Ever Wonder How They Pick Movie Locations? We Did.
by Christine Bord
Since so many of us love traveling to locations where our favorite movies have been filmed, it made me wonder how exactly these places end up on the big screen and why we are so drawn to them?
For each film, commercial, photo, advertisement, or television show that is filmed on location, there is a staff, usually led by the location manager, who secure that location with the production crew, the city or town, and local residents, local utility companies, all before a decision can be made whether the site is right for their shoot or not. This can be a daunting task and proves that locations are not chosen on beauty alone but on cost and practicality as well.
The popularity and ease of filming on location has changed over the course of movie history and therefore the face of movies has changed with it. In the early days of film making, directors often embraced their surroundings. For example, in the 1928 film The Crowd, King Vidor, the film’s director, used hidden cameras n the streets of New York City to capture the authenticity of the city.
In the 1930s, films such as The Wizard of Oz were filmed on sound-stages more frequently than on location because as film technology advanced the scenery could be manipulated using these new special effect techniques. For the first time directors were able to create a world that never existed before.
The prevalence of filming in studios continued through the1940s as shortages and rationing caused by World War II made it difficult to film on location.
But by the 1970s filming on location began to rise once more as technology again lends a hand, this time creating mobile studios that allowed filmmakers the convenience of bringing an entire studio on the road to film anywhere.
Filming on location does not necessarily mean that the movie is being filmed where it is meant to be taking place. For example, the 1996 movie Beautiful Girls is set in New England but was filmed in Minnesota. This is often done for legal reasons, to save costs or sometimes the effect the director is trying to capture is actually easier to capture somewhere else.
This also means sometimes the most unlikely place becomes a tourist haven. The location can give the film a sense of reality, romanticism, or emotion that can not always be recreated in a studio. And this emotion is what resonates with the audience. For instance the town of Preston, Idaho and the surrounding area has been cashing in since Napoleon Dynamite was filmed there in 2004. The town sells t-shirts, there are look-a-like contests, and even a festival celebrating the film all of which bring in fans from around the world.
Though it would seem that the magic captured on screen was there long before the first location scout arrived, we know this is not always the case. Often what makes a filming location so captivating on film is not the location itself but rather the skill of location scouts, directors, producers, and cinematographers. Even if a location doesn’t seem as beautiful in person as it did on film, it may still evoke the emotion for us that we had watching the film.
We become familiarized with places around the world because of movies and television, we grow attached to them. We all know what Times Square looks like and have a sense of what it must feel like even if we have never been there. Anyone who has walked through Times Square on a Saturday night knows it is crowded and every corner is made more chaotic by vendors. It’s a nightmare really, but it is still the Times Square that we have seen a million times, in movies, on morning shows, in musicals, and on New Year’s Eve, that is what makes it so special. Whether a place is spectacular all on its own or the camera has made it that way, seeing the places in person that we saw many times before on film gives us an irreplaceable sense of nostalgia. Now that is what I call movie magic!
