateo. All offer distinctive locations and also have the ability to play Anytown, America — as demonstrated

by Netflix series Thirteen Reasons Why (2017-20), which shot in Solano and Marin.

The state capital, Sacramento, is just over an hour north of San Francisco and has good transport links to L.A. Under Sacramento City film commissioner Jennifer West, who took up her post in 2019, the city has turbo-charged its efforts to attract production. West, keen to build on the buzz generated by Greta Gerwig’s Ladybird in 2017, has streamlined the permitting process and helped public departments understand how film works and the timelines involved. She also organized a tour of the area in 2023 for California-based film professionals.

All of this legwork seems to be paying off, with three highprofile feature films visiting the city since mid-2023. First came Sacramento, starring Kristen Stewart, Michael Cera and Michael Angarano in the story of a pair of friends’ road trip to Sacramento. West’s office helped secure locations

and permits, as well as liaising with local neighborhoods.

The end result is that the movie is reckoned to have brought in $100,000 to the region in hotels, local hires, van rentals and catering.

Coming into 2024, local-media outlet ABC10 reported that two major projects were filming almost simultaneously.

The first is a Warner Bros. blockbuster starring Leonardo Di Caprio and Sean Penn, codenamed BC. The second is a movie about homelessness called No Address. Speaking to ABC10, No Address location manager Stan Bautista praised the city infrastructure, saying Sacramento was equipped to provide everything the production needed. “In a crew of 50, we had 31 local hires; that’s 60% local filmmakers making this project.”

San Francisco and Sacramento can both act as jumpingoff points to the northern reaches of the state which offers a spectacular array of mountains, lakes, rivers, coastline and the world-famous redwood trees. Dotted among the region’s geographic marvels are small- to mid-sized population centres with a myriad of architectural and community features.

In recent years, Mendocino County on the coast has hosted projects including the movie version of Need for Speed and HBO series, Sharp Objects, while the counties of Humboldt and Del Norte have attracted projects including Birdbox (2018) and Swiss Army Man (2016). Home to giant redwood trees and quaint towns, for example, Eureka, the latter two counties have been welcoming production for more than 100 years. At time of writing, the Warner Bros. BC project was prepping to shoot in this area as well; casting directors Tracy Dixon and Kelly Hunt were both in the region looking for extras.

Elsewhere, the breathtakingly beautiful terrain around Lake Tahoe is a major draw for filmmakers and is blessed with two local film offices dedicated to servicing production needs.

Placer County has always been a popular location,

WE ARE A 'YES' OFFICE — WE LOVE TO PARTNER WITH PRODUCTIONS TO HELP THEM STRETCH THEIR DOLLARS MANIJEH FATA

hosting iconic films, including 1974's The Godfather Part II. It posted a particularly strong performance in 2022, generating $3m in economic impact. Placer County Film Office has now revamped its website and is asking local residents to add their properties to the website’s new intuitive location database. Placer County Film Office liaison Juli Johnston says: “I may be biased, but our region offers the most unique locations in all of California. From Lake Tahoe’s crystal-blue waters to rich farmlands and industrial sites, this is truly a place for all seasons.”

Sharing Lake Tahoe duties is nearby El Dorado/ Lake Tahoe film commissioner, Kathleen Dodge, whose most high-profile recent project was Top Gun: Maverick, starring Tom Cruise. Speaking via the LMGI’s (Location Managers Guild International) recent California Gold Rush virtual fam tour, she agreed that the area’s big strength is its diversity: “We have a huge variation in elevations as well as roads and structures of all sorts”. As for the film

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That just south of San Francisco there are iconic oceanside cliffs, larger-than-life redwoods, a buzzing technology hub, historic mansions and just about every flavor on the face of the planet. A perfect production hub to access the best of Northern California scenery—all just minutes from SFO.

FIND OUT MORE AT THESANFRANCISCOPENINSULA.COM/FILM.

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office, she promises “a quick response on scouting and permitting matters. We’re on call 24/7.”

While there’s a healthy rivalry for work between California’s counties, this is overridden by a realization that they all need to work together to keep production in the state. One person who knows this well is Sabrina Jurisich. At a state level, she is chair of FLICS, a network of 42 film commissions and offices that are based across the state. “FLICS never feels competitive,” she says. “We all want each other to succeed, because we want productions to stay in California. That way, we all benefit.”

Jurisich has also carried this collaborative ethos through to a regional level, acting as a prime mover in the creation of the Upstate Film Commission, a unified body that represents the counties of Shasta, Tehama, Yuba and Sutter. “Before, I used to solely represent Shasta, which has a rich offering in its own right. But now we have a much broader proposition that offers a wide array of rural settings and some hidden architectural gems, ranging from quaint towns and Victorian houses to revitalized downtown areas. All of this is easily accessible from Sacramento, which opens our region up to productions that need to bring cast and crew from across the state.”

Upstate has worked hard to promote its counties, organizing a fam tour for location managers. “Last year, we had 10 award-winning location managers,” Jurisich says, “and there was such a lot of positive feedback because they didn’t know what was on offer and how film-friendly we

THERE’S NO QUESTION WE’VE SEEN ENQUIRIES MULTIPLY SINCE THE STRIKES ENDED SABRINA JURISICH

are. Often their personal experience has just been seeing us as a step along the highway to get gas. The fam tour was an opportunity to explore.”

Jurisich says the region came through the 2023 strike period relatively unscathed, “because we primarily host productions like independent films and commercials which were not directly impacted. But there’s no question we’ve seen enquiries multiply since the strikes ended, which is positive for 2024.”

Doubling back from the north of the state, there is also a magnificent array of locations to be found in the central band of California between L.A. and San Francisco.

Santa Barbara offers a diverse range of looks including vineyards, ranches, sand dunes, beaches, forests, mountains and Spanish architecture; while Kern County offers mountains, forests, deserts, farm landscapes, and remote highways. Home to locations including Tejon Ranch, Red Rock Canyon, Trona Pinnacles, Lake Isabella and the Edwards Air Force Base, Kern regularly hosts car commercials — and sometime features in blockbuster

Sarah Paulson (left) as Mildred Ratched, Cynthia Nixon as Gwendolyn Briggs and Judy Davis as Nurse Betsy Bucket, in the eighth episode, series one of Ratched.

Photo: Netflix. ©2020

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Hidden Creek, filming on location in San Luis Obispo County

movies, including Top Gun: Maverick and Transformers.

Another popular option in Central California is San Luis Obispo County (SLO), three hours north of L.A. The county’s most popular film location, the Oceano Dunes, can double for the Middle East or Sahara, but there are also lush vineyards, rolling hills, picturesque landscapes, rural barns and flat lands. Recent projects to have shot in the area include indie movies Hidden Creek, produced entirely around the seaside town of Cambria; and Camera, which shot around Morro Bay and local landmarks including Giovanni’s Fish Market and Galley.

One of the most spectacular locations in the Americas is Monterey’s Pacific Coast stretch. Up to a point, this sublimely beautiful area sells itself, with HBO’s Big Little Lies, Netflix’s Ratched and 2022 feature film All the Old Knives all visiting. The region is also popular with fashion shoots, reality TV shows and car commercials looking for beautiful backdrops.

Despite its inherent brand familiarity, however, Monterey County film commissioner Karen Nordstrand makes a point that California as a collective is also aware of: “This

THIS BUSINESS IS TOO COMPETITIVE TO BE COMPLACENT EVEN THOUGH WE ARE FORTUNATE TO HAVE ICONIC SITES KAREN NORDSTRAND

business is too competitive for us to be complacent, even though we are fortunate to have iconic sites like Big Sur and the town of Carmel in Monterey.”

For Nordstrand, there is a 24/7 job to be done marketing Monterey County via trade events and activity online: “We’ve just launched a sizzle reel, Monterey County: You Won’t Believe Your Eyes. It’s a fast-moving, speed-dating style display of our diverse and extraordinarily visually appealing film locations.”

Marketing Monterey County is also a way of prompting location managers to reach out — because that’s how they can gain access to some of the county’s breathtaking homes. “We liaise with a lot of homeowners who are happy to allow filming but don’t want their beautiful properties to appear on the website, because they are seeking more discretion than that.” At the same time, it’s an opportunity to highlight the fact that there is more to the county than its coast. “We have a lot to offer producers further inland, for example Steinbeck Country.”

From her hot seat in L.A., the CFC’s Bell concludes by saying that all productions are welcome in California — irrespective of whether they are part of the state Tax Credit Program or not.

“The program is vital if we are to compete with other production hubs for blockbuster films and high-end TV series,” she says, “but we celebrate every type of production from unscripted TV to commercials to indie features. The CFC, and all the state’s regional film offices, are here for everybody, because a healthy industry needs project diversity.”

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What’s your Beef?

SOME TIME AGO, SHOWRUNNER DANNY CHO BECAME INVOLVED IN A REAL-LIFE ROAD-RAGE INCIDENT. THE EXPERIENCE LED TO THE CREATION OF THE HIT NETFLIX SERIES BEEF. DEBBIE LINCOLN REPORTS

Ali Wong as Amy and Steven Yeun as Danny in episode 10 of Beef.

Photo: Andrew Cooper/Netflix. ©2023

BEEF follows the story of two strangers who come together in a road-rage incident. Danny Cho (Steven Yeun) is a contractor whose business is failing, and Amy Lau (Ali Wong) is a self-made entrepreneur with a seemingly perfect life. Antagonism builds between the two as they can’t let it go. There’s comedy and heartache as their conflict builds and we learn more about this unlikely pairing.

“The idea was loosely based on a roadrage incident that actually happened to me. Someone went off on me and for some reason, that day I did not use sound judgment and impulsively decided to follow this person,” the series’ creator and showrunner Lee Sung Jin says. “I didn’t

really have a set plan, I just wanted him to feel fear and let him know that it’s not okay to do that to people. But things went awry — certainly not like they do in the show — and what happened that afternoon ended up inspiring Beef. I thought there was a show there about two people who are very much stuck in their own perspectives and have a lot going on in their individual lives that this incident unravels.” He adds: “A while later, when I met with Ravi Nandan, [head of television at production company A24], he asked me if I was noodling on anything and I told him that story, and he just instinctively got it. Everything came together pretty quickly after that.”

The lead actors Lee cast for the series were also friends of his and giving them roles as executive producers too, meant that communication on all issues related to script, character and production was very straightforward.

“The characters were very much shaped by Steven and Ali. I think the joy of having them as executive producers early on is that I was able to talk about everything with them as I was developing the characters,” Lee says. “Being friends first helps a lot because on a lot of other projects, there’s a more clearly defined line between professional and private. On

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The road rage begins: Steven Yeun as Danny in episode one of Beef.

Photo: Andrew Cooper/ Netflix. ©2023

THE IDEA WAS LOOSELY BASED ON A ROAD-RAGE INCIDENT THAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED TO ME LEE SUNG JIN

this show, between the three of us, there really wasn’t. So I could call them at any hour any day and say, ‘Hey, I’m stuck on this. What do you think?’ Both of them have a good intuition and radar for what’s truthful and that just made the whole process easy.”

Key to the tension between the two lead characters in the series is Amy’s seemingly perfect life that contrasts with Steven’s. And for production designer Grace Yun, this had to be reflected in their respective homes. Yun designed Danny’s apartment to be “a collage of tiny failures” that gave the viewer a sense that the apartment was a reflection of the feeling of failure that follows him around.

"Danny’s constantly in this transient space of struggling and never getting a win. He’s had such aspirations for his life and so many dreams for himself and his family, and his apartment shows that he probably moved in thinking, ‘Oh, I’ll just be here for five years, develop my business, then I’m going to move out’. But he’s never really been able to get out of

that stage,” Yun says. “He’s not exactly a hoarder, but there’s a scarcity mentality of saving things, of not knowing when or where you’ll end up at the end of a project or something. So he has construction materials from past jobs piling up, and a mix of different furniture — and so he’s tripping over everything, all these things he feels are necessary for his life that he can’t let go of.”

Amy’s home — a luxurious mansion — had to reflect her success in life, but also give the impression that she is somehow restricted by that success. “We wanted her home to feel very curated and manicured.

But I also wanted to sneak in a bit of a prison concept, with the vertical slats and the plaster walls being a stone concrete color, which has an expensive, upscale effect, but when that texture is applied to the entirety of the interior, it gives a kind of darkness and coldness to the home,” Yun says. “A feeling like she’s trapped in her dream, in a way, or trapped in the life that she made.”

Location manager Michael Percival and his team searched Los Angeles to find the perfect house for Amy. “We did some preliminary scouting in the fall of 2021,

pre-production in spring 2022, and then shot during the spring into the summer,” Percival says. “The shoot leans into a lot of iconic L.A. locations, but also creates a nuanced world that many viewers wouldn’t be too familiar with.

“We focused a lot of energy on finding locations in an area called Calabasas. Both Danny and Amy are Korean American by ethnicity, but they live different lives. So we needed properties that reflected that.

Amy is very aspirational and successful, but Danny comes from a much grittier, more institutional world.”

Virtually all of Beef is shot on location, one exception being Amy’s house, which presented a classic production conundrum. “We found a house we liked,” Percival says, “but the homeowner wasn't interested in filming. We then found another similar one which gave us the exterior look we wanted. But Yun had a very specific vision for how the flow of Amy’s house should go. So the interior was built as a set.”

