Warbird Information Exchange

Hey all,
In the infinite wisdom of our state government we have a new thing here in Massachusetts. It is a tax break for Movie Production. As of the beginning of the year there is a 25% tax rebate to the film company after the production is finished. It seems to be a hit!

There are somewhere in the vicinity of 8 in the works right now with a possible 80 this year. There is also talk about building a bunch of large soundstages at the former NAS South Weymouth.

We have seen them turn the Burlington Mall back into X-mas decor for the past month, change Hanscom Field into McGuire Airport in South Orange wherever, and shoot several scenes at Beverly airport for the past few days.

Bring on the Warbird Movies!

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"Hindsight is usually 20% off!"

Same here in Michigan. Tax breaks for movie production...of course I dont know that any have begun production...flak vests and "k-pots" are too expensive for the whole crew!

They did that in Connecticut 3 years ago (but it's 30%) and we have been exploding with films including the latest installment of Indiana Jones, shot last summer as a stand in for Jones' "Marshal College". It featured a big motorcycle chase. They also shot at the Valley Railroad in Essex.
Since my company is in the production business, the tax credit has helped us a lot!
Jerry

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"Always remember that, when you enter the ocean or the forest, you are no longer at the top of the food chain."

Unfortunately for us,
The trade off has been the planned reinstating of the 5% sales tax on Aviation.
The bill was passed in 2002 to remove sales tax on anything in aviation.
Trying to compete with the other New England states that do not have taxes on aviation, we saw alot of airplanes come back in 2002-2003.
Several that had been kept in NH and bounced down to MA to pick up.
We will see what happens.


Also on the list last week was a $1 per pack increase for smokers.
Man, am I glad I dont smoke.

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"Hindsight is usually 20% off!"

I thought you were going to start yelling about "liberal" massachusetts lol!

Hey, anything anybody can steal from LA is good in my book. That place ought to be bulldozed into the ocean. Except for present company, of course. You all could go live in NorCal.

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"I knew the jig was up when I saw the P-51D-20-NA Mustang blue-nosed bastards from Bodney, and by the way the blue was more of a royal blue than an indigo and the inner landing gear interiors were NOT green, over Berlin."

I'm just waiting for the big "Shake-n-Splash", then I'll look into that oceanfront property in Arizona...

Wouldn't mind the west coast weather...

Robbie

It has been fairly common since the 1970s for production companies to do a lot of location work all across the country and the world. Pittsburgh, PA and the surrounding area over the years has been used a lot for location work. The old architecture and industrial areas are perfect for period movies. I would assume that much of Massachusetts would be very similar in that you can find areas of town that look much like they did 100 or 200 years ago without too much modification.

You also see places like Bulgaria being used to portray 1930 -50s Los Angeles. My father is friends with a location guy who does a lot of the bigger movies and talking with him is pretty interesting. They travel basically all over the world scouting locations, photographing and creating a huge database. Whenever calls for particular locations come in they can find places in the world that look like old LA, or various Arab nations etc. It is a pretty neat part of the industry that many people don't think of.

Jerry you know what is interesting about CT in Indiana Jones. They did much of the filming there but ended up using out airport here in Fresno to be the Airport in CT. It is so interesting how all those pieces come together even though they are filmed on opposite sides of the country. They used our fire truck for that scene and painted a Branford CT Fire Dept logo on the side.

Right you are man. I was just an extra in a movie with some friends. My one friend ended up with a really cool part as a body double for the star. This is the second major film to be shot here in Pittsburgh this year. Being that much closcer to Hollywood does make you feel kind of cool. I am going to go ahead and start the rumors now, that I am dating Jessica Simpson.

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Chris Henry
EAA Aviation Museum Manager

It is odd how they do that. Not bad in a night time scene, but in daylight, it can sometimes be pretty obvious it's not the location they say it is.

One of my favorite more recent faux paus was in Pearl Harbor (as if there weren't enough in thaty one!). Near the beginning of the flim they show P-40's landing at Mitchel Field on Long Island in New York. It is obvoius that there are mountains behind the landing P-40's and that it is a desert climate.
I don't think there is a hill over 40 feet on all of Long Island!
Jerry

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"Always remember that, when you enter the ocean or the forest, you are no longer at the top of the food chain."

I love spotting goofs like that - the movie Jet Over the Atlantic had a good one with a a scene set at an airport in Portugal that showed a Western Airlines DC-4...

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All right, Mister Dorfmann, start pullin'!
Pilot: "Flap switch works hard in down position."
Mechanic: "Flap switch checked OK. Pilot needs more P.T." - Flight report, TB-17G 42-102875 (Hobbs AAF)

Or the X-Files with mountains in the Houston skyline (this after having filmed multiple scenes in Houston then transitioning to CA for the rooftop shots)....

Sometimes they get away with the location but mess up with the equipment. They got one of Air Tahoma's CV-580s as a stand-in for a C-131H for "Walk The Line" and had to have it white. Instead of doing it right and using the white (and it was a clean white) airplane to digitally mask on an authentic USAF scheme on it, they just put a 5-foot high star & bars (albeit the right star and bars design for the time in question) and left the N-Number in plane (pun intended) view. It was great free advertising for Air Tahoma, something that movies usually try to prevent. They filmed the Germany scenes inside several hangars and offices at Millington (ex Memphis NAS) but those are "standard issue" buildings, so they actually are pretty close to what was present in Germany at the time Cash was in the Air Force.

I've always laughed whenever I watched the last 2 seasons of Prison Break. All of it was filmed here in and around Dallas/Fort Worth but not a single scene actually occurred in Dallas, Fort Worth, the Metroplex, or Texas at all for that matter. They happened in Illinois, the Midwest, Utah, Mexico, and Panama. Odd how that works out.

My little home town of Shreveport, Louisiana has also become a major point for Hollywood productions over the last three years. They call us "Hollywood South" down here You'd be amazed at all the major releases, tv shows, reality series, etc that have been produced in this little out-of-the-way town:

Premonition
Mr. Brooks
The Mist
The Guardian
Mad Money
Factory Girl
Year One
Welcome Home Roscoe Jenkins
The Great Debater
Soul Men
"W"
and about 20 others so far...

My wife was just featured in an episode of "Billy The Exterminator" that will premiere on the A&E Channel this Fall. I was working out of town for the first half of the shoot, so no national exposure for me. Not sure of I want the whole world knowing we had a rat problem though!

We're supposedly third in overall movie production, second only to Los Angeles and New York. Here's an excellent article about the Shreveport movie industry in the NY Times...

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/20/movies/20shre.html?_r=3&oref=slogin&pagewanted=all&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

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Rob Mears
'Surviving Corsairs' Historian
robcmears@yahoo.com
http://www.robmears.com