Martin Cuff Consulting

I realized again this week that no-one in my family and only a few in my circle of friends actually has much of a clue what I do for a living. This video on the making of The Hobbit in New Zealand I think offers a first class insight into the requirements of filming on location. Now film commissions don’t actually organize the logistics of on location filming themselves – that’s the production’s job. What a film commission does, on behalf of the local community, is to promote their specific locations as a great place to film, and then ensure that it actually IS a great place to film – by coordinating and promoting available crews and equipment and services and labor and permit issuing bodies, so that filming is easy and the maximum amount of money is spent in local area. And at the AFCI, I now coordinate between all of the governments in the world who offer this unique service to the film industry – we also provide the definitive training for Film Commissioners, and we host an annual event in LA where film commissions gather to market their destinations to Hollywood.

Serbs, white South Africans and Colombians – they’re the kind of tripartite alliance of Hollywood bad guys. They’re the go-to nations for cartoon-ish stereotype, the people you portray when you can’t be bothered to create any characters with genuine emotions or motives or personality. Ah well. In Colombiana, the lithe, balletic Ms. Zoe Saldana plays a Colombian-born assassin who’s hell-bent on finding the evil drug lords who killed her parents. The bad guys (cue slick hair, gold chains, nasally accents) are actually being protected in the US by a corrupt CIA agent. Zoe has to force them into the open, which prompts much bizarrely-plotted violence that’s supposed to mark her as brilliant but actually seems contrived and, let’s face it, risky. (murder by shark? I mean, really.)

Colombiana is not a bad film, considering the confines of its genre. I actually quite like revenge flicks – at least there’s a nominal reason for the brutality – and Zoe is kind of the female Jason Statham, mesmerizingly athletic, but with bigger hair.

Colombiana filmed in New York and Chicago, with Mexico doing stand in for Bogota. Which begs the perennial Film Commission question: when you’ve got idiot film-makers making a mockery of your country and your people, do you encourage them to film in your location, take their money and work like hell to make them at least feel a little guilty about their quasi-racist assumptions? Or do you block filming, only for the movie to be shot elsewhere where you’ve got absolutely no influence, leaving you to watch from the sidelines as your homeland is trashed? There’s no easy answer to that.

One of the shows I caught a couple of times in LA was “How the States got their Shapes“ on the History Channel – a light though entertaining unpacking of the expansion of America (which incidentally filmed its reenactments in Cape Town….) It’s kind of obvious, but I hadn’t thought of it before – but before the advent of the railroads, State borders were lined up along the courses of rivers. Once railroads changed the way the continent was crossed, rivers became irrelevant, and hence, the further west you go, the straighter the borders become. Anyway, I’m digressing only slightly, because the coming of the railroads is one of the underlying themes of my final installment of American history – Christian Bale and Russell Crowe in the Western 3-10 to Yuma.

Bale plays an impoverished farmer about to be punted off his land to make way for the railroad, who volunteers to escort a wanted criminal (Crowe) across country to catch the train of the title. It’s a rollicking good yarn – great story, great acting, well told – and though I’d seen it before several years back, it was still fresh and interesting. Another reason I enjoyed it though was the New Mexico locations. Both the towns of Bisbee and Contention were built from scratch in the New Mexico Desert – and I was lucky enough to visit The Bonanza Creek Ranch where Bisbee was built (and remains) during the AFCI’s Cineposium in 2007.

James Peak of The Location Guide talks to AFCI caretaker manager Martin Cuff about his appointment and plans:

After the unexpected departure of CEO Larry Brownell, the Association of Film Commissioners has a new caretaker manager. Martin Cuff is an economics expert based in Cape Town, South Africa. So the most American of institutions has hired someone outside Hollywood? Who is this guy, and what is he doing? And is he interested in the job on a permanent basis?

Martin is a film sector specialist: “I have a small business that specialises in establishing and mentoring film commissions around the world. I’ve run film commissions and film permit offices on two continents. I was the first African representative to be voted onto the AFCI board. I’m the only foreigner to ever have been hired in to run a US state film commission….

Click here for more.