Among the most striking locations in Beef is the building chosen as the home of Jordan Forster (Maria Bello), a billionaire who is keen to take over Amy’s company,

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Kōyōhaus. “This was an interesting location story,” Percival says. “Danny's character is involved with a church. So we went to the American Jewish University in Simi Valley to look at a potential property.

It didn't fit, but as a throwaway comment, I mentioned that there was another interesting property nearby called House of the Book. When the production team saw it, I could immediately see everybody's wheels start turning — and we used it for Jordan’s house.”

House of the Book is an architecturally significant building on the 2,700-acre Brandeis-Bardin campus of the American Jewish University that was visited by Percival and his team. Designed by architect Sidney Eisenshtat in 1973, it’s a brutalist-style concrete structure, its unique cylindrical architecture and other dramatic features making it an ideal filming location — it has previously been used for Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country and the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers television series.

The exterior and interior of Jordan’s home are dressed to look like “a place that is reminiscent of Amy’s world, but totally upstages her in every way,” Yun says. “She wants to own and conquer.”

Much of Beef is set in and around the Greater Los Angeles area, though there is a moment where the action moves to Las Vegas. But Percival and his team decided to double L.A. for Sin City.

“For Vegas we went to the Pacific Palms Hotel in the City of Industry, in the San Gabriel Valley, eastern Los Angeles County.

And besides the actual hotel suite, which was built on a stage, almost all of the Vegas stuff was created at the hotel,” Percival says. “We brought in all the casino machines that you can see in the lobby. Amy gives her big speech in the ballroom, and then we have that great, back-of-house hallway scene where Danny's trying to escape.”

Percival picks out the opening car chase as “difficult but fun. Those scenes are always difficult to permit and do safely — with all the traffic control and everything,” he says. “But there’s a particular moment when Danny’s truck drives across somebody’s front yard. I think it was on the southeast corner of an intersection. We had to find a yard that, you know, we would be allowed to cut across the corner the way Danny did. And we got lucky: somebody was in the process of re-doing their front yard and the lovely homeowner was willing to let us drive across it.” The damage done can be seen in the sequence, but Percival’s team made sure that they organized some “nice

Creator/showrunner/director/executive producer Lee Sung Jin shooting the first episode of Beef.

Photo: Andrew Cooper/Netflix. ©2023

SOMEBODY WAS IN THE PROCESS OF REDOING THEIR FRONT YARD AND THE LOVELY HOMEOWNER WAS WILLING TO LET US DRIVE ACROSS IT MICHAEL PERCIVAL

landscaping” before they left the scene.

He acknowledges that with this kind of logistically complicated scene is where Los Angeles comes into its own, and where the work of FilmLA, — the film office for the City and County of Los Angeles and other local municipalities — can really make a difference. “From a permitting-permissions standpoint, FilmLA really is the gold standard. Due to their knowledge and experience, there's nothing we're going to bring to them that is going to shock, or surprise. And it’s the same story when you get into the details of working with the police, the stunt co-ordinators, and all the other moving parts.” He adds: “I would say that, you know, working in Los Angeles, FilmLA is probably the most knowledgeable film office in the world.”

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A SAFE PLACE TO SHOOT If there is one factor that distinguishes California’s film and TV production business from anywhere else in the world, it’s the state’s remarkable network of movie ranches. Andy Fry reports

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STABLISHED and evolved over more than a century, these vast and varied outdoor filming hubs continue to be a major draw for productions of all sizes — from blockbuster feature films and high-end TV series to commercials and music videos.

Audiences wouldn’t necessarily know it, but California’s 30 or more movie ranches have featured in everything from Little House on the Prairie (1974-83) and Westworld (2016-22) to Django Unchained (2012) and The Magnificent Seven (2016). And they not are only used for Westerns: Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019), Babylon (2022), Nope (2022) and Netflix’s new science fantasy movie Rebel Moon, all shot on ranches.

Rob Frank recently took over the running of one of the state’s leading ranches, Big Sky Movie Ranch, famously the location for long-running TV series Little House on the Prairie. Frank says ranches perform several key roles: “The first is that they offer a wide range of natural locations that producers can access in a controlled way. Because ranches are on private land, productions don’t get tangled up in permitting issues.”

Big Sky Movie Ranch covers more than 7,000 acres, with topography including meadows, mature trees, valleys, rocky outcroppings, 20 miles of roads, dirt trails and

breathtaking vistas. Furthermore, like many leading ranches, it has built features including old ranch-house sets and a Western-era church. In the downtime caused by the 2023 Hollywood strikes, Frank says the team at Big Sky built a new pond, “which is really popular with car commercial producers — they love access to water”.

With this scale and diversity on offer, the ranch has featured in numerous major productions including Men in Black (1997), Hail, Caesar! (2016) and Babylon. “The top ranches are huge,” Frank says, “so filmmakers can fly helicopters and drones, or set off explosions, without upsetting the neighbors.”

In a similar vein, he says, they offer productions privacy — which is particularly important for commercials involving sensitive launches, or music videos featuring A-list talent.

“There’s much less chance of unofficial photos escaping from a ranch shoot,” he says.

Increasingly, producers are using ranches as backdrops for digitally-enhanced productions. “We just hosted a Star Wars shoot, where the producers were looking for a backdrop for a digital portal into another world. The audiences will never know that the portal was at Big Sky Ranch, but that’s one of the beauties of ranch filming.”

While most leading ranches pride themselves on their topography and standing sets, this ability to offer location-based anonymity is a compelling proposition for producers. Blue Cloud Movie Ranch, for example, recently hosted sci-fi epic Rebel Moon – Part One: A Child of Fire, a Zack Snyder film for Netflix. Part of the action takes place on a farming planet where the central character Kora has been living peacefully — until all hell breaks loose and

Sofia Boutella as Kora, Charlotte Maggi as Sam and director Zack Snyder on the set of Rebel Moon — Part One: A Child of Fire.

Photo: Enos/ Netflix. ©2023

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WE GOT HELICOPTERS TO DESCEND SUPER LOW, RIGHT OVER EVERYBODY AND BLAST THEM WITH THE ROTOR WASH ZACK SNYDER

she is forced to lead a revolution. A veldt set, constructed using wheat crops, was located at Blue Cloud.

One key sequence in the making of Rebel Moon was “when drop ships are landing in veldt,” Snyder says. “We knew the engines of the drop ships would be strong when they were landing and would create a dust cloud. So we had a bunch of big giant fans, and we were like, ‘OK, we’ll point them down so they blow a little bit.’ We did a test and we were like, ‘That’s not enough'. And so we got helicopters instead to come and descend super low, right over everybody and

blast them with the rotor wash from the helicopters.”

It’s not just other-worldly looks that ranches can provide.

Disney-owned Golden Oak Ranch, for example, is an 890acre site that has tree and plant species from across the U.S. Although located within L.A.’s thirty-mile zone, it has features found in the Midwest or East Coast. Alongside its varied terrain, Golden Oak also has well-tended rural sets, residential streets and a business district with 42 distinctive storefronts. Again, architectural designs are representative of the entire U.S. and cover various periods back to the 1920s.

Location manager and scout Brent Gaffan is an industry veteran who has worked at Golden Oak on many projects over the years. “I’ve been coming out to Golden Oak since around 1996, and I’m still there on a regular basis.

I’m working on a car commercial at the moment and the beauty of Golden Oak is that if offers production designers

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SANTAENDLESS CLARITA POSSIBILITIES • One-Stop-Shop Film Permitting • In the 30-Mile Zone • 60+ Soundstages, 10 Movie Ranches, Diverse Locations • Film Incentive Program

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versatility and flexibility.”

Underlining the point that ranches are not simply rural locations, he says the Golden Oak residential street is a big attraction “when you consider how much it would cost to shut down a street in the real world — paying out to the neighborhood and negotiating with public bodies”.

Not to be overlooked is the servicing that comes with the best ranches. “The team at Golden Oak are really good at maintaining their backlots — and they also provide excellent support and security during production. I can remember working on a razor commercial that featured Jennifer Lopez, which had paparazzi everywhere. The one day she didn’t have to deal with that was during filming at Golden Oak. I think one of the things that really defines a great ranch is the people running it, and Golden Oak has always been well managed,” Gaffan says.

Most leading ranches don’t have Golden Oak-style backlots, but many have sophisticated standing sets.

The Melody Ranch, for example, has a farmhouse, ranch house, Victorian home, Spanish hacienda, Western town and Middle Eastern village. Pre-pandemic, it was also home to a fictional 1930s L.A. neighborhood for TV drama Penny Dreadful: City of Angels (2020).

A bridge over water that provides a standing set at Golden Oak Ranch. Photo: Dyana Carmella

IF ONE OF THE RANCHES DOESN'T HAVE QUITE THE RIGHT LOOK, THEY WILL POINT IN THE DIRECTION OF ANOTHER EVAN THOMASON

Location manager Mandi Dillin says: “I recently visited Melody for the first time since 2021. They’ve now removed all of the facades from Penny Dreadful to uncover the well-known Western town we used on Django Unchained, Westworld and countless other projects. It was the first time the Western facades had been uncovered since 2018 when we finished Season 2 of Westworld. The Penny Dreadful facades have been relocated to a different part of the ranch to create a new street for film companies to use, which could be an asset.”

Melody is one of three ranches that belong to the extended Veluzat family, which has been in the film business for decades. In addition to Melody there is the Diamond V Ranch, which has a wide range of standing sets and interiors including a 1950s diner, rustic gas station and biker tavern. Also within the Veluzat family is Santa Clarita Movie Ranch, until recently known as the Veluzat Movie Ranch. This site includes a Mexican town, as well as a wide variety of other sets. Just to illustrate how deep the Veluzat connections go, Blue Cloud also used to belong to the family, until sold to current owner Dylan Lewis.

Around 10 leading players (including the three Veluzatcontrolled sites) are based in the vicinity of Santa Clarita, Evan Thomason, economic development associate for the city, says. “The fact that they are so close together is a real advantage for producers. The ranches are very collaborative, so if one of them doesn’t have quite the right look, they will point producers in the direction of another.

Equally, they will work together if a large-scale production needs extra capacity — for example on parking.”

There’s also a symbiosis with the local studio infrastructure,

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Thomason adds. “With well-established studios like LA North and Santa Clarita Studios just a few miles away, producers have a wide range of options in terms of stages, backlots and sets.”

Thomason also notes that six of its local ranches are “in our movie ranch overlay zone. The zone assigns certain areas where location filming and production-related facilities, including soundstages, are permitted by right.

This streamlines the production process and saves on permitting costs.”

Blue Cloud is in the zone, as are Rancho Maria and Sable Ranch. Popular with producers, these ranches are under shared ownership and have about a mile of continuous boundary, before branching off into individual canyons, meadows and forests. The ranches have a main street, cabins, an Old West fort gate, a red barn and an adobe hacienda from the turn of the 20th century. There is also a Western street with a saloon, schoolhouse, church, general store, and much more. Recent big-budget productions to have shot at Sable include High Desert, an Apple TV+ comedy series starring Patricia Arquette. Sable was used to help recreate scenes set in Pioneertown, which is itself a historic filming location.

Also in Santa Clarita’s overlay zone is Rancho Deluxe, where owner Steve Arklin has 350 acres at his disposal.

Productions to visit have included Westworld, NCIS Los Angeles (2009-23), Sons of Anarchy (2008-14), Mayans M.C. (2018-23), and upcoming HBO series The Sympathizer, based on Viet Thanh Nguyen’s award-winning novel.

Arklin has been consistently busy over the last year, firstly with The Sympathizer (starring Robert Downey Jr.), then with a mix of commercials, music videos, social media and kids TV. Explaining the ranch’s appeal, he says the privacy, ease of permitting and vast space are all in the plus column, with the ranch capable of accommodating

Bernadette Peters and Patricia Arquette in Apple TV+ comedy High Desert, shot at Sable Ranch

hundreds of crew on single or multiple projects. But most of all, he says, producers “love the diversity here. We had one who came to us not realizing the full extent of what we have on site. As a result, he rewrote parts of his script to take advantage of the locations we can offer.”

Arklin says the ranch offers a range of topography including lakes, waterfalls, desert and forest. Among built locations there is a military base, Western town, barns, cabins and the recently-constructed Palace Saloon. With its immaculate farmhouse-barn exterior and sumptuous interior, Arklin says: “The Saloon can accommodate film and television productions both on the exterior and the interior of the building. Productions are particularly impressed by the high ceilings.”

In theory, Arklin could build more external sets — but he says it actually makes more sense to keep a lot of the terrain open, so that producers can imagine their own worlds: “The Sympathizer spent a lot of time with us before the strikes started. They did an amazing job of recreating Vietnam by planting trees, making rice paddies and building a village and a crashed helicopter set. At the end we discussed keeping it but decided against it. You always have to think about how you might want to utilize your space in the future and what the likely demand is.”

Besides, he says, Thomason is right to note the collaborative nature of the ranch ecosystem. “The ranches talk and meet regularly. We all realize there is no point in us all building the same thing when we can just refer jobs to each other.”

