Feria de Valladolid (Valladolid Trade Fair Centre) will hold next October 21st and 22nd Shooting Locations Marketplace, an event aimed at professionals in the audiovisual industry and the destinations eligible for becoming locations for filming movies, television, advertising, music, video game productions, etc. Currently, nearly 50 locators and more than 30 national and international destinations have already confirmed their participation.
Shooting Locations Marketplace is an unique proposal in Spain developed by Feria de Valladolid in collaboration with the Spain Film Commission and with the support of institutions and public entities such as Ayuntamiento de Valladolid (Valladolid City Council), Junta de Castilla y León (Castilla y León Regional Government), Diputación de Valladolid (Valladolid Provincial Council), the Chamber of Commerce and ICEX.
The main objective of Shooting Locations Marketplace is to offer the agents involved in the development of audiovisual projects “a commercial and business platform, a workplace that contributes to the promotion of Spain as a shooting destination and to the strengthening of this industry that is going through a moment of growth and expansion ”, explained the general manager of the Feria de Valladolid, Alberto Alonso.
This booking market has an international scope and already in this first edition will have the participation of representatives from at least ten countries. The United Kingdom, Portugal and Brussels will be present through their respective Film Commissions and 65 percent of the registered locators come from the United States, Great Britain, Romania, Germany, Canada, Italy and Malta.
They are professionals with extensive experience, who work for large productions of studios and platforms such as Marvel, HBO, Palma Pictures, Netflix, Mediapro, Globomedia, Baelsberg, Franco Films, 22Locations, among others.
Becky Brake, Lori Balton, James Lin, Robert Boake, Leann Emmert, Valerio Marelo, Tate Aráez, Jaume Jordana, Eduardo Rodrigálvarez, Dow Griffith and John Rakich, president of Locations Manager Guild International, are some of the locators who will hold work interviews October 21st and 22nd in Valladolid with the participating destinations.
In the trajectory of these professionals, great titles of films and television series can be found, such as Pirates of the Caribbean, Mission: Impossible, Game of Thrones, La Casa de Papel, The Bourne Supremacy, Argo, The Grand Budapest Hotel, Black Mirror, Wonder Woman 84, New Amsterdam, etc.
“I’ve been doing this for 30 years and I can’t imagine a more rewarding job. It’s collaborative and always different”, that’s how Lori Balton defines her work as a locator of settings for all kinds of shootings. Her most recent works include Top Gun: Maverick, projects with Aaron Sorkin for Amazon and Damien Chazelle for Paramount, a series with HBO… ”
“My favourite part is searching, all phases of the process,” she says. Those searches have taken her to places like Brazil, Peru, Colombia, Mexico, Morocco, France, Italy, Vietnam, Portugal, Iceland, Lapland… “At Shooting Locations Marketplace I hope to discover both new scenarios and service companies for production, because the shooting plan requires a prior investigation on logistical issues such as permits, accommodation, transportation, auxiliary companies, etc.”
The common interest of the locators that will attend Shooting Locations Marketplace is to learn about new scenarios and interlocutors to incorporate them into their work schedule as possible destinations for future projects. Most of these professionals spend between 100 and 200 days a year prospecting for destinations in search of all kinds of locations: nature, historical buildings, industrials, cities, etc.
Destinations
The range of destinations attending the event includes, in addition to the aforementioned (Portugal, United Kingdom and Brussels) the Canary Islands, Mallorca, Navarra, La Rioja, Costa Blanca, Castilla y León, Valencia, Madrid, Córdoba, Bilbao, Zaragoza, Andalusia, Ávila, Burgos, León, Palencia, Salamanca, Segovia, Soria, Valladolid, Zamora, Riaza, Gran Canaria and Tenerife. In addition, service companies specialized in processing and consultancy on legislation, financial aid, etc. will also participate in Shooting Locations Marketplace.
In the presentation of Shooting Locations Marketplace, held at Abadía Retuerta Le Domaine, the president of Spain Film Commission, Carlos Rosado; the president of the Executive Committee of Feria de Valladolid, Víctor Caramanzana; the vice president Diputación de Valladolid, Víctor Alonso Monge; the general director of Cultural Policies of Junta de Castilla y León, José Ramón González; and the mayor of Valladolid, Óscar Puente.
Carlos Rosado has highlighted that Spain Film Commission has worked from the beginning of this project with Feria de Valladolid in the development of the first edition of Shooting Locations Marketplace “with the aim of building in our country an event of international relevance, exclusively dedicated to locations for audiovisual productions. This meeting space with the industry and its professionals aims to contribute to the competitiveness of the Spanish film industry”.
Óscar Puente has pointed out the unique character of the project, “the sweet moment in which it arrives, with the Spain Audiovisual Hub Plan for Europe promoted by the Government of Spain, the increase in the number of shootings and the demand for content. This fair reinforces Valladolid’s commitment to attract the audiovisual industry, both from a territorial as well as a strategic point of view”.
José Ramón González has stressed that Shooting Locations Markeplace “constitutes an unique opportunity to let the professionals in the film location industry learn about the enormous potential that our territory has in order to host audiovisual productions of different sign or nature. The diversity of our region, landscape and heritage, offers the possibility of shooting almost any kind of scene”.
Víctor Alonso Monge has shown, as well as the province’s link with cinema with festivals and activities such as the Medina del Campo International Film Week and Rueda con Rueda, the ability to generate economic dynamism that filming has and mentioned as an example of Valladolid settings the recordings made at the Museum of the Roman Villas for the series El Corazón del Imperio (The heart of an empire).
Víctor Caramanzana has referred to the opportunity that Shooting Locations Marketplace represents for companies and destinations “due to its high specialization and the international scope of this project that was born without borders”.
Professional associations
Shooting Locations Marketplace wants to be the meeting point for the audiovisual industry and for this is essential the commitment of the most relevant professional associations. Thus, collaboration agreements with the following entities have been signed:
– ICEX.
– Locations Managers Guide International, the leading international association of destination scouters.
– European Film Commissions Network, which brings together 95 partners from 31 countries.
– Association of Audiovisual Production Professionals (APPA), which has 170 associates from the industry of cinema, television and advertising.
– PROFILM, an organization that groups together production companies that develop audiovisual projects with third countries in Spain.
– Alianza de la Industria Audiovisual (ALIA, Audiovisual Industry Alliance), brings together the main technical and service companies from all phases of the production process.
– Asociación de Productoras de Cine Publicitario (APCP, Association of Advertising Film Production Companies).
– Audiovisual451.
– Cineuropa.
– Cine y Tele (Cinema and TV).
Work interviews and conferences
Shooting Locations Marketplace is a booking market structured around a system of previously closed interviews between destinations and locators, so that both make the most of their participation. The work program also includes technical conferences in which experts from different areas will speak, among other issues, about the demands that production companies raise to destinations, what are the solutions that the territories offer to capture shootings, future prospects, how the increase of audiovisual consumption affects the development of auxiliary industries, etc.
Leon Forde, from the British consultancy SPI Olsberg will be one of the speakers at the sessions, as well as the president of the British Film Commission, Adrian Wootton; John Rakich, president of LMGI, Peter Andermatt, director of the office of Media España, Angelica Cantisani, director of EUFCN, and Dow Griffth, locator who started his career with “Carrie” by Brian de Palma.