KFTV
by Nick Goundry
May 26, 2016
More Westerns are getting creative with their filming
locations and shooting outside the United States. KFTV takes a closer look.
The genre has seen a resurgence in recent years driven by
the success of films like the Coen Brothers’ remake of True Grit and Quentin
Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight.
A modern challenge is that the genre now generally
favours more mature storytelling and realistic depictions of the old west -
it’s a style that tends to rely more heavily on the support of older
moviegoers.
Given that Westerns can be by their nature expensive as
stories with period settings, smaller shoots have to give more careful
consideration to the availability of local production resources and filming
incentives.
Alberta in western Canada has once again become a popular
Western filming location. In the early 90s the province hosted Clint Eastwood’s
seminal Unforgiven and, more recently in 2007 Brad Pitt’s lesser-seen The
Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford.
Producers shooting in Alberta can now get filming
incentive support in addition to the sweeping wilderness locations and,
crucially for independently-financed productions, a selection of movie ranches
that have ready-made western sets.
The CL Ranch near Calgary has recently hosted Westerns
Forsaken, starring Kiefer Sutherland and his father Donald, and Diablo
(pictured above), starring Scott Eastwood, the son of Clint. Location manager
Jason Nolan worked on both films.
“Forsaken was an independent film and we were able to get
all the locations they were after including the Western Town set on CL Ranch
located just minutes west of Calgary,” Nolan tells KFTV. “The house we burned
on Diablo was an old set on the same ranch – the owners let us get rid of it.”
Similar standing western sets are available near Calgary
at Albertina Farms, Bow River Ranch and John Scott’s Ranch.
“You don’t have to go very far to get the vast landscapes
and step back in time,” Nolan says of shooting westerns in Alberta. “We have
good western town sets that are ready to go within our studio zone, stacked
with everything you need to dress your sets. Power is run – it really is plug
and play.”
New Western stories are also using locations around the
world as doubles for the US. In Europe, Amsterdam-based production company N279
Entertainment recently filmed the Badlands-set movie Brimstone in Romania,
Spain and Germany.
On the small screen, a series of German-backed TV movie
Westerns based on the fictional literary character Winnetou filmed in Croatia
last year.
Nearby Romania was the main filming location for the 2012
US cable hit Hatfields & McCoys, standing in for the eastern US to tell the
true story of a violent feud between two families on the Kentucky/West Virginia
border after the American Civil War. The History Channel production was
serviced by Castel Film Studios of Bucharest.
“We could offer them great locations – matching the
actual places in the US – experienced crew, and maximum value for the dollar
spent,” says Bogdan Moncea of Castel Film Studios, in comments to KFTV.
Independently-financed Westerns are sometimes driven by
the specific make-up of their funding arrangements, while regional production
incentives and lower costs are also important.
John Maclean’s Slow West (pictured left and below) was a
UK production that doubled New Zealand for 19th century Colorado to tell the
story of a jaded mercenary escorting a naïve young man through the wilderness
on a search for the woman he loves. See-Saw Films had previous experience of
filming on South Island and returned with Slow West, with the backing of the
New Zealand Film Commission.
The story makes the most of the plains, mountains and
woods of South Island and conspicuously lacks big set builds. Two small wooden
huts are key story settings but are about the only interior locations in the
film.
“The amazing thing about New Zealand – especially South
Island – is how quickly the landscapes and vegetation change within a
relatively short drive,” Slow West’s location manager David Walker says in
comments to KFTV.
“With a day’s scouting you can cover native beech
forests, be in the snow line in the Southern Alps, then on barren forbidding
windswept plains and rock formations," Walker says. "Many of the
comments by visiting producers is that these types of relocates in other
countries such as the US are days, weeks or countries apart.”
Kristian Levring’s 2015 film The Salvation is set in the
deserts of the mid-West, once again in the late 19th century. Producers
considered filming locations as diverse as Australia and India before settling
on South Africa.
“We were looking for the mid-western prairie look and you
find that more in northern South Africa,” says Michael Auret, a co-producer on
The Salvation, in comments to KFTV.
“South Africa’s net costs are cheaper overall than in
other parts of the world and there’s been a good exchange rate for the last 18
months. Also, local crews speak English and they have experience of working on
big productions.”
The Salvation was filmed on vast farmland near
Johannesburg that didn’t have modern pylons or other contemporary features on
the landscape. Unusually, the production team built a full Western town set
specially for the shoot.
“We had three months of construction on the town and we
built full interiors rather than just exterior facades,” says Auret. “So we
shot most of the interiors on location as well, and built a train station next
to a railway track.”
New Mexico in the south-west US remains the filming
location of choice for many high-profile American Westerns with money to spend
and star names involved. Natalie Portman’s Jane Got a Gun and Adam Sandler’s
comedy The Ridiculous Six have been among the recent productions shooting
locally. A remake of The Magnificent Seven (pictured above) has also filmed
partly in Santa Fe and will test whether a dramatic western offering star names
like Denzel Washington and Chris Pratt can still generate mass audience appeal.
Beyond the US studio system it’s clear that filming
locations around the world offer the Western-looking visuals and workable
finances that cater for the needs of creative producers on tighter budgets.