Another important ranch hub is Simi Valley, 30 miles south-west of Santa Clarita. With more than 80 years as a production hub, Simi Valley recently saw thousands of Little House on the Prairie fans gather at Rancho Santa Susana Park for a three-day celebration of the 50th anniversary of the beloved TV series. Attendees viewed recreated sets, and attended episode screenings and discussions. “The success of this celebration gave centerstage to Simi Valley’s decades-long history of providing memorable cinematic locations,” Simi Valley City Council member, Elaine Litster, says.

That series' original host, Big Sky Movie Ranch, is also located in Simi, as is the historically significant Corriganville Park, which can still be accessed via the Rancho Simi Recreation & Park District (along with some other locations). Simi Valley’s offer is further enhanced

ONE PRODUCER REWROTE PARTS OF HIS SCRIPT TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THE LOCATIONS WE CAN OFFER STEVE ARKLIN

by the presence of Allied Studios/76 Movie Ranch and Hummingbird Nest Ranch. The latter hosts scores of productions every year — recent examples including hit detective series Bosch. Spread across 130 acres, the ranch has various looks including a Spanish Colonial villa, ranch house and horse barn.

Slightly further afield, but still within reach of L.A., Palmdale and the Antelope Valley have been growing in significance as a filming hub. Ranches out in this direction include Four Aces Movie Ranch, which features standing sets including a 1940s-style diner, a honky-tonk bar, a

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[249 Route 66-style gas station and an atomic-age roadside motel. These were used to great effect in the classic Rob Zombie horror film House Of 1000 Corpses (2003). Also out in this direction is Agua Dulce Movie Ranch, which has distinctive canyons, ponds and rock formations. In terms of built backdrops, it offers producers a jet fuselage with a vintage 1974 interior, and a biker-bar interior, as seen in Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991).

Another popular spot in this vicinity is Blayney Ranch, which offers 160 acres of desert, with unusual rock formations, dirt roads, canyons, dry river beds and Joshua trees. Blayney’s recent claim to fame is Amazon Prime Video series Daisy Jones & The Six. The ranch was used for a scene in which the rock band at the heart of the show visits the desert for a photoshoot.

Canyon Ranch Studio is a 100-acre site in the area surrounding the Conejo Valley. From cosy cabins to a secluded mine, Canyon Ranch is another site which combines intriguing built locations with natural beauty.

Commercial clients are regular visitors, with Kevin Hart recently shooting a Chase Bank ad on the site. But the ranch has also hosted high-end productions including True Detective (2014-), Promising Young Woman (2020) and The Wheel of Time (2021-).

Producers rarely need to stray too far from L.A. in search of ranch-based locations, but there is a small number of more distant ranches that have unique appeal.

One is Tejon Ranch in Kern County, which has welcomed

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films, series, commercials and music videos over the years.

With its own full-service film department, Tejon offers 270,000 acres of diverse locations and backdrops. Terrain includes rolling hills, mountain vistas, lone trees, private roads and wide-open spaces with no visible powerlines.

The ranch is perfect for car ads, with straight stretches of paved roads surrounded by wide open space. There are also mountain ‘S’ curves, and tree-lined segments.

With California crying out for additional studio capacity to meet demand, one interesting trend has been for closer alignment between the classic studio and ranch propositions. Disney has looked hard at this idea for the last decade — intending at one point to build a dozen stages at Golden Oak Ranch. But as yet it has not gone further than the planning phase.

By contrast Santa Clarita-based Melody Ranch has built two studios and a construction space. The larger of its sound stages is 22,000 sq ft while the smaller is 11,200 sq ft. The larger unit has 45 ft ceilings, drive-in doors, black insulation and sound proofing.

Over in Simi Valley, meanwhile, Allied Studios has 78,000 sq ft of stages, a backlot and a ranch, located around 10 miles from its studio hub. Called 76 Ranch, it is spread over around 1,000 acres. Like its counterparts, it offers a range of topographies from rolling hills to country roads. Recent projects to have been based across Allied Studios’ sites have included Your Honor (2020-23) and recent series Daisy Jones & The Six.

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SUNSET STRIP, CITY OF WEST HOLLYWOOD The iconic Sunset Strip is synonymous with the history of the entertainment history, as well as having a modern, cutting-edge look.

Portions of it can also double for Anywhere, USA. Also important for location shooting, Sunset Strip has ample basecamp, hotel accommodations and parking options for cast and crew.

Recent projects include TV series Daisy Jones & The Six (2023), Selling Sunset (2019-) and Bosch: Legacy (2022-); and commercials including Gucci, Loewe and Celine. Among the countless classic films featuring Sunset Strip are The Player (1992) and Get Shorty (1995).

PHOTO, COURTESY JON VISCOTT

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WITH THE HELP OF FILM COMMISSIONS, PHOTOGRAPHERS AND LOCATION MANAGERS, LOCATION CALIFORNIA TAKES A TOUR OF SOME OF THE MANY STRIKING AND DIVERSE LOCATIONS ON OFFER IN THE GOLDEN STATE

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ASILOMAR STATE BEACH, MONTEREY COUNTY This beach is situated off Sunset Drive in Pacific Grove, Monterey County. The sandy pocket beach runs along the rocky coastline and features tidepools at the end of the day. A larger beach and sand dunes are close by and the area provides dramatic sunsets, with boardwalks and sandy trails in a pristine, natural setting.

Numerous commercials, videos and stills have used the beach and nearby dunes, and feature film The Shift ( 2023) also filmed here.

PHOTO, COURTESY KAREN SEPPA NORDSTRAND, MONTEREY COUNTY FILM COMMISSION

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DUNSMUIR, SISKIYOU COUNTY Dunsmuir is a former railroad town that sits alongside the Sacramento river. This is the epitome of a river mountain town with plenty of opportunities to shoot historic and notable buildings — including the California Theatre and Railroad Park Hotel and Restaurant, the Castle Crags State Park and examples of railroad memorabilia. During the summer there is soft summer light and in the winter snow falls, giving rural mountain snowy vistas..

Recent productions shot here include: Hotel Dunsmuir (2022) and Peter Five Eight (2024).

PHOTO COURTESY JASON YOUNG

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ALMOND ORCHARDS, STANISLAUS COUNTY Mid-February through mid-March is a magical time in the Central Valley in Stanislaus County. For every single one of the almonds grown (accounting for 80% of the world’s almond supply), a tiny, delicate blossom sprouts. Multiply that by the thousands of buds on each tree, and multiply that by over 160,000 acres of almond orchards in the Modesto region alone. Also close by, the Stanislaus River runs alongside rolling hills with views of the Sierras mountain range in the background. All this provides a location that can be both bustling and calm depending on the backdrop you choose.

PHOTO, COURTESY ERIC BJERKE, SR. HTTPS://EBIMAGEPHOTO.COM

CARSON MANSION, EUREKA Eureka is a port city in Northern California. Its Old Town district features elaborate Victorian houses, including nearby Carson Mansion. This historic landmark, constructed between 1884-1885, continues to be a world-renowned architectural gem. It is a four-story, 18-room building with a basement and tower, and is currently maintained by the local social organization Ingomar Club. This preserved piece of history offers a great background location, especially for period productions.

One of many projects that filmed in the Carson Mansion is Valley of the Giants (1919,).

PHOTO, COURTESY ANIBAL POLANCO

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Pine Creek Canyon is a spectacular example of a steep-sided glacial canyon. The road to the location cuts through the verdant lowland of Round Valley before it weaves up this narrow canyon to the base of the vast, classic U-shaped glacial wall.

Huge mountains, interesting rock formations, alpine lakes, sweeping vistas, epic roads and an abundance of gorgeous accessible natural locations are within a short drive from downtown Bishop..

Numerous movies have shot here, including: How The West Was Won (1962), True Grit (1969) and Hook (1991).

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PINE CREEK CANYON, BISHOP, INYO COUNTY

PHOTO, COURTESY EHRIN DAVIS, LMGI

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SUNSET CLIFFS NATURAL PARK, SAN DIEGO Sunset Cliffs Natural Park offers one of the best sunset views in San Diego. This 68-acre hillside park comprizes sandstone cliffs stretching along the Point Loma Peninsula with gorgeous panoramic views of the Pacific Ocean. Low permit fees, pristine beaches and parks, and a modern downtown with historic residential pockets make this an attractive filming location.

Numerous productions have filmed here including the TV series Veronica Mars (2014–2019).

PHOTO, COURTESY JOSH UTLEY

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MONO LAKE, MONO COUNTY Mono Lake is located on the eastern base of the Sierra Nevada mountain range in northern California. It is an ancient lake with no outlet, covering about 65 square miles, and is over one million years old. Surreal, otherworldly limestone formations called tufas rise out of the waters in various locations. .

This landscape has attracted numerous film projects over the years, including High Plains Drifter (1973). The inner sleeve of Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here (1975) album shows a man diving into Mono Lake, surrounded by tufas.

PHOTO , COURTESY MARK INDIG , LMGI

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HALF DOME, YOSEMITE VALLEY Immortalized for many in the photographs of Ansel Adams in the 20th century, Yosemite National Park is a unique location that draws visitors and filmmakers from all over the world. Filming here can be tricky as it is a protected natural environment. However, it is possible with good co-ordination with the supervising rangers and effort is made to secure a small footprint.

In 2023 a beautiful commercial was shot for Subaru at this specific location, among others throughout the valley.

PHOTO, COURTESY : JOF HANWRIGHT / WWW. LOCATIONPICTURES.COM

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STINSON BEACH, MARIN COUNTY Stinson Beach is framed by golden sand dunes and backed by rugged hills, creating a captivating juxtaposition of land and sea. Filmmakers are drawn to its natural beauty, diverse coastal landscapes and proximity to San Francisco. The versatility of Stinson Beach also allows it to stand in for different coastal locations.

Films featuring Stinson Beach and its roadways include Swiss Army Man (2016) and Basic Instinct (1992).

PHOTO COURTESY MARIN CONVENTION & VISITORS BUREAU AND FILM RESOURCE OFFICE

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TRAIN TRESTLE, DIESTLEHORST BRIDGE, REDDING The train trestle is about three-quarters of a mile long and crosses the Sacramento River north of downtown Redding. The structure is more than 70 years old and took an important role in the historic improvement of transportation in California, which was so important for the local agricultural industry.

Tyler Lockamy, producer on Interpreters (2019) and later for The Dresden Sun (2023), which both used the area as a location, says: "We were very excited to shoot this scene because of the natural beauty of the water and the train trestle in the distance. We heard the train coming so we set up the camera and called action.”

PHOTO, COURTESY PETER GLUCK, LMGI

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VENETIAN SUNSET, CAPITOLA, SANTA CRUZ COUNTY The Capitola Venetians were the first condominiums in California, and these colorful cottages, which dot Capitola Beach, provide a Mediterranean feel to the village and a small-town aesthetic. The off-the-beaten-path town of Capitola has 20 miles of coastline, old-growth redwood forests, a 100-year-old seaside amusement park, a pedestrian-friendly downtown and scenic highways both by the ocean and within the forest. Also, San Jose Mineta International Airport is only 30 minutes away from Capitola.

Commercial shoots are regular here, with Robert Talbott clothiers being the latest example.

PHOTO, COURTESY SANTA CRUZ COUNTY FILM COMMISSION/PRAVEEN PN

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HEARST CASTLE, SAN SIMEON The historic Hearst Castle, designed in 1919 by California’s first licensed female architect, Julia Morgan, graces the hilltops of San Simeon. Once the residence of businessman, publisher and politician, William Randolph Hearst, the estate has transformed into an accredited museum and California State Park. With its rich history and architectural grandeur, Hearst Castle remains an iconic and captivating setting for a diverse range of filming projects.

Productions shot here include: Of Mice and Men (1939), Spartacus (1960) and Commando (1985). The indoor Neptune Pool in Hearst Castle also served as the filming location for Lady Gaga’s music video G.U.Y. (2014).

PHOTO COURTESY OF VISIT SLO CAL

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SNOWFALL IN COLFAX, PLACER COUNTY Colfax, a gateway to the High Sierra Mountains, has kept it quaintness for the last 150 years and is one of many Placer County towns that could represent small-town USA. The city’s slow-paced lifestyle, historic train depot, picturesque theater and dated storefronts make it an ideal location for productions looking for backcountry towns in the mountains — and the city is especially magical when it snows. Colfax is even mentioned in the novel Around the World in Eighty Days, by Jules Verne.

TV series that filmed in Colfax, include House Hunters (1999-), American Pickers (2010 -) and New Lives in the Wild (2013). The movie The Independent (2022) also shot in the town.

PHOTO, COURTESY SIMPLY CANDID BY JESSICA SMITH (INSTAGRAM: @SIMPLYCANDID_JS)

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THE FEELGOOD FACTOR Sunshine and stunning landscapes have forever been used to deliver the feelgood factor that brands look for in TV and cinema commercials. Which is why the Golden State has long been a source of breathtaking backdrops for so many commercial spots.

Debbie Lincoln reports

C

Childhood Rules, winner of the COLA Location Manager of the Year – Commercials award for 2023

INEMA and TV commercials shoots are generally short-term affairs.

They’re in and out so you’d hardly notice them; and generally they’re not massive users of hotels, restaurants and other facilities that benefit so considerably when a movie or series moves into an area.

