Thom Anable

Whether it’s real or not, the setting for a movie is one of the most important elements in filmmaking. This not only applies to where the movie’s story is located, but also where the movie is actually filmed. Of course, the relation between these two aspects can be mutual or dissonant depending on the setting to begin with. For instance, if the movie takes place in a fictional location that has no real-life counterpart a filmmaker might look for someplace that’s as close to the fictional setting as possible in real life and film the movie there. Yet even if they managed to film in the movie’s real-life location, the way a filmmaker portrays that place may not reflect what it’s actually like.

But regardless of the setting’s realism, the movie itself has to be good too. With that said, the way a movie portrays a certain setting may be so inspiring to us as viewers that we feel compelled to actually travel to that place. This kind of inspiration especially comes to light when we’re children, and so we’ll most likely want to go the places shown in the movies we see at that age as opposed to when we’re older. To demonstrate, let’s take a look at the locations from movies that came out from the mid-90s to the early 2000s which inspired those who grew up seeing them to travel to those places. ... See MoreSee Less

6 hours ago

25 Places Movies Inspired 90s Kids To Travel To

thetravel.com

Whether it was joining Katniss in the Capitol, journeying to Rivendell, or hopping to NYC with the Olsen twins, these movies inspired us to travel!

Space: it’s the final frontier in the Star Trek universe. It’s also a mission requirement for the Toronto-filmed TV series “Star Trek: Discovery,” which sprawls across the 45,900-square-foot Mega Stage at Pinewood Toronto Studios.

The CBS series, which airs on Bell Media cable channel Space, has been holding on to Toronto’s largest studio space with a Vulcan death grip since it began filming in April 2016.

Hosting the high-profile series has aggravated a problem in the city: too many productions, not enough studio space.

“With ‘Star Trek’ being there for a number of years, it’s taken that stage out of the market,” says Scott Alexander, who has been a location manager in Toronto for the past 20 years. “We haven’t been able to draw in the really big projects that would utilize that space’s height and width,” he adds.

Numbers for 2018, not yet available, are on track to rise, but until new studio space opens the problem might affect Toronto’s ability to lure the biggest and buzziest projects.

Due to a lack of studio space, Alexander has been instructed to look into alternative venues for the upcoming FX Productions series “Mrs. America” with Cate Blanchett, which will begin filming in Toronto in mid-June.

In the past, Alexander has had to get creative and scout industrial buildings that could be converted. He recently talked a clothing-recycling operation into temporarily relinquishing their warehouse so it could be used as a studio.

That’s not ideal, especially on larger projects.

“They all have posts every 30 feet,” he says, noting this type of layout obstructs shots. “There are some older studio spaces that you work out of that if it rains really hard you can hear it on the roof.

“There are places where water leaks. There is a warehouse that we use that is close to a road and the soundproofing isn’t completely in it. You have to bring police officers in to intermittently stop the traffic if you have major dialogue scenes.”

But several high-profile builds are expected to open in and around Toronto by fall 2020 that may alleviate the shortage.

“Production studios are already trying to put holds on things that don’t even exist for 2020, 2021,” says Simard.

First up is CBS Stages Canada, a 260,000-square-foot facility that is slated to open in Mississauga later this year. While CBS productions will have first rights to the space, it will be available to outside productions as well.

In Markham, construction is set to begin this spring on the 400,000-square-foot Markham Movieland studio complex. Aiming for a 2020 opening, it will have a 70,000-square-foot sound stage — the largest in North America and not much smaller than the 78,954 square foot Stage 15 at Babelsberg Film Studios in Potsdam, Germany, the largest in the world.

Bell Media is spearheading a 200,000-square-foot expansion at Pinewood while just a five-minute drive away, Toronto’s Cinespace Film Studios is creating a new studio with 165,000-square-feet of production space. Cinespace is also opening the 50,000-square-foot Titan Studios at its Kipling Campus, where “The Handmaid’s Tale” and Netflix’s superhero series “Titans” films. The new space plans to include an underwater filming tank, something missing from Toronto’s studios.

When Alexander worked on 2016’s “Suicide Squad,” he had to negotiate with the Canadian military to set up a giant tank in Hamilton’s John Weir Foote V.C. Armoury in order to film scenes of an underwater subway station and a submerged car.

And while 1,075,000-square-feet of new studio space may sound excessive, Simard predicts it will allow Toronto to woo an ever expanding cabal of players.

“Amazon is in town, Apple is starting to spend a lot. It’s not even a guess for the next few years. It is the complete golden age of content creation.”

In the meantime, productions will continue to improvise. The sci-fi series “The Expanse,” which debuted its third season on Amazon Prime Video on Friday, splits time between Pinewood and Cinespace as it films its fourth season.

Manny Danelon, producer on “The Expanse,” says Toronto doesn’t have to look to London or Los Angeles for a blueprint of a city where studios thrive. “Think about what Montreal and Vancouver did so eloquently by building purpose-built studio spaces,” he says. “If we build it, they will come.” ... See MoreSee Less

1 day ago

Producers get creative in dealing with Toronto's limited studio space

680news.com

TORONTO — Space: it’s the final frontier in the Star Trek universe. It’s also a mission requirement for the Toronto-filmed TV series “Star Tre...

