Shot On Location

In the early days of filmmaking, before many of Hollywood’s elaborate sets and soundstages had been built, it was common for movies to be shot on location. Decades later, Hollywood filmmakers rediscovered the practice of using real locations and documentary footage in their narrative features. Why did this happen? What caused this sudden change? Renowned film scholar R. Barton Palmer answers this question in Shot on Location by exploring the historical, ideological, economic, and technological developments that led Hollywood to head back outside in order to capture footage of real places. His groundbreaking research reveals that wartime newsreels had a massive influence on postwar Hollywood film, although there are key distinctions to be made between these movies and their closest contemporaries, Italian neorealist films. Considering how these practices were used in everything from war movies like Twelve O’Clock High to westerns like The Searchers, Palmer explores how the blurring of the formal boundaries between cinematic journalism and fiction lent a “reality effect” to otherwise implausible stories. Shot on Location describes how the period’s greatest directors, from Alfred Hitchcock to Billy Wilder, increasingly moved beyond the confines of the studio. At the same time, the book acknowledges the collaborative nature of moviemaking, identifying key roles that screenwriters, art designers, location scouts, and editors played in incorporating actual geographical locales and social milieus within a fictional framework. Palmer thus offers a fascinating behind-the-scenes look at how Hollywood transformed the way we view real spaces.

The filming of an American movie set on location in Greece becomes the stage for a far more sinister production in this unputdownable political suspense. Rich and famous movie directors like Harry Avery don’t ordinarily disappear—especially when on a routine flight in a private plane seeking location shots for another film. Yet why was Avery flying so close to the Albanian border? Why had his hitherto reliable plane crashed so unpredictably? And why—once the rescue party reached the spot in the Greek mountains—wasn’t his body found among the wreckage? Brad Smith, back in Los Angeles after active duty in Vietnam, is determined to find Avery. Brad has his own scores to settle with the millionaire director, for not only has Avery stolen some of his original TV scripts, written just before he left for the service, he has also stolen his girlfriend, the now famous actress, Rhona Avery. Upon arrival in Greece, Brad soon realizes that Avery’s ominous disappearance has far greater implication than he anticipated. Soon he is caught up in a dangerous web of plot and counterplot as eh discovers he is not alone in the manhunt: the beautiful actress he once loved seems to have more on her mind than wifely devotion in her frantic search; the CIA as well as the undercover agents of another world power are equally determined to find the missing director. And each, for different reasons, is desperate to track him down first. No one knows better than Helen Nielsen how to keep a complex plot going at a faster-than-the-eye-can-see pace. Danger, intrigue and the guessable conclusion—hallmarks of Miss Nielsen’s suspenses—are evidenced yet again.

You have a strong vision for how your movie should look, but how do you find the perfect spot to shoot and how do you organize the complex logistics of such a shoot once you find that perfect location? In this comprehensive guide, industry veteran Kathy M. McCurdy provides everything you need to know to get out on location-from how to break down the script, public relations tips for successful location scouting, negotiating with property owners, permitting on public property, how to handle complaints, and even where to put the very unattractive port-a-potties. It also includes samples of all the different forms and contracts you'll need and breaks down everything from where to park the trucks to when you need police on the set. Filled with real-life examples and actual filming situations, Shoot on Location provides everything you need to know from scouting through the wrap. Delivers the universal step-by-step process for managing location shoots using industry standard guidelines and real-life examples from actual filming situations. Includes samples of all of the legal forms and contract necessary for shooting off the lot and covers everything from script breakdown, negotiation with property owners, and even where to put the porta-potties. Loaded with real tips and how-to's for every level of scouting, shooting, and wrapping-up.

Location shooting has always been a vital counterpart to soundstage production, and at times, the primary form of Hollywood filmmaking. But until now, the industrial and artistic development of this production practice has been scattered across the margins of larger American film histories. Hollywood on Location is the first comprehensive history of location shooting in the American film industry, showing how this mode of filmmaking changed Hollywood business practices, production strategies, and visual style from the silent era to the present. The contributors explore how location filmmaking supplemented and later, supplanted production on the studio lots. Drawing on archival research and in-depth case studies, the seven contributors show how location shooting expanded the geography of American film production, from city streets and rural landscapes to far-flung territories overseas, invoking a new set of creative, financial, technical, and logistical challenges. Whereas studio filmmaking sought to recreate nature, location shooting sought to master it, finding new production values and production economies that reshaped Hollywood’s modus operandi.

This book examines the on-site experiences of film-induced tourists at various film locations, including locations from The Lord of the Rings, Star Wars and The Sound of Music. The study attempts to understand the needs and wants of film location tourists and also examines how to use films for destination marketing.

For all those fans who wonder where their favorite movies were filmed or what it would be like to visit the sites, this book is the ultimate resource. It features information on blockbuster, cult, and art house favorites from Saturday Night Fever to Men in Black, from Belle du Jour to Ben Hur. The entries for individual films include brief descriptions of key scenes shot at the location, travel details, photographs, film stills, behind-the-scenes information, and insights as to what these places are really like. Also included are full-color features on major sites of special interest—Vertigo’s San Francisco, Woody Allen’s Manhattan, and a world Star Wars tour, among others—along with more obscure locations that have become sought-after travel destinations simply because of their connection to the movies.

Movie studios are the wondrous, almost magical locales where not just films, but legends, are created. Unfortunately, these celebrity playgrounds are, and always have been, largely hidden from public view. Although some movie studios offer tours, few guests from outside the Hollywood community have ever been witness to the artistry, politics, and scandals that routinely go on behind the soundstage walls and away from the carefully orchestrated scenes visible to them from their tram carts. In this book, studio staff historian and Hollywood insider Steven Bingen throws open Hollywood’s iron gates and takes you inside the greatest and yet most mysterious movie studio of them all: Warner Bros. Long home to the world’s biggest stars and most memorable films and television shows, the Warner Bros. Studio lot functions as a small city and is even more fascinating, glamorous, and outrageous than any of the stars or movies that it has been routinely minting for more than ninety years. Accompanied by stunning behind-the-scenes photos and maps, and including a revealing backstory, this book is your ticket to a previously veiled Hollywood paradise.

Take three speedboats, a disgruntled ghostwriter, and a hit TV show starring a gorgeous but impossible diva and created by a driven genius who may be losing his marbles. Add a fearless and gleefully profane stuntwoman, an ancient Mafioso with a chihuahua, and a revenge-crazed blonde in gladiator sandals. Stir in a thug with a heart of gold and an inveterate slacker who yearns for glory. Whisk a loopy but tender romance into the mix, turn the whole crew loose in the liberating and seductive sunshine of the Florida Keys-and what do you have? SHOT ON LOCATION, the new and long-awaited Key West novel by Laurence Shames. Hilarious and suspenseful, wisecracking and wise, this is the most intoxicating story yet from the author of such cult classics as FLORIDA STRAITS and SUNBURN. Longtime Shames fans will rejoice at his return to the fictional turf of Key West and the reappearance of some of his most beloved characters. And new readers will find themselves in for a hell of a ride as Hollywood glitz meets Florida funky.