But they still do bring business into an area, and they also provide work for local crews and other professions. They can also provide an important training ground for the production industry: Sir Ridley Scott and the late Sir Alan Parker — and many others — are testament to that.

Which is why film offices and other organizations are happy to help, providing backup and more, to visiting commercials productions.

Down in the south, between Los Angeles and San Diego, Riverside County is one such area that offers support to visiting commercials. Commercials comprise around 10% of all filming in the region, for which the local film commission offers free filming permits, and waves location fees for County-owned sites.

Stephanie Stethem, from the Riverside County film office, says commercial producers “are mostly looking for desert and mountain roads, mid-century looks, wind turbines, ranches and lakes, and unique architecture such as the Dinah Shore house in Palm Springs, or the Mission Inn”.

Recent commercial shoots in Riverside County include car

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WE LIKE TO SAY WE HAVE PRICELESS LOCATIONS THAT LOOK LIKE A MILLION BUCKS KAREN NORDSTRAND

companies Audi, Hyundai and BMW, Chevrolet and Alpha Romeo.

Santa Cruz, on the coast between San Francisco and Monterey, doesn’t host too many large-scale productions, and so commercials are an important element of the business of the Santa Cruz County Film Commission, according to film commissioner Christina Glynn. “Our bread-and-butter is commercial shoots,” Glynn says. And the recent client list is impressive: Audi, Range Rover, California State Parks Foundation, New Balance, Ugg, Giro Sport Design, Boa Fit running shoes, Hahn Family Wines, and a special project for pet product Purina.

“One of the strongest resources I have are the location scouts that have the Santa Cruz area on their radar,” Glynn says. Her office operates principally as an enabler, helping to source catering, hotels and lodging as well as sharing its database and making introductions to companies and organizations geared up to assist with scouting locations, permitting and other production requirements.

Further north, in the Humboldt Del Norte region, around 25% of visiting productions throughout the year are commercials. “Many are car commercials,” film commissioner Cassandra Hesseltine says. “We have nice roads that vary in geography. For example, we have roads near beaches, rivers, through redwood groves, rolling hills and small towns.” She adds: “Recently, we had Harley Davidson film a commercial here in the historical

A popular location for commercials: The Palm Springs Estate of the late American entertainer Dinah Shore.

Photo: Locations 760

town of Ferndale — known for its Victorian village look.”

Ferndale has hosted pretty much every type of production, including feature films Salem's Lot (1979), Outbreak (1995) and The Majestic (2001).

“Quite a lot of our general permits are free or low-cost,” Hesseltine says. “Our office is a full-time, stand-alone film commission office for two counties and will help with logistics in any way needed. We have a production guide for crew and vendors and can help with all our permit jurisdictions.”

“We like to say we have priceless locations that look like a million bucks,” Monterey County film commissioner Karen Nordstrand says. “In other words, you can get your ‘money shot’ in Monterey County.

“Commercial producers often send location scouts here in search of dramatic coastline looks — especially Big Sur — easily accessible beaches and ocean views, and roads along the shore or in rural parts of our county,” Nordstrand says. “Agricultural fields and crops, rustic barns and winery looks are often sought in our Salinas Valley with its ‘John Steinbeck Country’ farm-field settings.”

Over the years nearly every make of car has come to film commercials on the scenic roads of Monterey County.

“Glamorous and rare cars arrive for the annual Concours d’Elegance car show at Pebble Beach, and often car manufacturers do additional filming of vehicles outside the show as well,” Nordstrand says. “Recently, Kia and other new electric models have filmed commercials here.”

Advertising agency Shipyard, which has California offices in Newport beach, San Diego and Sacramento, is the creative force behind the stunning, star-studded Visit California pre-game ad that appeared before the Superbowl in 2022. The following year, Shipyard’s latest work for Visit California won plaudits at the annual COLA Awards, the California On Location Awards, which honor the best location professionals in entertainment. The awards are organized by FLICS, the Film Locations in California Statewide, a body of 42 film offices and commissions that work with the California Film Commission to facilitate film production in the state. The Location Manager of the

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Year – Commercials award for 2023, went to Weston Marsh for the Visit California Childhood Rules commercial spot.

“85% of parents are very likely to travel with their children in the next 12 months, with travel intent this year higher than in 2019, and this new campaign, which is a pure celebration of joy for both kids and parents, shows them just what makes California such a unique family destination,” David Grzelak, chief strategy officer of The Shipyard, says.

Shot by director Ben Quinn, the campaign shows kids living out their collective childhood dreams with joyful abandon, and seemingly unsupervised. The turn of the spot reveals that their parents were out having just as much fun. Marsh describes it as “the most fun and enjoyable commercial project I have ever worked on. The title of the commercial kind of says it all…. The project brief was 'kids being kids' — having fun while exploring a variety of the most epic locations in the diverse state of California. The director and team did an amazing job of capturing kids having fun, not just acting like it. How can kids not have fun when jumping in mud puddles in redwood forests, splashing in the warm waves of the San Diego coast and meeting Groot at Disneyland?”

The Shipyard crew filmed from the southern border up into northern California, including: Torrey Pines State

A popular area for car commercials: Monterey County Big Sur Rocky Creek Bridge.

Photo: Monterey County Film Commission

Beach in San Diego, Oceano Dunes at Pismo Beach, Santa Cruz Boardwalk, Paso Robles, San Gregorio, San Francisco, Sonoma, Disneyland, Universal Studios, Elysian Park, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. “It was the ultimate California road trip as I traveled to and from all these locations during the process of scouting, director’s scouting, tech scouts and then finally filming the shots,” Marsh says.

W.C.Fields maxim ‘never work with children or animals’ went right out of the window for this particular shoot, and Marsh said that numerous precautions and considerations had to be put in place bearing in mind that almost every scene in the commercial involved children.

“We filmed a scene 300 ft above the ground in the canopy of the coastal redwoods. It is one of the longest zip-lines in the state and the child actors were invited to go up there prior to the film date to do test runs on the zip-lines with their family to make sure they were not afraid of heights and would actually enjoy the experience,” Marsh says.

“Although the longest and highest zip-line in California is thrilling, it can also be scary and intimidating. It would be hard to fake a smile if a kid is terrified and screaming. Filming with child actors and drones through redwood trees above 200 ft is even more complicated and potentially disastrous than it sounds. The practice runs were absolutely necessary, and in the end, I don’t think those kids will ever have a better day at the office!”

Marsh explains the difference between shooting commercials and series or features — short lead times being the key.

“Generally there is a short turnaround time between the scouting process and filming but that is all I’ve ever known and I enjoy the fast pace and pressure of the commercialfilm process. There is a frenetic energy from start to finish that drives me to stay on-task and be laser-focused,” he says. “A unique opportunity that commercial location scouting led me to was an invitation to join an undercover operations team in Cartagena, Colombia. Because of my background as a location scout and being fluent in Spanish, I went undercover with a team of operatives to take down a network of child traffickers on a remote island off the coast of Cartagena. It was something I would have never pursued to be involved in, but the opportunity came to me and I went all in. It was exciting and a life-changing experience, but I was more than happy to get back to the world of commercial location scouting in California.”

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The

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Three hours from Hollywood, SLO CAL (San Luis Obispo County, California) offers 3,616 square miles of wide-open coast, classic beach towns, sprawling ranchlands and lush vineyards. Find the perfect backdrop for your next commercial, photo shoot, TV series or feature film. With 315 days of sunshine here, it’s always a beautiful day on set.

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M AKING A SCENE NIGH T SWIM

‘I want to smell the chlorine’ EVERYONE ASPIRES TO A BACKYARD SWIMMING POOL. A SIMPLE PLEASURE, A LUXURY FOR MOST AND ALWAYS A PLACE OF FUN. BUT IN NIGHT SWIM IT BECOMES SOMETHING TO FEAR, WHERE EVIL TAKES HOLD. IT’S WHAT YOU MIGHT EXPECT FROM MASTERS OF HORROR JASON BLUM AND JAMES WAN. JULIAN NEWBY REPORTS

BASED on a 2014 short film, Night Swim stars Wyatt Russell as Ray Waller, a former major-league baseball player forced into early retirement by a degenerative illness. He moves into a new house with his wife Eve and their children, where he hopes the glistening backyard swimming pool will be fun for the kids and provide physical therapy for him, and the hope that he one day might return to pro ball.

But the house has a dark secret that will turn their happy family life into a living hell.

The film is directed by Bryce McGuire — who also made the 2014 short — from his own screenplay. The film is a kind of homage to 1980s-era horror movies: think Poltergeist and Pet Sematary.

McGuire’s own childhood and adolescence resonate throughout the film, its theme, in part reflecting his own aquaphobia. “I’ve always had water on the brain,” he says. “Growing up in Florida, surrounded by ocean on three sides, in a climate that can only really be survived by partaking in water ritual, knowing friends

who drowned, hurricanes that flooded homes, boating accidents, shark attacks, you come to have a kind of fear and reverence for the water.”

McGuire’s childhood memories are fairly dark: “Probably the first horror film I ever saw was Creature from the Black Lagoon, and I haven’t stopped thinking about it since; I have a Creature tattoo on my right bicep,” he says, also citing Night of the Hunter (1955) and The Abyss (1989) as early influences. “And, of course, there was Jaws(1975). I saw that movie when I was 10 years old. We had a swimming pool at the time, and I remember treading water by myself at night when my younger brother turned the lights out. And even though I knew the pool was only nine feet deep and 18 feet wide, I was certain beyond any doubt that the water was an abyss and something horrible was rising toward me from the depths.”

Amélie Hoeferie as Izzy Waller (lower left), Elliot Waller (Gavin Warren), Ray Waller (Wyatt Russell) and Eve Waller (Kerry Condon) in Night Swim

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Bryce McGuire on location with Night Swim

SHOOTING IN WATER IS TWICE AS SLOW, TWICE AS EXPENSIVE AND TWICE AS DANGEROUS AS SHOOTING ON LAND BRYCE MCGUIRE

He adds: “The idea of an inanimate object or location being a source of mystery, terror, a crucible for someone’s innermost wishes, imprinted itself on my imagination. It’s always the things that are prettiest on the outside that can harm us the most.”

The best horror movies take the innocent or the mundane and inject evil or fear where there should be none. “The pool represents status, diversion, fun,” McGuire says. “It’s sexy; it’s seductive and that’s what makes it deadly. The colors are rich and vibrant; the cool, glowing turquoise water invites us like a siren call.

But in the water, when the lights go out, it feels big. I also loved the idea of tapping into the universal memories we all have

Kerry Condon as Eve Waller

with the pool from our childhoods — reaching into the drain flap, skimming out dead bugs from the surface, getting your leg caught in the pool cleaner tube, playing Marco Polo — and turning these memories into unique scares. I would always say on set, ‘I want to smell the chlorine’. I hope people smell the chlorine when they watch this movie on a big screen.”

Night Swim was filmed on location in Altadena and the Los Angeles region over

the course of 34 days in 2023. And the toughest casting challenge was to find the right pool for the Waller family. McGuire initially wanted to build the pool on a Hollywood backlot, but the unusually wet winter season of 2022-23 made that impractical.

So he and his team set out on an epic search of Southern California backyards.

“We searched for houses with pools in almost every neighborhood in Los Angeles,” McGuire says. “We needed a big

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pool with lots of space around it, because I wanted it to feel like you were on an island surrounded by darkness when a character was in the water alone. I also wanted big trees on the property, but not palm trees; I wanted the movie to feel like it could be taking place in Anywhere, America. But we’re shooting in L.A. — so that’s not easy to come by.”

There were so many options, McGuire says, that at one point they were making unnecessary work for themselves by piecing together the front of one house, the back of another and the pool of yet another. “It became such a scheduling headache,” he says.

The crew eventually found the perfect location in Altadena, a middleclass suburban community about 13 miles northeast of Los Angeles, near to Pasadena. “The house had everything we wanted,” McGuire says. “The yard was wrapped in massive, live oak trees above the deep end that almost feels like a gaping mouth about to swallow you whole. The pool was over nine feet deep and 44 feet long with a diving board and an interesting silhouette. When I saw the pool looking down from the second-story window, it took my breath away. It was everything I imagined.”

Some scenes did require deeper water, so cast and crew also shot for four days in a 13-foot-deep Olympic-sized pool in Chatsworth, California.

While the shoot did employ blue screen for some shots, Night Swim was mostly filmed “wet for wet,” as opposed to “dry for wet,” meaning it didn’t rely on digital effects to simulate the movement of water. McGuire and his director of photography, Charlie Sarroff, used older, wider lenses to make the pool seem more like the ocean, when the scenes go into supernatural mode.

For underwater sequences, they collaborated with two specialists: cinematographer Ian Takahashi and stunt co-ordinator Mark Rayner, whose team included performers who had just come off Avatar: The Way of Water. “Shooting in water is twice as slow, twice as expensive and twice as dangerous as shooting on land,” McGuire says. “It was a huge logistical challenge. Everything from keeping the water clear enough to have visibility and having the right flashlights, to the amount of time talent could safely hold their breath, required specific problem-solving and strategies that you’d never even think about until you’re making a movie called Night Swim.”