While most romantic film plots are just too good to be true, that doesn’t mean you can’t bring them to life yourself. All it takes is a trip to these beautiful filming locations to put yourself right back in the moment. Then just make use of your imagination and experience the romance in real life! Here are some magical places where you can follow in the footsteps of some of the best romance films, filmed in beautiful locations from downtown L.A. to the islands of the Mediterranean. ... See MoreSee Less

2 days ago

The Most Romantic Film Locations To Sweep You Off Your Feet

kayak.co.in

Follow in the footsteps of some of the best romance films by visiting beautiful shooting locations from downtown L.A. to the islands of the Mediterran...

Thanks to the lush production design of Fiona Crombie, the dramatics of director Yorgos Lanthimos’s dark comedy extend well beyond the tension created by the award-winning actresses on screen—even more so considering the lavish, period-piece aesthetic Crombie was able to create on an indie-film budget.

“One of the key challenges was working within a really precious location,” explains Crombie of Hatfield House, the grand Jacobean estate in Hertfordshire, England, used as the primary filming location for The Favourite. Built in 1611 by Robert Cecil, First Earl of Salisbury and Chief Minister to King James I, this historical country home remains, according to Crombie, “one of the best-preserved examples of its kind in England,” and allowed the seasoned production designer—who also visually brought to life Macbeth, starring Michael Fassbender, in 2015 and the 2013 hit TV series Top of the Lake—incredible flexibility in executing her on-screen vision, which was largely inspired by the estate itself.

The 42-acre property was already laden with carved wood, engravings, and historic paintings; along with these existing features, Crombie commissioned a team of artisans to create original furniture, paneling, and set decorations in methods authentic to the time period. All of the film’s glassware, for example, was hand-blown, the horse-drawn carriages were custom-built and hand-painted, and Queen Anne’s imposing 14-foot-tall canopy bed was made by hand in Northern England. ... See MoreSee Less

3 days ago

The Sets of The Favourite Serve Royal Drama and Then Some | Architectural Digest

architecturaldigest.com

Production Designer Fiona Crombie takes AD inside the opulent world of the Emma Stone–starring period drama

For Barry Jenkins, director of the film If Beale Street Could Talk, which was adapted from the 1974 James Baldwin novel and tells the story of love and injustice in 1970s New York, largely in the African-American cultural mecca of Harlem and what was then a more rough-and-tumble Greenwich Village, capturing the New York City of yesteryear was paramount.

“I knew this was going to be an intimate film,” Mr. Jenkins said in a recent interview. “This is a period piece about New York. It’s James Baldwin’s sometimes acrimonious love letter to New York, but a love letter nonetheless.”

New York has, of course, changed dramatically since the 1970s. Local institutions like B. Altman and Horn & Hardart are no longer part of the landscape. Entire neighborhoods have become denser and more vertical. However, on foot, remnants of the past still stick out, providing a sensory overload that is distinctly New York.

While many of the rough spots in Greenwich Village have been smoothed out over the years, many scenes in the film were still shot there, and other neighborhoods — within walking distance or an easy subway ride away — were able to stand in. Throughout the city, narrow streets, urban parks and restaurants that have seen better days give a sense of the time and place that the novel and the movie sought to convey.

To visually reflect the richness of Baldwin’s prose, Mr. Jenkins worked closely with the film’s production designer, Mark Friedberg, and Samson Jacobson, the locations manager, both native New Yorkers.

“I leaned on those guys to not only try and find what places are organically part of the world of our characters, but also are New York, in all caps,” Mr. Jenkins said.

In the film, a pivotal scene between main characters Tish (KiKi Layne) and Fonny (Stephan James) at the intersection of Minetta Lane and Minetta Street, reflected such a sentiment and revealed New York as a place of promise, despite the many obstacles that both characters would soon face.

“The Minetta scene was interesting because it was pouring rain,” Mr. Jenkins said. “This wasn’t our intention in the script, but on the day of filming these two young black actors who are unfamiliar to many people were just walking down the block on the night of essentially their first love and the skies have opened. It’s so picturesque, like 1950s Hollywood Americana.”

Reflecting on some of the most memorable film locations in the city, Mr. Jenkins honed in on the Showmans Jazz Club on 125th Street near Convent Avenue in Harlem, which featured a scene with Joseph Rivers (Colman Domingo) and Frank Hunt (Michael Beach), two fathers sitting at a bar, trying to figure out how to save Fonny from a jail sentence. The bar impressed Mr. Jenkins during the film preproduction, and made it into the film.

“Showmans is a place where I would go to unwind if I lived in the neighborhood,” he said. “It’s one of my favorite Harlem locations because it’s still there. The essence and spirit of your work really comes alive when you can get a lot of the city into a film.” ... See MoreSee Less

4 days ago

‘If Beale Street Could Talk’ Offers a Tour of a Lost New York

nytimes.com

The film, directed by Barry Jenkins and nominated for three Academy Awards, was adapted from the 1974 James Baldwin novel and shot largely on the city...