AUSTRIA/Mission in Vienna
For three weeks in June and July 2014, Britain’s „Origin Pictures“ filmed “Woman in Gold”, starring top-class actors Dame Helen Mirren, Ryan Reynolds and Daniel Brühl, in Vienna. The producers were highly satisfied with the filming process.
Just after “Woman in Gold”, in August 2014, Paramount Pictures and Skydance Productions started filming the fifth installment of the block- buster “Mission: Impossible”, with Tom Cruise and Simon Pegg, directed by Christopher Mc Quarrie. The main location for shooting in Vienna was the State Opera.
The Vienna Film Commission, the Vienna Tourist Board and the Vienna City Administration worked closely together to make both projects a great success.
NORWAY/Form Hamburg t the Fjords
“Kleine Ziege, Sturer Bock”, starring Wotan Wilke Möhring, was filmed on location in Western Norway from the end of August until mid- September.
Wilke Möhring stars as a charming and happy-go-lucky Elvis impersonator, Jacob, who makes a living taking odd jobs. When Jacob is offered a job transporting a ram to Norway, he happily accepts. Jacob takes his 12-year old daughter Mai, played by Sofia Bolotina, and the stubborn ram, on an adventurous road trip north.
“Kleine Ziege, Sturer Bock” is directed by Johannes Fabrick, based on a screenplay by Petra K Wagner and produced by Munich-based Die Film (Uli Aselmann, Sophia Aldenhoven), in co-production with A.Pictures & Tv Production in Hamburg, ZDF and ARTE.
The feature film is funded by Filmförderung Hamburg-Schleswig-Holstein, FilmFernsehFonds Bayern, Bayerischen Bankenfonds, Nordmedia and Deutschen Filmförderfonds.
It was filmed in Hamburg, Niedersachsen, Schleswig-Holstein, as well as a variety of coastal, mountain and fjord locations in Western Norway.
Production services in Norway were provided by VPB Media.
GERMANY/Workshop at Bavaria Studios
The tour continues: after stops in Berlin and Franconia, Munich was the next Bavarian location for a workshop by Filmkulisse Bayern.
This time around, the workshop introduced the initiative to some 20 representatives of regional tourist offices. There were four major items on the agenda: Film Commission Bayern’s Anja Metzger provided answers to the question “How to become a film location?”; Alexandra Burgmaier, responsible for press & PR at Chiemsee-Alpenland Tourism, provided some best practice examples; and Daniela Hitzler from Bayern Tourism Marketing spoke about “Shooting Locations as Tourist Attractions – Processing and Marketing”.
In a creative workshop, the participants then developed a concept for the marketing of their own individual locations. The greatest challenge was making tourism experts aware of the fact that it is not only the idyllic and beautiful locations that can benefit from such initiatives.
Furthermore, Film Location Austria (FISA) has been supporting feature films and documentaries with a total annual budget of 7.5 million Euros since the beginning of 2014. FISA provides non-repayable grants of up to 25 percent of the eligible production expenditures in Austria.
Both “Woman in Gold” and “Mission: Impossible 5” were able to take advantage of FISA funding.
BELGIUM/Brussels in Film
Twenty-two big productions have come to Brussels since January 2014. These are mainly Belgian and French co-productions but also productions from the United Kingdom and Germany.
Between February and June 2014, a BBC series has been almost entirely filmed in the Belgian capital over 20 weeks: “The Missing” is co-produced with Two Brothers Pictures, Czar TV Productions and filmed with the support of the Belgium federal government’s Tax Shelter scheme.
Jaco Van Dormael (Mister Nobody)’s new film, “Le tout nouveau testament” gives the background of Brussels an important role in the story.
Filming with Benoît Poelvoorde, and Catherine Deneuve amongst others, ended in September 2014.
“Plan Bart”, a Flemish romantic comedy produced by Caviar was filmed entirely in the capital. This is an exemplary project for the multicultural and multilingual Brussels.
The Brussels Film Office is still waiting for some big projects to arrive in the next few days: “La dame dans l’auto” (Versus production), “Je suis un soldat” (Saga Films) and “Je me tue à le dire” (Novak Films). As well as some new projects to be released in cinemas: “Tokyo Fiancée” (Stefan Liberski, Versus productions), “La French” (Cédric Jimenez starring Jean Dujardin and Gilles Lellouche – Scope productions), “Suite fran- çaise” (Michelle Williams, Kristin Scott Thomas, Mathias Schoonaerts), “Moonwalker” (Antoine Bardout-Jacquet starring Ruppert Grint and Ron Perlman – Partizan Films, Nexus factory), and “Tous les chats sont gris” (Savina Dellicour starring Bouli Lanners – Tarantula production).
The South Transdanubian Film Fund has coordinated an Indian-Hungarian commercial shooting in the vicinity of Pécs, in the unique city of Szigetvár.
The Cadbury’s commercial was shot this August to launch the campaign for the world-famous chocolate brand’s latest product for the Indian market.
The Hungarian and Indian film crew of more than 40 people set up an authentic English fun-fair in the center of the main square with an original Ferris Wheel transported straight from Scotland, and the whole area was decorated with Christmas bulbs and lamps. The shooting took two nights, with five days of preparation on location. There were about fifteen local companies involved in the production that provided every kind of film commission services (technical services, props rental and design, medical services, location security, catering) and more than a hundred extras participated in the making of the commercial, their coordinator was the South Transdanubian Film Fund’s associate. The local authorities were very supportive of the production.