For early scenes of the Wallers

Gavin Warren as Elliot Waller in Night Swim

discovering the derelict pool littered with fall leaves and coated with scummy algae — and for the moment in which Ray accidentally slips into it — production designer Hillary Gurtler and the artdepartment team created large vinyl prints that were fitted to the bottom of the pool to create the illusion of dirty water, so as to prevent damaging the pool and to spare actor Wyatt Russell the unpleasantness of experiencing real slime and scum.

For swim stunts that involved anything more complicated than a dog paddle, the cast would first study action drawings created by storyboard artist John McKey and then watch Rayner’s divers demonstrate the choreography — which sometimes required the actors to put on goggles and go under the water to

I WAS ALWAYS INTERESTED IN DOING SWIMMING ON-CAMERA AND COMBINING THOSE TWO GREAT INTERESTS FOR ME” KERRY CONDON

watch before doing it themselves.

Kerry Condon, who plays Ray Waller’s wife Eve, was particularly equipped for the part.

“On the day I met Kerry, she had been nominated for a Golden Globe for The Banshees of Inisherin — and swam a mile in the ocean that morning,” McGuire says.

“She had to do some really demanding underwater work, especially late in the movie, that most people simply would not have been able to do. She’s an extremely tough and physical actor. Something special happens with Kerry every time the camera rolls. She really pushed me and the material, and she’s fantastic in the movie.”

Condon says the opportunity to play in the water was a major reason why she was keen to take the part. “I was always interested in doing swimming on-camera and combining those two great interests for me,” Condon says. “But the other major reason why I thought this was a great opportunity for me was that I’d never done a horror movie before, and I've always wanted a career that would allow me to be a character actress in every kind of genre.”

All cast members did have to pass a basic swim test prior to production, and the cast always had lifeguards watching out for them during every take.

Night Swim is a Universal Pictures presentation, from Blumhouse Productions. Producers are James Wan and Jason Blum.

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Jaafar Jackson as Michael Jackson in Michael.

Photo: Lionsgate

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GOT TO BE THERE The year 2023 will be remembered by many in the film and TV business as a difficult one. But for California, the ending of the strikes was followed by more good news.

Andy Fry reports

W

HILE studios and union reps thrashed out their new post-strike agreements, California governor Gavin Newsom was unveiling plans to extend California’s $330m-a-year Film & TV Tax Credit Program until 2030-31, an additional five years. By doing so, it is estimated that that state will create 60,000 jobs and generate $10bn of investment over that time.

Announcing his vote of confidence in the state’s film and TV sector, Governor Newsom said California’s entertainment industry “drives economic growth in communities all across our state. Over the years, our Tax Credit Program has helped create thousands of jobs, relocated productions to California, and brought billions in new investment. Through this extension, we’ll continue this growth, protect jobs and push for progress on diversity so workers better represent communities.”

California Film Commission (CFC) executive director Colleen Bell is equally effusive, saying the “Tax Credit Program will strengthen our global competitiveness and deliver significant, long-term value.” Referring back

to previous incarnations of the Tax Credit Program, which was first launched in 2009, she says productions subsidized by the state have generated more than $24bn in economic output and supported 188,000 jobs.

The 2025 edition will be designated Program 4.0. The current edition, Program 3.0, remains live until then and is in the midst of supporting a broad range of projects. In 2023 alone, it allocated funds to around 40 feature-film projects, from indie releases through to blockbusters.

Most of these have yet to complete production, but highprofile titles include Under My Skin, an untitled Netflix project, and Quentin Tarantino’s 10th and final film. Each is expected to bring more than $100m into the state.

Explaining why he chose to shoot his final film in California, writer/director/producer Tarantino says: “I love shooting in California. I started directing movies here and it is only fitting I shoot my final picture in the cinema capital of the world. There is nothing like shooting in my hometown; the crews are the best I’ve ever worked with, and the locations are amazing.”

Program 3.0 projects that received funding back in 2022, and thus closer to release, include The Thomas Crown Affair, Netflix-backed Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F (starring Eddie Murphy) and the hotly anticipated sequel Joker: Folie à Deux, which stars Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga. Todd Phillips, again at the helm of the Warner Bros. project, says, “No other city has more resources than L.A.

NO OTHER CITY HAS MORE RESOURCES THAN L.A. WHEN IT COMES TO OUR INDUSTRY TODD PHILLIPS

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when it comes to our industry, and to have this support is a nice welcome for all of us working on Joker: Folie à Deux. Having spent the last several years filming in iconic locales in the U.S. and around the globe, I’m looking forward to bringing a project of this scope to California.”

Although movie projects capture headlines, the tax credit has also been effective in bringing high-end TV series to the state. Recent beneficiaries have included Netflix, Disney, Paramount Global, Amazon Studios and BET, with True to the Game, a drama based on a trilogy of hit movies.

A particular point of satisfaction for the CFC’s Bell is that the tax credit has encouraged numerous shows to relocate to California having shot previous seasons in other parts of the world. To date, 33 series have relocated — with Amazon Studios’ Citadel the latest to come to California.

Previously based in the UK, Bell says the second season is California’s highest spending relocating TV series to date, with an estimated $119m in qualified expenditures.

The greatest satisfaction comes when series relocate and then renew, Bell says, since this brings regular work.

American Horror Story is the best example, having produced six series in California since relocating from Louisiana. Good Girls, Ballers and Veep all went on to produce three series after relocating.

The CFC announced in April, 2024, $152m in tax credits for 12 television projects as part of the program.

Recipients include one relocating series, three recurring series and eight new series. The Commission estimates that the 12 projects will spend $1.1bn in the state during

Sarah Paulson in Cult, season seven of American Horror Story, which has produced six series in California since relocating from Louisiana

their upcoming seasons, supporting local business and employing 2,300 crew, 2,200 cast and 50,000 background performers.

Applications to the Tax Credit Program are managed in waves across the year, with each wave focusing on a different segment of the business. The latest tranche of film titles to receive backing suggests that enthusiasm for California has weathered the disruption of the Hollywood strikes in 2023. Unveiled in February 2024, high-profile projects joining the program include Lucasfilm’s The Mandalorian & Grogu, which the CFC says will add an additional $166m to the state’s economy — the biggest blockbuster in the program’s history. Directed by Jon Favreau, this is exactly the kind of project that could have chosen to tap into tax credits in other parts of the world.

But a Lucasfilm spokesperson says the production is looking forward to utilizing the state’s “world-class crew”.

The 15 productions selected in this latest round of film awards are projected to generate over $400m and create 20,000 jobs — across a combined 579 filming days. Other recipients include an untitled Disney live-action movie and two Amazon MGM Studios projects — The Accountant 2 and Mercy.

Mercy is a sci-fi film, starring Chris Pratt, set in the near future, when capital crime has increased. The story follows a detective accused of a violent crime who is forced to prove his innocence. Producer Charles Roven summed up the appeal of working in the Golden State: “We get to work with terrific talent that lives here and utilize wonderful

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locations. Almost everyone goes home at the end of day.”

One noteworthy point about the new tranche of productions, Bell says, is the high level of filming that will take place outside the Los Angeles thirty-mile zone — a scenario which entitles producers to apply for a 5% uplift on the basic 25% tax credit.

Nearly 41% (235 out of 569) of the filming days planned by the projects will take place in out-of-zone locations including Alameda County, Orange County, San Bernardino County, San Diego County, San Francisco, Upland, Joshua Tree and Marin.

This is a healthy trend that builds on the flagship outof-zone projects already supported by Program 3.0. The latest remake of The Thomas Crown Affair is reported to be shooting 30 of its 54 production days in San Francisco.

Elsewhere, Michael, a biopic of Michael Jackson that has been allocated $21.1m in tax credits, is expected to base the majority of its 80-day California shoot in Santa Barbara.

Bell says: “We have a high concentration of film production here in L.A. County, but we love the fact that other parts of the state are building out their production infrastructure.

Our ambition is to encourage multiple clusters so that more Californians can experience the economic benefits of having production in their communities. And we can only do that through tools such as the state tax incentive, investment in training and the amazing work of the local film commissioners.”

Bell says one of the advantages of reviewing and extending the tax credit every few years is that it ensures accountability. Another is that it is possible to evolve the program to ensure it is delivering the maximum impact for the industry. For Program 4.0, she is especially enthusiastic about three developments, the first of which is refundability. “We’re one of the very few jurisdictions that hasn’t had a refundable tax credit. By changing this

The Mandalorian & Grogu, one of the high-profile projects joining the California Tax Credit Program Ben Affleck in The Accountant 2: chosen for a recent round of state subsidies Amazon Studios’ Citadel is one of the latest series to relocate to California

WE LOVE THE FACT THAT OTHER PARTS OF THE STATE ARE BUILDING OUT THEIR PRODUCTION INFRASTRUCTURE COLLEEN BELL

in Program 4.0, it gives more certainty to decision-makers who are making long-term plans that our Tax Credit Program will still be available for them.”

In simple terms, refundability relates to a relaxing of criteria relating to tax liabilities that will make it possible for more companies to participate — some studios unable to access the tax credit will be able to do so from 2025.

The other developments that Bell is enthusiastic about are the expansion of the CFC’s Career Pathways Training program and efforts to incentivize productions to become more diverse. “Essentially, we will withhold 4% of the credit until productions have shown us a comprehensive diversity work plan. They will show us their plan, and if they’re having difficulties, we will make recommendations for how they can achieve their goals.”

Bell says the new system is rigorous but not unreasonable: “At the end of the process, there will be a diversity audit and we will make a determination as to whether or not the producers have made a good-faith effort to meet their goals. And at that point, we will release the full 100% of their tax credit.”

In terms of whether the tax credit could do more, there are suggestions that increasing the overall budget ($330m) or raising the cap per project ($20m) might help California stay competitive.

The state has made a move to incentivize stage construction, and another specific area where the state needs to act is around VFX and virtual production. Bell admits: “It's an important part of this business, and there are other jurisdictions doing a better job of incentivizing visual effects and animation. We've got some of the best training in California, but we're finding that people come out the other side and the jobs aren't there for them. We need to wrap our heads around this as quickly as possible so that talent can stay with us and build their careers here.”

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F E AT U R E

ST U D I OS

ACTION! There are many countries and regions around the world that offer beautiful locations and enticing tax incentives. But the factor that really sets leading production hubs apart from their rivals is state-ofthe art film and TV studio space — which is where California takes the lead. Andy Fry reports

Shooting on the New York backlot at Universal Studios, Los Angeles

S

TUDIOS are safe havens for production, where privacy is guaranteed and weather is never a consideration. More than that, studios are where the magic happens, where spectacular sets are built and state-of-the-art technology is put into play. Without a studio system working at full throttle, production hubs can never hope to anchor the landmark productions that audiences love.

It's perhaps no surprise, then, that California — more specifically Los Angeles — is still home to the largest concentration of studio space on the planet. In the 2023 edition of its Sound Stage Production Report, film office

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FilmLA estimated that Los Angeles County currently has 6.2 million sq ft of certified sound-stage space, more than arch-rivals including Toronto, the UK and Georgia. Not only that, it is growing fast — with new studios and major expansions coming on stream all the time.

FilmLA president Paul Audley insists that Los Angeles “cannot afford to lose its competitive edge when it comes to sound stages and other production infrastructure. Local studio expansions and the California Film & Television Tax Credit Program are prerequisites for sustaining the high level of production we have in L.A., and for growing it further.”

To its credit, California’s decision-makers understand this point, and introduced a $150m tax-credit scheme in 2022 — specifically to support studio expansion within the state. Dubbed the Soundstage Filming Program, the new credit offers 20-25% against qualified expenditures for a

ON THE LOT

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production that takes place in a certified studio construction project. To receive the credit, the claimant is required to construct or renovate one or more soundstages certified by the California Film Commission.

One of the key strengths of L.A.’s studio ecosystem is that it is capable of hosting pretty much any kind of high-end production. While the lion’s share of shoot days is taken up by one-hour and half-hour scripted TV, there’s also a healthy volume of feature-film production in the L.A. region. On top of this, the city’s studios get to host talk shows, commercials and game shows, among other genres. FilmLA’s studio report shows that capacity typically runs at around 90-95%, which is enough to feel sustainable without raising fears that L.A. will need to start turning work away because of lack of capacity.

Looking at the offering in more detail, a large part of L.A.’s stage space is accounted for by iconic Hollywood Studios including Universal, Fox, Warner Bros. and Walt Disney — historic sites that are constantly evolving in line with production demands.

Universal Studios, for example, is a vast complex that offers a 360-degree service for producers, explains vice-president of stages and backlot Jennifer Oswald. Spanning 400 acres, Oswald says the studio offers “34 stages, more than 30 backlot locations, and our new state-of-the-art virtualproduction stage which pioneers cutting-edge technology for innovative filmmaking. It’s a dynamic canvas, featuring thematic environments such as the bustling streets of New York and the charming landscapes of Europe. We also offer residential settings, serene lakes, wooded areas and a water tank.”

Collectively, Oswald says, “the studio offers unparalleled versatility for creating a wide range of scenes. Furthermore, our commitment to expanding capabilities is

The set for Amazon’s Candy Cane Lane at Universal Studios, Los Angeles

evident in the recent addition of eight stages near Barham Blvd., enhancing our capacity to accommodate concurrent productions.”