So today I’m heading off on a mission with Leonie Berning, who’s the manager of the revitalised Zululand Film Office. As the website blurb says: “The Northern Kwa-Zulu Natal Film Office’s objective is to promote and market the Northern Kwa-Zulu Natal District as a prime location for Stills and Film Production companies…… from the bustle of Ballito in the south to the harbour city of Richards Bay and the open wilderness areas of the north, the Zululand and Ilembe North Coast regions offer creative visual practitioners a scenic diversity and multi-cultural heritage not easily found elsewhere….The Northern Kwa-Zulu Natal Film Office vision is to position NORTHERN KWA-ZULU NATAL in the global spotlight as prime film destination, thus creating sustainable employment opportunities, develop skills within the related market as well as promoting local and international tourism.”

Northern KZN is already in some demand as a tropical production destination, but we’re going to be doing a rapid introduction to some of the production companies and other film practitioners in Cape Town – those businesses that are most likely to actually bring productions to KZN – putting faces to names, and starting on the road towards relationships of trust that are so important for film commissions and offices. We’ll also be brainstorming some of the options available to the region, and generally just finding answers to all sorts of questions. We’re also going to Cape Town Film Studios for a tour, which will be a first for me. I’ve never met Leonie, but since we started chatting in November, I’ve been impressed by her energy, her enthusiasm, and her whacky sense of humour. So I’m looking forward to it.

Needless to say, I’m quite pleased to quote directly from the Association of Film Commissioners’ International website as follows:

Larry Brownell, who has served as the AFCI Executive Director since February 2010, stepped down from his post Wednesday, March 15th. The Board of the AFCI is pleased to announce that Martin Cuff Consulting will provide management services to the association until a permanent Executive Director is hired.

The board and staff are forecasting a smooth transition and look forward to working with Martin Cuff Consulting on upcoming events.

The scariest horror film you will see this year:

Still not convinced?

Mark my words: this is the future. The website’s header says:You Witnessed it, Your Recorded it, Now Tag it: #18daysinegypt.

And then it encourages Egyptians to tag their media in Twitter, YouTube and Flickr with the following tags: #18DaysInEgypt
+ the day it occurred: #jan25, #jan26, #jan27….#feb11
+ where it occurred: #tahrir, #heliopolis, #alexandria, #suez, #ndpbuilding
+ and other relevant tags about the footage : #army, #singing, #violence, #tents, #protest
Tagging the media will allow us to find you through search…just that simple.

As I said, what this trend; it’s going to change the way social movements mobilise.

For now, you can tag your videos on YouTube and photos on Flickr. In the coming days we will have a url uploader to capture links to your tweets and media on other platforms. We are also working on functionality so you can send us your SMS text and MMS photos/videos.

I’ve just come back from a few days in Antalya, Turkey, where I was keynote speaker at a national Film Commissions’ conference. Organised by the erudite and thoroughly entertaining Mr Zihni Tumer and his team, the conference gathered eight cities from all over the country under the auspices of the Ministry of Information, Ministry of Culture and Tourism and the General Directorate of Motion Pictures and Copyrights, to discuss Film Commissions and how they might work in Turkey.

Over two days I was invited to outline the opportunities, benefits, possible structures of film commissions in Turkey, as well as explain their objectives, functions and key interventions. The fascinating Stefan Roesch also spoke about Film Tourism, and the gentlemanly George David also demonstrated the hugely successful Royal Film Commission of Jordan as a case study, and shared some of the fantastic things being done in Amman to build a dynamic, professional crew base. I also had the pleasure of meeting producer Manu Gargi, who’d just wrapped Ghost Rider 2 in the country (starring the awful Nicky Cage – above) and had very good things to say about his experiences. He even had nice things to say about Mr. Cage, which of course I couldn’t actually understand…..

Anyway, all eight cities will now be encouraged to prepare models that suit their local jurisdictions, and we’ll reconvene in a few months to assess progress.

Patricia Calhoun on Denver’s fab Westword blog site gives a list of the best movies shot in Colorado. It’s a good list. But what it really hammers home is that there has been very little production in Colorado since around the mid-2000′s, which is when competitive Film Incentives – or Colorado’s lack of them – really began to bite.

Since then, Colorado’s tremendous crews, talent, equipment and locations have not been able to trump the allure of other States’ incentive programs. To illustrate, all of the films listed below (total production budgets +/-$300 million), with given Colorado locations, filmed elsewhere:

Read on:

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