Location/20″/dt1st/mark2nd
By EDVARD PETTERSSON
Staff Reporter
Producing a movie or TV show overseas can be a drag.
It’s not just that the catering services in, say, Saskatchewan, aren’t up to snuff compared to those in L.A. Or that the crown jewel of local retailing is a Wal-Mart rather than a Barney’s.
It has more to do with that most essential ingredient to Hollywood success: being seen and being available.
Running into someone at an L.A. dinner party can be an important first step in doing a deal. If you’re not at that party, you might not get the deal.
“It’s one thing being in Vancouver, but when you’re in Romania, where there is a nine-hour time difference, you can forget it,” said Darin Spillman, vice president of production with Trimark Pictures. “I don’t have the opportunity to look at new submissions and specs, and I have my assistant tell people that I’ll be back in a couple of weeks. Which means that, once I get back, I’ve got an enormous amount of catching up to do.”
While on location, producers spend most of their time on cell phones, playing phone tag with their counterparts back home and trying to keep abreast of what’s going on in their absence.
If it’s a problem for producers temporarily on location, it’s an even bigger one for entertainment executives stationed permanently overseas.
“I constantly have to remind people that I’m down here,” said Joanna Milter, manager of creative affairs with Fox Studio Australia, who accepted a position with Fox Entertainment Group’s fledgling Australian subsidiary 18 months ago.
“I’m pretty much in the loop as far as what’s going on at Fox in Los Angeles is concerned, but as far as Hollywood as a whole, I’m definitely not in the loop,” Milter said.
Still, she sees Australia as a personal adventure, and reckons that the experience of overseeing a start-up production company will outweigh the disadvantages of being away from Hollywood for a few years.
But it’s not just being away from Hollywood that takes getting used to. There’s the issue of working with foreign crews.
“Personally it is rewarding, but professionally it can be extremely challenging,” said Spillman, who has produced movies in Canada and Romania for Trimark. “It’s nice to meet people who are not as jaded and have other interests besides movies. But on the other hand, our work ethic doesn’t really translate overseas. It happens that you’ve scheduled a shoot at an airport at 8 a.m., and the liaison for the airport shows up 45 minutes late.”
Moreover, Spillman says that foreign crews often find it difficult to adapt to the more creative and unconventional ways of making films.
“They have a long tradition of filmmaking in Romania, but you have to push them really hard to be inventive,” he said. “They are very quick to say that something can’t be done, and they simply have not been trained to be resourceful.”
Although crews in Canada are, on the whole, just as reliable and professional as those in the United States, Spillman believes that the best crews are still in Los Angeles.
“You don’t find this anything-can-be-done attitude in Canada, or anywhere else, that you find here,” he said. “The best people are still here, and we are planning to start production on low-budget movies in Los Angeles in the near future now that (labor costs have) become less expensive again.”
Indeed, there already may be signs of a backlash to making movies abroad. Director Wolfgang Petersen decided not to make his adaptation of the sea novel “The Perfect Storm” in Mexico, even though the same facilities could have been used as for the movies “Titanic” and “Deep Blue Sea.” Petersen has opted to shoot in Massachusetts.
“If Mexico’s so great, why aren’t they (going there)?” asked Brett Smith, an assistant set designer who worked on Petersen’s movie “Outbreak.” “It’s because it’s very difficult to make a movie there.”