Underlining the turnkey nature of the complex, she says: “To augment the experience, we will be completing a new Campus Project construction which will feature screening theaters, commissary, coffee house, sushi bar and restaurant. This adds a set of contemporary buildings for clients to enjoy and to use as locations. All locations at Universal are filming locations.”

ALL LOCATIONS AT UNIVERSAL ARE FILMING LOCATIONS JENNIFER OSWALD

Oswald says the lot is designed to cater to a diverse range of productions. “It is typically occupied by a mix of TV, film, commercial and streaming projects. The flexibility of the facilities allows for the seamless execution of various creative endeavors, including music videos, concert rehearsals, still photography and events. Whether it’s internal projects or external collaborations, Universal provides a conducive environment for the successful realization of creative visions.”

Recent productions that underline the point include The Voice, Bel Air, Quantum Leap, Oppenheimer, That’s My Jam, Lopez vs. Lopez, Hacks, Loot, Ted, Based on a True Story, Killing It and Amazon’s 2023 feature Candy Cane Lane. “The lot is typically a bustling hub of a diverse array of productions that span various genres and formats,” Oswald says, adding that: “We welcome all third-party

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productions. Our lot can cater to the unique needs and creative visions of a wide range of clients in the industry.”

The backlot is, of course, a prize asset — with the ability to recreate arch-rival New York being a key attraction: “The busiest backlot locations include the five-acre New York area which encompasses a range of versatile settings such as Wall Street, Central Park and Brownstones. The energy of Broadway is captured through the bustling theater marquees, while interior shooting locations provide a dynamic backdrop.”

Also in the backlot are Colonial and Elm streets, residential areas that offer a glimpse into everyday life. “One of my personal favorites,” Oswald says, “is the Falls Lake location which provides a picturesque setting with heated water.”

In terms of the strategic benefits of the backlot, Oswald calls it “multifaceted. Firstly, it provides filmmakers with unparalleled control over the production environment.

The painstakingly crafted backlot settings allow for precise control of every detail, ensuring that the creative vision is executed seamlessly. Moreover, the controlled environment minimizes noise disturbances, creating an ideal space for high-quality audio.”

“THE BACKLOT HAS MANY LAYERS OF VALUE THAT BEGIN WITH CONVENIENCE”

KIMBERLY FINE GUTIERREZ

In the age of VFX, Oswald says, “the backlot proposition becomes even more valuable. The controlled environment allows for easier integration of visual effects, providing filmmakers with the flexibility to enhance scenes digitally.”

Fox Corp’s Fox Studios Lot is another dynamic L.A.-based hub that recently announced plans for a game-changing $1.5bn overhaul that will add 1.6 million sq ft of studio, administration and production-support space to the site.

Key upgrades will include the addition of nine soundstages, bringing the total number to 24. Gary Ehrlich, president and general manager of Fox Studio Lot, says: “Our vision is to secure the future of the lot by investing in production infrastructure and the Century City business core.”

FilmLA’s Audley has no doubt it is exactly the kind of investment that will help L.A. — and California more generally — to compete in the studio-space race: “Fox’s planned investment in new studio infrastructure could not have come at a more critical time. Giving the greenlight to new stage builds will tip hundreds of millions of dollars into the local economy.”

Speaking to Location California about the current profile of the Fox Studio Lot, Kimberly Fine Gutierrez, senior vicepresident, production services, said: “Located in the heart of Century City, the Fox Studio Lot currently consists of 15 sound stages of various sizes, scenic on-lot locations, convenient and top-of-the-line production services, various interior and exterior settings, state-of-the-art post-production mixing suites, a renowned Scoring Stage and several screening rooms — including three large theaters.

The 53-acre Fox Studio Lot has a long legacy of production excellence helping creators bring to life content for screens of all sizes. The Fox Studio Lot is also home to one of Hollywood’s historic and most elegant studio commissaries.”

Of particular note right now, Gutierrez says, is the rebuild of the studio’s famous 55-year-old New York Street backlot. “The all-new build begins with steel infrastructure that’s skinned with façade reproductions of much of the original Academy-Award winning production design

by John DeCuir. We have expanded the interior space to accommodate larger sets and events. We added apartment and diner interiors with expansion plans for more interior spaces in the next phase of construction. The design heritage is complemented with modern enhancements including practical lighting fixtures, pre-hung lightboxes, backing track and plans for climate control.”

Designed for the camera, the street is the right size for productions to work efficiently with set decoration and staging. Many of the new enhancements are aimed at maximizing the existing footprint, while improving every angle the space has to offer. The filmable street area was extended over 50 feet by including adjacent buildings, and the New York Street Alley was made wider and longer to give more depth in close space. New elements have been incorporated that suggest iconic locations including Chinatown, the Lower East Side and the Village. With a bit of imagination and production wizardry, the backlot can also be reimagined as other cities, including San Francisco.

Like Oswald, Gutierrez observes that the backlot offers distinct logistical advantages over shooting in live locations: “The backlot has many layers of value that begin with convenience. A controlled environment with less restrictions, offering productions a white-glove service,” she says. “We have secure, private locations, which allow clients to streamline operations, as well as providing more flexibility for production design.”

The Fox Studio Lot is equipped to handle film and television productions of all sizes, including third-party shows and projects. In January 2024, after being offline for nearly two years, the Lot celebrated its official reopening with its first booking, a music video featuring a legendary artist. In the first few months, several productions also filmed on the New York Street for broadcast and streaming platforms.

Further proof that the Hollywood majors have faith in the future of L.A. as a production hub is Warner Bros.’ plan to expand its own studio footprint, via a lease-back deal with Worthe Real Estate Group and San Francisco-based investment firm Stockbridge. In the process, Warner Bros. is hoping to tap into the state-supported tax rebate scheme.

First unveiled in 2021, the plan is for 16 new stages to be put up on the historic Ranch Lot Studios site in Burbank — with the new complex expected to go live in 2025. This site, home to historic productions including Bewitched (1964-72) and The Waltons (1972-81), is just one mile north of Warner Bros.’ existing 100-acre lot in Burbank, and the ultimate goal is to connect the two. Jeff Nagler, president, Warner Bros. Worldwide Studio Operations, says: “Continuing to enhance our state-of-the-art studios and full-service offerings for our productions and partners is a key priority for our company, and the new Ranch Lot development will certainly fulfil this goal in the Los Angeles area.”

Understandably, many sound stages owned by the Hollywood majors are occupied by their own content. But the L.A. region is also witnessing important new studio developments by third parties. Most notable is Hackman Capital Partners’ (HCP) multi-billion acquisition of both the CBS Radford Studio Center and Television City. HCP’s

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A diner on a New York street at the Fox Studio Lot

FEATURE STUDIOS

plans include the state-of-the-art modernization and expansion of its new assets — a move that will help California meet the growing demand for studio space.

Signing off on an important labor agreement at the start of 2024, Michael Hackman, founder and CEO of Hackman Capital Partners, said: “We are committed to investing in the future of our city’s existing studio facilities and building state-of-the-art soundstages here in Los Angeles. This goal drives our modernization projects at both Television City and Radford Studio Center. We know that if we make these investments, productions and good paying production jobs will stay in L.A.” In a similar vein, Bardas Investment Group and Bain Capital Real Estate have unveiled plans for a $600m redevelopment of the former Television Center, at 6311 Romaine St. Under the name Echelon Television Center, the facility will be transformed into a 620,000 sq ft studio campus with four stages. Bardas founder David Simon says the project to re-imagine the old home of Technicolor and Metro Pictures “represents another great opportunity to keep Hollywood in Hollywood”.

Away from the central L.A. cluster, the city of Santa Clarita also continues to play a crucial role in the expansion

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of California’s studio capacity. Evan Thomason, economic development associate for the city, says “at last count, we had around 57 soundstages in town across established players like Santa Clarita Studios and LA North, and more are coming online.”

Santa Clarita Studios (SCS) broke ground on its first six stages in 1987 and today has 35 studios ranging from 6,000-48,000 sq ft in size. Primarily geared towards TV, recent productions have included Westworld, Goliath and Justified. Among key developments at SCS has been the $5m expansion of its backlot, which includes 600 ft of facades, multiple streets and angles, buildings interiors, and an alley. The majority of the street is 40 ft in height and can be dressed as anything from contemporary Downtown L.A. to 19th-century Paris.

Other developments in the Santa Clarita Valley include plans for a new complex from Shadowbox Studios, owner and operator of campuses in Atlanta, London and L.A. Having secured support from the Santa Clarita Valley Economic Development Corporation and the Santa Clarita Valley Chamber of Commerce, the plan is to construct 19 purpose-built, modern soundstages ranging from 15,000 to 40,000 sq ft, as well as workshops and production offic-

FEATURE STUDIOS

es. Shadowbox reckons the new hub will facilitate 2,400 full time jobs and generate over $1bn of annual economic impact. And then there is LA North, which arrived in Santa Clarita in 2018 and snapped up its fifth building in the valley in 2022. Combined, the LA North network now represents just under 500,000 sq ft of production space and 16 soundstages.

The studio was co-founded by Anthony Syracuse and John Prabhu, both from California. Syracuse, a featurefilm construction manager by trade, says LA North is now “busting at the seams” after the end of the 2023 talent strikes. “There was a lot of hardship among the workforce last year,” Syracuse says, “but now things are back to normal we have as many as 1,700 people across our five campuses on any given day. It’s awesome to see that energy back.”

The only marginal benefits of the strike period, he reflects, were the opportunity to plan and do some on-site jobs.

“When you’re busy, you don't focus on the broken sprinkler or the faded signage. So it was nice to catch up with maintenance.”

At time of writing, LA North is still at five sites, and has partnered equipment company Cinelease on three of them. But echoing other entrepreneurs in the state, Syracuse says: “John and I are actively looking at expansion because there is demand from clients. What we’re finding since the end of the strikes is that productions are very quick to commit to taking stage space. Enquiries are less general, more targeted. At the same time, we are benefiting from a growth in repeat customers.”

Further expansion will focus on Santa Clarita initially, Syracuse says, “and we’re probably looking at scaling up another 200,000 or 300,000 sq ft. I would say that we will

SINCE THE END OF THE STRIKES PRODUCTIONS ARE VERY QUICK TO COMMIT TO TAKING STAGE SPACE” ANTHONY SYRACUSE

The Water Tower and The Steven J. Ross Theater at Warner Bros.

Studios in Burbank.

Photo: Ian Corrigan/ Warner Bros.

Studio Operations

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have something locked down before the end of the year.”

Historically LA North’s sweet spot was feature films and it has some great credits, having hosted King Richard (2021), Don’t Worry Darling (2022), The Fabelmans (2022) and Creed III (2023). Syracuse says this is still a major area of activity, but with clients including Netflix, Lionsgate, Apple, Amazon, Warner Bros., Paramount and Disney, scripted and unscripted TV are growing in importance.

Recent TV projects to have spent time at the studio include Amazon’s drama Expats (2023-24). “Right now, we’re hosting two of the biggest feature films in the U.S.,” Syracuse says, “but we are just as happy when we have a series or a live-audience show.”

Syracuse has noted the growth in studio space across Southern California and welcomes it. “For all of us to be successful in California, we need more space and we need to work together. We have friends over at Santa Clarita Studios and there have been times when we refer business to each other. I think we all benefit as businesses if we embrace each other.”

While expansion is on the horizon, Syracuse says the goal is to achieve sustainable growth, not allowing studio construction to get out of sync with demand. Crucial in this respect is the extension of the state tax credit. “When

FEATURE STUDIOS

you’re building infrastructure, you need a long runway. So what’s important is the security of knowing the tax credit is here in the long term.”

While Santa Clarita has earned itself the nickname 'Hollywood North', it’s not the only part of L.A. building studio space. Over in Simi Valley, Allied Studios has 78,000 sq ft of stages, a backlot and a ranch. Meanwhile, FilmLA points to the fact that three facilities are being built in the San Fernando Valley, including Sunset Glenoaks in Sun Valley, Reframe Studios in Atwater Village and East End Capital’s studio in Glendale.

Sunset Glenoaks Studios is a $190m development, that will have seven soundstages, offices and other production facilities across its 10-acre site. It’s the fourth L.A.-based site in the Sunset Studios family, a joint-venture between Hudson Pacific and Blackstone. Glenoaks’ film- and TVready stages will range from 15,000 to 21,000 sq ft, all with 35 to 40 ft clear heights. Victor Coleman, chairmanCEO of Hudson Pacific, says it is “a perfect example of our long-term strategy with Blackstone to buy and transform existing facilities and to build new, state-of-the-art studios within L.A. and other high-priority production markets we’ve identified for expansion.”

Of course, California as a whole would benefit from having a few more state-of-the-art studios across the length and breadth of the state — rather than just in the thirty-

mile zone around L.A. Working towards this goal is Mark Walter, a former Cinelease executive who is now general manager of Film Mare Island, a production hub in Northern California’s Bay Area.

Walter’s ambition is to help the Bay Area build a permanent sound-stage complex, an initiative he believes would take the region to the next level as a production hub. To that end, he is working with a range of regional players on a mix of both permanent and temporary staging solutions.

Mare Island, a former Naval base, can offer a wide range of studio space and historic buildings. But Walter is also in constant dialogue with regional stakeholders about creating a network of filming hubs. He has worked with developer IRG, which is in the midst of transforming the Solano County Fairgrounds, and he is in discussions about the potential for stages in Oakland and Alameda. “California’s ability to compete with other leading film centers will be enhanced greatly if we can establish a Northern California studio offering.”

San Francisco Film Commission executive director Manijeh Fata also views construction of a studio as a priority: “We are working on a public-private partnership to secure and develop a soundstage and ensure we remain a cinematic destination where films and shows cannot only be set but where their productions can take place. In the meantime, we have short-term solutions for stage needs.”

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LA North Studios in Santa Clarita

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AVALON BAY, CATALINA ISLAND

Catalina Island is off the coast of Southern California in the Gulf of Santa Catalina and is approximately 29 miles south-southwest of Long Beach, California. The island covers an area of about 75 square miles.

It features a diverse and rugged landscape, including rolling hills, canyons, coastal cliffs and sandy beaches. The tropical palm trees, desolate beaches, sparkling blue water and lush terrain make it a versatile filming location.

The village of Two Harbors, with its South Pacific vibe, was the backdrop for early classics including Treasure Island (1918) and Mutiny on the Bounty (1935).

PHOTO, COURTESY LOVE CATALINA ISLAND/ FILMCATALINA.COM

california

in pictures

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STUBBS VINEYARD, PETALUMA, MARIN COUNTY Stubbs Vineyard is a sweeping 600-acre estate, nestled between the rugged cliffs of the California coast and the rich expanse of Napa Valley, tucked in the hills of West Marin, about 45 minutes from San Francisco.

The property features ocean-to-bay views, natural groves of oak and bay laurel, and an olive tree-lined entry drive. It also features extensive sculpture and land art, as well as numerous hand-crafted and artisan-adorned buildings across the property, many of which are available for production use.

Many commercials have shot here including for Levi’s, OnStar and Nike, as well as several auto brands. The feature film Redemption Trail (2013) also shot here.

PHOTO, COURTESY OF STUBBS VINEYARD

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CLEAR LAKE, LAKE COUNTY Clear Lake is the largest natural freshwater lake entirely within California, with a surface area of 68 square miles. The expansive, warm water of Clear Lake makes it ideal for recreation — including swimming, water skiing, sailing and boating. Lake County has a mix of small towns, vineyards and rugged topography around the region of Clear Lake.

Films shot in Lake County include Sherman’s Way (2008) and Twixt (2011).

PHOTO, COURTESY SAME EUSTON

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East Dunne Avenue in Morgan Hill crosses over Anderson Lake via this bridge. The road winds up into the Diablo Mountain Range, ending at Henry W. Coe State Park. This part of East Dunne Avenue is a winding, narrow, backcountry road which, as it travels up, offers incredible westward views toward the depths of the valley and the city of Morgan Hill. There are very few visible structures and there are not many road users. Seasonal wildflowers are a feature of this area and there is occasional snow in winter.

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ANDERSON LAKE BRIDGE, MORGAN HILL

PHOTO, COURTESY VISIT MORGAN HILL

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BALCH PARK, TULARE COUNTY This county-owned park provides access to Giant Sequoia Trees outside of National Park Service and National Forest Service jurisdiction. There are also two ponds within a forest background, as well as several campsites. Total site control is possible and is quite easy to obtain, while offering an array of forest and outdoor scenery locations.

Many productions have shot here, including movie Gone (2014), video-game Titanfall 2 (2016) and musician Lindsay Sterling's video Artemis (2019). Also, multiple vehicle commercials, including for Toyota, Chevrolet and Nissan, have shot here.

PHOTO, COURTESY TULARE COUNTY FILM COMMISSIONER PHOTO LIBRARY

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D IRECTORY OF REGIONAL FILM OFFICE S

DEL NORTE

SISKIYOU

HUMBOLDT

MODOC

SHASTA

TRINITY

REGIONAL FILM OFFICES GEOGRAPHICAL LOCATION

LASSEN

TEHAMA PLUMAS GLENN

BUTTE

SIERRA

MENDOCINO LAKE

COLUSA SUTTER YUBA

NEVADA

PLACER

SUTTER

NAPA SOLANO CONTRA COSTA ALAMEDA

NORTHERN REGION

CALAVERAS SAN JOAQUIN

Imperial County Orange County Huntington Beach Riverside County Palm Springs San Bernardino County Big Bear Lake San Diego Ventura County

TUOLUMNE MONO

STANISLAUS MARIPOSA

SANTA CLARA MERCED

101-105

MADERA SAN BENITO SANTA CRUZ

SAN FRANCISCO SAN MATEO

Alameda County Berkeley Livermore Oakland Amador County Butte County Calaveras County Del Norte County El Dorado County Humboldt County Lake County Lassen County Marin County Mendocino County Mono County Placer County Sacramento County Folsom Sacramento San Francisco County San Joaquin County Stockton San Mateo County/ Silicon Valley Santa Clara County San Jose Santa Cruz County Shasta County Siskiyou County Solano County Vallejo Sutter County/ Yuba county Stanislaus County Modesto Trinity County Tuolumne County Yolo County

110-111

ALPINE

SACRAMENTO AMADOR

MARIN

SOUTHERN REGION

EL DORADO

YOLO

INYO

FRESNO TULARE

MONTEREY KINGS

SAN LUIS OBISPO

KERN

SANTA BARBARA

SAN BERNARDINO VENTURA

LOS ANGELES

RIVERSIDE

ORANGE

SAN DIEGO

CENTRAL REGION

106-107

Fresno County Inyo County Lone Pine Kern County Ridgecrest Madera County Mariposa County Monterey County San Benito County San Luis Obispo County Santa Barbara County Tulare County

LOS ANGELES AREA

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Antelope Valley/ North Los Angeles County/Palmdale Beverly Hills Catalina Island FilmLA Culver City Diamond Bar Fullerton City of Industry

Gardena La Habra Heights Lancaster Los Angeles City Los Angeles County Monterey Park Newport Beach Palmdale San Dimas Santa Monica South Gate Vernon Long Beach Malibu Pasadena Santa Clarita South Pasadena West Hollywood

IMPERIAL

FLICS is a statewide professional association of Film Commissions and Offices dedicated to promoting filming throughout California and assisting productions with locations, permits, resources, and local knowledge.

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Amador County Film Commission 9600 Summit Place, Jackson, CA 95642

BERKELEY Berkeley Film Office Convention & Visitors Bureau 2030 Addison Street, Suite 102 Berkeley, CA 94704

BUTTE COUNTY Chico Chamber of Commerce & Visitor Center 180 E. 4th St., Suite 120 Chico, CA 95927

CALAVERAS COUNTY Calaveras Visitors Bureau & Film Commission 753 S. Main Street Angels Camp, CA 95222

DEL NORTE COUNTY Humboldt - Del Norte Film Commission 235 F Street Eureka, CA 95501

EL DORADO COUNTY South Lake Tahoe Region El Dorado Lake Tahoe Film & Media Office 542 Main Street Placerville, CA 95667

FOLSOM Folsom Tourism Bureau 200 Wool Street Folsom, CA 95630

RICH HOFFMAN Film Commissioner, Office: (209) 304-3730 phone 1 hoffmangallery007@gmail.com www.visitamador.com

BARBARA HILLMAN Film Commissioner Office: (510) 549-7040 film@visitberkeley.com www.filmberkeley.com

MIKE EGBERT President & CEO/Film Liaison Office: (530) 891-5556 Mike@chicochamber.com www.chicochamber.com

MARTIN HUBERTY Executive Director/Film Commissioner Office: (209) 736-0049 Cell: (209 ) 481-5824 martin@gocalaveras.com www.filmcalaveras.org

CASSANDRA HESSELTINE Film Commissioner Office: (707) 443-4488 Cell: (707) 502- 0018 commissioner@hdnfc.org www.hdnfc.org

NORTHERN REGION

AMADOR COUNTY

KATHLEEN DODGE Executive Director Office/Cell: (530) 626-4400 film@eldoradocounty.org www.filmtahoe.com

SALLY HOWARD BUCHANAN Director Office: (916) 985-2698, ext. 26 Cell: (916) 337-7881 maryann@visitfolsom.com www.visitfolsom.com

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D IRECTORY OF REGIONAL FILM OFFICE S

HUMBOLDT COUNTY Humboldt - Del Norte Film Commission 235 F Street Suite 27 Eureka, CA 95501

LAKE COUNTY County of Lake Administrative Office 255 N. Forbes St. Lakeport, CA 95453

LASSEN COUNTY Lassen County Chamber of Commerce 707 Nebraska St., Suite 5 Susanville, CA 96130

LIVERMORE/PLEASANTON/ DUBLIN/DANVILLE Valley Film Office 5075 Hopyard Rd, Suite 240 Pleasanton, CA 94588

MARIN COUNTY Marin Film Resource Office 1 Mitchell Blvd., Suite B San Rafael, CA 94903

MENDOCINO COUNTY

Mendocino County Film Commission 217 S. Main Street P.O. Box 1141 Fort Bragg, CA 95437

CASSANDRA HESSELTINE Film Commissioner Office: (707) 443-4488 Cell: (707) 502- 0018 commissioner@hdnfc.org www.hdnfc.org

BEN RICKELMAN Film Liaison/Deputy CAO Office: (707) 263-2580 Benjamin.rickelman@lakecountyca.gov www.lakecounty.com

MAURICE ANDERSON Director of Planning & Building Services Office: (530) 251-8269 manderson@co.lassen.ca.us www.lassencounty.org

JUSTIN BOWER Film Liaison Office: (925) 846-3389 justin@visittrivalley.com https://visittrivalley.com/filmoffice/

DEBORAH ALBRE Film Liaison Office: (866) 925-2060 Direct: (415) 785-7032 film@visitmarin.org www.filmmarin.org

DEBRA DE GRAW Interim Film Commissioner Office: (707) 961-6302 Cell: (707) 972-1953 filmmendocino@mcn.org www.mendocinocoast.com

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Modesto Convention & Visitors Bureau / Film Commission 1008 1st Street Modesto, CA 95354

MONO COUNTY Mono County Tourism and Film Commission PO Box 603 1290 Tavern Rd. Mammoth Lakes, CA 93546

CITY OF OAKLAND Oakland Film Office 1 Frank H. Ogawa Plaza, 9th Floor Oakland, CA 94612

PLACER COUNTY North Lake Tahoe Region Placer-Lake Tahoe Film Office 145 Fulweiler Ave., Suite 120 Auburn, CA 95603

SACRAMENTO Sacramento Film + Media 915 “I” Street, 3rd Floor Sacramento, CA 95814

SAN FRANCISCO COUNTY San Francisco Film Commission 1 Dr. Carlton B. Goodlett Place City Hall, Room 473 San Francisco, CA 94102

TODD AARONSON CEO Office: (209) 526-5588 Cell: (209) 573-0503 todd@visitmodesto.com www.visitmodesto.com

LIZ GRANS Film Commissioner Office: (760) 924-1738 Lgrans@mono.ca.gov www.filmmonocounty.com

KAT TORIO Special Permits Coordinator Economic & Workforce Development Department, Special Activity Division Office: (510) 238-4948 KTorio@oaklandca.gov www.oaklandca.gov/resources/ oakland-film-office

JULI JOHNSON Film Program Liaison Officer Office: (530) 215-5305 Cell: (530) 906-3350 filmofficer@placer.ca.gov www.filmplacertahoe.com

JENNIFER WEST Film Commissioner Office: (916) 808-2676 filmoffice@cityofsacramento.org www.filmsac.com

NORTHERN REGION

MODESTO/ STANISLAUS COUNTY

MANIJEH FATA Executive Director Office: (415) 554-6241 Direct: (415) 554-5142 film@sfgov.org www.filmsf.org

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D IRECTORY OF REGIONAL FILM OFFICE S

SAN JOAQUIN COUNTY/ STOCKTON Stockton/San Joaquin County Film Commission 146 West Weber Ave. Stockton, CA 95202

SAN JOSE Visit San Jose 408 Almaden Blvd.

San Jose, CA 95110

SAN MATEO COUNTY The San Francisco Peninsula 111 Anza Boulevard, Ste. 410 Burlingame, CA 94010

SANTA CRUZ COUNTY Santa Cruz County Film Commission 303 Water Street, #100 Santa Cruz, CA 95060

SHASTA COUNTY Upstate Film Commission Film Shasta PO Box 1468 Anderson, CA 96007

SUTTER COUNTY/ YUBA COUNTY Upstate Film Commission Film Yuba Sutter PO Box 1468 Anderson, CA 96007

WES RHEA CEO/Film Liaison Office: (209) 938-1555 film@visitstockton.org www.filmstockton.com

FRANCES WONG Director of Communications Office: (408) 792-4119 fwong@sanjose.org www.sanjose.org/media/ film-office

KARLA NAJERA National Account Executive & Film Liaison Office: (650) 348-7600 karla@thesfp.com thesanfranciscopeninsula.com

CHRISTINA GLYNN (“CEEGEE”) Director of Communications/ Film Commissioner Office: (831) 425-1234, ext. 112 cglynn@santacruz.org www.filminsantacruz.org

SABRINA JURISICH Film Commissioner Office: (530) 710-7784 Sabrina@upstatecafilm.com www.upstatecafilm.com

SABRINA JURISICH Executive Director, Film Yuba-Sutter Office: (530) 710-7784 Sabrina@upstatecafilm.com www.upstatecafilm.com

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Film Siskiyou 1512 S. Oregon Street Yreka, CA 96097

TEHAMA COUNTY Tehama County Film Commission Film Tehama PO Box 1468 Anderson, CA 96007

TRINITY COUNTY Trinity County Chamber of Commerce P.O. Box 517 Weaverville, CA 96093

TUOLUMNE COUNTY Tuolumne County Film Commission 193 S. Washington St. Sonora, CA 95370

VALLEJO/SOLANO COUNTY Vallejo/Solano County Film Office 289 Mare Island Way Vallejo, CA 94590

YOLO COUNTY Visit Yolo PO Box 681 Winters, CA 95694

JASON YOUNG Film Commissioner Office: (530) 859-3890 jason@siskiyoucounty.org www.filmsiskiyou.org

SABRINA JURISCH Executive Director, Film Tehama Office: (530) 225-4103 Sabrina@upstatecafilm.com

WAYNE AGNER President, Trinity Chamber Office: (530) 623-6101 chamber@trinitycounty.com www.visittrinity.com

LISA MAYO Film Commissioner Office: (209) 533-4420 film@gotuolumne.com www.filmtuolumne.org

MIKE BROWNE Film Liaison Office: (707) 562-5677 mike@visitvallejo.com

NORTHERN REGION

SISKIYOU COUNTY

TIFFANY DOZIER Public Relations & Communications Director/Film Liaison Office: (530) 297-1900 tiffany@visityolo.com www.visityolo.com

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D IRECTORY OF REGIONAL FILM OFFICE S

FRESNO COUNTY Fresno County Film Commission 2220 Tulare Street, 8th Floor Fresno, CA 93721

INYO COUNTY Inyo County Film Commission 561 W. Crocker Street Big Pine, CA 93513

KERN COUNTY Kern County Film Commission 1115 Truxtun Ave. Bakersfield, CA 93301

MADERA COUNTY/ YOSEMITE Yosemite/Madera County Film Commission 40343 California 41 Oakhurst, CA 93644

MARIPOSA COUNTY Yosemite Mariposa County Tourism Bureau / Film Commission 5065 State Highway 140, Suite E Mariposa, CA 95338

MONTEREY COUNTY Monterey County Film Commission 801 Lighthouse Avenue, Suite 104 Monterey, CA 93940

JONATHAN AVEDIAN & MICHELLE AVALOS Film Liaisons Office: (559) 600-4271 tourism@fresnocountyca.gov www.filmfresno.com

JESSE STEELE Film Commissioner Office: (760) 938-0144 film@inyocounty.us https://inyocountyvisitor.com/film/

Office: (661) 868-3154 kerninfo@kerncounty.com https://www.kerncounty.com/government/departments/countywide-communications-home/film-commission

RHONDA SAILSBURY CEO/Film Commissioner Office: (559) 683-4636 Cell: (559) 658-0150 rhonda@yosemitethisyear.com www.yosemitemaderafilm.com

TONY McDANIEL Director of Communications / Film Liaison Office: (209) 742-4567 Tonym@yosemite.com www.yosemite.com/film-commission

KAREN NORDSTRAND Film Commissioner Office: (831) 646-0910 Cell: (831) 594-9410 karen@filmmonterey.org www.filmmonterey.org

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Ridgecrest Regional Film Commission 643 N. China Lake Blvd., Suite C Ridgecrest, CA 93555

SAN BENITO COUNTY San Benito County Chamber of Commerce 243 Sixth Street, Suite 100 Hollister, CA 95023

SAN LUIS OBISPO COUNTY Film SLO CAL 81 Higuera St. #220 San Luis Obispo, CA 93401

SANTA BARBARA COUNTY Santa Barbara County Film Commission 500 E. Montecito Street Santa Barbara, CA 93103

TULARE COUNTY Tulare County Film Commission 5961 S. Mooney Blvd.

Visalia, CA 93277

KARI CRUTCHER Film Commissioner Office: (760) 375-8202 Cell: (660) 608-9550 permits@filmRidgecrest.com www.filmridgecrest.com

MICHELLE LEONARD President/CEO Office: (831) 637-5315 CEO@SanBenitoCountyChamber.com www.sanbenitocountychamber.com

MATT HALVORSON Film Commissionere Office: (805) 541-8000 Matt@SLOCAL.com FilmSLOCAL.com

MAREN BENEKE SHANTEL ROWE Visit Santa Barbara Operations Manager / Film Commissioner Office: (805) 966-9222 X 101 film@santabarbaraca.com https://santabarbaraca.com/ film-commission/

CENTRAL REGION

RIDGECREST

ALLY YATES Film Commissioner Office: (559) 624-7007 tcfilmcommission@tularecounty.ca.gov www.filmtularecounty.com

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D IRECTORY OF REGIONAL FILM OFFICE S

ANTELOPE VALLEY/NORTH LOS ANGELES COUNTY LANCASTER/PALMDALE Antelope Valley/North Los Angeles County Film Office Call for appointment

BEVERLY HILLS City of Beverly Hills 455 North Rexford Drive, 1st Floor Beverly Hills, CA 90210

CATALINA ISLAND Catalina Island Tourism Authority P.O. Box 217 Avalon, CA 90704

LONG BEACH Office of Special Events & Filming 5001 Airport Plaza Drive Suite 130 Long Beach, CA 90815

LOS ANGELES CITY & COUNTY FilmLA Radford Studio Center, Bungalow 20 4024 Radford Ave. Studio City, CA 91604

PAULINE EAST Film Liaison Office: (661) 510-4231 pauline@filmantelopevalley.org www.avfilm.com

SCOTT LIPKE Filming & Special Events Office: (310) 285-2408 cbhfilmpermits@beverlyhills.org www.beverlyhills.org

JIM LUTTJOHANN President & CEO/Film Liaison Office: (310) 510-7643 jim@lovecatalina.com www.filmcatalina.com

TASHA DAY Manager of Special Events & Filming Office: (562) 570-5333/(562) 570-5313 tasha.day@longbeach.gov www.filmlongbeach.com

PAUL AUDLEY President Office: (213) 977-8600 info@filmla.com www.filmla.com

ALSO REPRESENTING CULVER CITY / DIAMOND BAR / FULLERTON / GARDENA / GLENDALE / INDUSTRY / LA HABRA HEIGHTS / LANCASTER / LOS ANGELES CITY / LOS ANGELES COUNTY / MONTEREY PARK / NEWPORT BEACH / PALMDALE / SAN DIMAS / SAN FERNANDO / SANTA MONICA / SOUTH GATE / VERNON

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City of Malibu 25 W. Rolling Oaks Drive, Suite 201 Thousand Oaks, CA 91361

PASADENA City of Pasadena Planning Department 175 North Garfield Avenue, Pasadena, CA 91109

SANTA CLARITA Santa Clarita Film Office, City of Santa Clarita 23920 Valencia Blvd., Suite 100 Santa Clarita, CA 91355

SOUTH PASADENA City of South Pasadena 1414 Mission Street South Pasadena, CA 91030

WEST HOLLYWOOD West Hollywood Film Office City of West Hollywood 8300 Santa Monica Blvd.

West Hollywood, CA 90069

KIMBERLY NILSSON Film Commissioner Office: (805) 495-7521 Cell: (805) 732-9433 filming@sws-inc.com www.malibucity.org/filming

ROCHELLE BRANCH Film Commissioner Cultural Affairs Manager Office: (626) 744-3964 filmoffice@cityofpasadena.net www.filmpasadena.com

EVAN THOMASON Film Commissioner MATTHEW CURRAN Film Permit Technician Office: (661) 284-1425 film@santa-clarita.com www.filmsantaclarita.com

JOAN AGUADO Film Liaison Office: (626) 403-7263 jaguado@southpasadenaca.gov www.southpasadenaca.gov/filming

LOS ANGELES AREA

MALIBU

EDDIE ROBINSON Film Coordinator Office: (323) 848-6489 wehofilm@weho.org www.weho.org/film

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D IRECTORY OF REGIONAL FILM OFFICE S

HUNTINGTON BEACH Surf City USA Visit Huntington Beach 155 Fifth Street Suite 111 Huntington Beach, CA 92648

IMPERIAL COUNTY Imperial County Film Commission P.O. Box 1467 El Centro, CA 92244

ORANGE COUNTY Orange County Film Commission

RIVERSIDE COUNTY Riverside County Film Commission Marketing and Community Services Riverside County Office of Economic Development 3403 10th Street, Suite 400 Riverside, CA 92501

SAN BERNARDINO San Bernardino County Film Office 290 North D Street, Suite 600 San Bernardino, CA 92415

SOPHIA VALDIVIA Film Commissioner Office: (714) 969-3492 x 214 Cell: (714) 335-3840 sophia@surfcityusa.com www.filminHB.com

CHARLA STEWART Film Commissioner Office: (760) 337-4155 Cell: (760) 791-1856 filmhere@sbcglobal.net www.filmimperialcounty.com

JANICE ARRINGTON Film Commissioner Office/Cell: (949) 246-9704 jarrington@fullerton.edu

STEPHANIE STETHEM Film Liaison Office: (951) 955-2044 Permits and Location Assistance Inland Empire Film Services Permits: (909) 460-8100 info@filmriversidecounty.com RivCoFilm.org

MARIAM ROJO Marketing Associate- TourismOffice: (909) 387-4328 or (909) 387-4700 info@eda.sbcounty.gov www.selectsbcounty.com

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City of San Diego Special Events & Filming Department Civic Center Plaza 1200 Third Avenue, Suite 1326 San Diego, CA 92101

GUY LANGMAN Filming Program Manager Office: (619) 685-1340 Cell: (619) 846-2099 glangman@sandiego.gov www.sandiego.gov/ specialevents-filming/filming

VENTURA COUNTY Ventura County Film Commission Ventura Economic Development Collaborative 4001 Mission Oaks Blvd. Suite A-1 Camarillo, CA 93012

COUNTY PERMITS GIANG MEYERS Creative Economy Manager Economic Development and Government Affairs Finance and General Government Group County of San Diego Chief Administrative Office 1600 Pacific Highway, Suite 152 San Diego, CA 92101 Office: (619) 346-8572 Ginag.Meyers@sdcounty.ca.gov https://www.sandiegocounty.gov/ cao/edga/Film.html PORT OF SAN DIEGO PERMITS ERICA NOGUEIRA Program Manager, Parks & Recreation Office: (619) 686-6564 Cell: (619) 496-6755 enogueira@portofsandiego.org https://www.portofsandiego.org/ about-port-san-diego/service-portal BILL BARTELS Film Liaison Office: (805) 409-9947 bill@edcollaborative.com www.venturacountyfilm.com

LOS ANGELES AREA

SAN DIEGO

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LOCATION CALIFORNIA 2024

ZABRISKIE POINT, DEATH VALLEY

PHOTO, COURTESY JOHN HUTCHINSON #HUTCHSCOUT, LMGI

ADVERTISERS BIG SKY MOVIE RANCH 47 CALIFORNIA FILM COMMISSION INSIDE BACK COVER CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY AT NORTHRIDGE 16 CITY OF WEST HOLLYWOOD 32 FILM LANCASTER 22 FILM LIAISONS IN CALIFORNIA STATEWIDE. (FLICS) 58/59 FILM SAN FRANCISCO 24 FILM SHASTA 24 FILM SIMI VALLEY 4/5 FILM TEHAMA 24 FILM YUBA-SUTTER 24 FOX STUDIO LOT INSIDE FRONT COVER AND PAGE FACING GOLDEN OAK RANCH 2/3 HUNTINGTON LIBRARY, ART COLLECTIONS AND BOTANICAL GARDENS 27 INLAND EMPIRE FILM SERVICES 26 LA NORTH STUDIOS 6 LITTLE GIANT LIGHTING AND GRIP COMPANY 73 LONG BEACH SPECIAL EVENTS AND FILMING 34 LOS ANGELES CENTER STUDIOS 9

MARIN FILM RESOURCE OFFICE MONO COUNTY TOURISM AND FILM COMMISSION MONTEREY COUNTY FILM COMMISSION PASADENA FILM OFFICE PLACER-LAKE TAHOE FILM OFFICE RANCHO DELUXE RIVERFRONT STAGES INC RIVERSIDE COUNTY FILM COMMISSION RSI LOCATIONS INC. SAN FRANCISCO PENINSULA SAN LUIS OBISPO COUNTY FILM COMMISSION SANTA ANITA PARK SANTA CLARITA FILM OFFICE STUDIO AIR AND POWER TULARE COUNTY FILM COMMISSION UNIVERSAL STUDIOS LOT UPSTATE CALIFORNIA FILM COMMISSION WARNER BROS. STUDIO OPERATIONS

74 16 31 32 28 11 36 28 36 34 75 14 44 OUTSIDE BACK COVER 31 86 24 84

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LO C AT I O N C A L I F O R N I A 2 024

SHOWCASING CALIFORNIA’S PRODUCTION INDUSTRY

C A L I F O R N I A2024

S H O W C A S I N G C A L I F O R N I A’ S P R O D U C T I O N I N D U S T R Y

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PUBLISHED BY BOUTIQUE ÉDITIONS

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