Runaway Productions

Negli ultimi due decenni un numero crescente di amministrazioni locali ha iniziato a considerare il cinema come un settore produttivo “utile” in grado di fungere da volano di sviluppo economico. Ciò ha portato molte di esse ad investire denaro in una serie di politiche film-friendly (film commission, film fund, incentivi fiscali, studi di registrazione) con l’obiettivo di attrarre sempre più riprese sui propri territori e, quindi, di incrementare la produttività locale, dirottare localmente nuovi capitali finanziari, creare occupazione e promuovere i propri paesaggi. Politiche che al contempo consentono alle imprese cinematografiche di risparmiare denaro, usufruire gratuitamente di preziosi servizi, e di sfruttare insolite location per intercettare l’interesse di un più ampio (o specifico) pubblico.
Alla luce di queste considerazioni, in prima istanza l’articolo analizza come le imprese cinematografiche e le amministrazioni locali stiano stringendo un’alleanza sempre più solida basata sullo sfruttamento di location cinematografiche. In secondo luogo il testo propone un modello attraverso il quale interpretare il mercato delle location cinematografiche che si sta venendo a creare e che coinvolge sempre più di frequente anche il pubblico.

A partire dalla fine degli anni Novanta l’industria audiovisiva indiana ha intensificato il numero di riprese effettuate all’estero, in particolar modo nei paesi occidentali. Questa migrazione di riprese rappresenta una grande occasione per i paesi ospitanti. L’industria cinematografica indiana, infatti, è la più prolifica al mondo e i suoi film riscuotono un ampio successo nel mercato domestico, con una quota di mercato stimata attorno al 90-95%. Ma il cinema indiano sta raccogliendo consensi anche all’estero, e i suoi spettatori non appartengono più solo alle classi popolari della società indiana, ma anche a quelle più facoltose, e dunque sono potenzialmente in grado di intraprendere viaggi verso i luoghi visti sul grande schermo.
In virtù di queste considerazioni, il saggio analizza innanzitutto le ragioni che hanno spinto i produttori indiani a delocalizzare le proprie riprese all’estero, in particolar modo in Italia. Solo alla luce di questa analisi della domanda, infatti, è poi possibile comprendere come i territori possono aver intercettato le necessità dell’industria del cinema (e di riflesso anche i desideri del suo pubblico) e divenire potenziali mete turistiche per gli spettatori indiani. Da un punto di vista metodologico, invece, il saggio ambisce a mostrare come gli studi condotti nell’ambito dell’economia dei media possano contribuire all’analisi dei fenomeni cineturistici e all’elaborazione di iniziative di successo in grado di intrecciare sviluppo territoriale e industrie creative.

Since the end of the 1990s Indian producers have been outsourcing an increasing number of film productions to Western countries, and this trend represents an important opportunity for the hosting territories. The Indian film industry is the main film producer in the world, and its movies achieve a wide success in the domestic market (where they hold a market share of about 90-95%). Moreover, from few years Indian films are successful not only among a mass audience that belongs to the lower classes of Indian society, but also among affluent spectators who have the economic resources for visiting Indian films’ locations. Finally, Indian films are more and more released abroad, and not just within national borders.

In the light of this trend, the article investigates the reasons that are pushing Indian producers to moving abroad their film shoots. In particular it analyses the phenomenon of Indian film shot in Italy explaining why Italy is currently so appealing for Indian producers, which is the first step for attracting shoots and reaching a wide audience of spectators/potential tourists. As regards methodology, the article aims to demonstrate how media economics studies can help in investigating film-induced tourism and in conceiving initiatives able to connect territorial development with creative industries.

This chapter takes political economy’s view on below the line work in U.S. runaway productions as a starting point for ethnographical observations regarding the sociomaterial construction of the film studio as workspace. It shows how the “biography” of props intersect with the working lives of prop-makers, and how aesthetical artifacts co-organize the production process.

in: Screening European Heritage: Creating and Consuming History on Film, eds. Paul Cooke and Rob Stone (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 25-44. The chapter examines how Europe's increasingly integrated, transnational television industry nonetheless re-establishes restricted notions of national and regional heritage at the heart of the continent's pan-European initiatives.

The outsourcing of film shoots has long been adopted by US producers to cut costs and improve box-office performance. According to the academic literature, outsourc-ing is exploited mainly for low-and middle-budget films, but this article aims to demonstrate that blockbusters are also migrating towards other states and countries to take part in an even more competitive film location market. It investigates 165 block-busters released between 2003 and 2013. The collected data show that blockbuster shoots are not an exclusive to California, but are re-drawing the map of film production in favour of an even more polycentric and polyglot audiovisual panorama.

Established in 1933, the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) protects its members' rights in bargaining agreements which guarantee decent wages, safe working conditions, health care and pensions. The technological and economic mutations of the movie industry brought about by the new media have changed the basics. Globalization and the ever-increasing problem of 'runaway' production led the actors to vote in 2001 the extension of the SAG contract to all English-speaking films shot outside of the United States. The paper analyzes the way SAG adjusts to the changing film industry.

In 1963, before it was established as a popular tourist destination, the poor village of Elounda (Agios Nikolaos region, Crete) was chosen as a shooting location of the Walt Disney Productions movie The Moon-Spinners (1964). Subsequently, a large number of film technicians, laborers, actors, even Walt Disney himself, arrived in the area. The local inhabitants participated collectively in the film’s creation and contributed to Elounda’s metamorphosis into a film setting. Today, more than 50 years after its completion, in the region where it was shot, the film is not forgotten. Instead it is acknowledged as a landmark signaling the beginning of Agios Nikolaos’ transformation from a region facing intractable problems of indigence into a tourist resort that attracts thousands of travelers annually. Based on the concept of mobility and through research in various primary and secondary sources, this essay examines The Moon-Spinners from a variety of perspectives. Firstly,

it approaches the film as a “Runaway Production”, a product of Walt Disney Productions’ strategies and policies. Secondly, it examines the film’s production in relation to the Greek government’s legislative measures taken with the aim of attracting foreign film productions to the country, in a period characterized by intensifying efforts to establish tourism as a significant sector of the Greek economy. Thirdly, it looks into the impact the film’s production had on both the rural environment and the local economy. Finally, it investigates aspects of the film’s (Greek/Cretan) reception: from its condemnation on the grounds of defaming the Cretan people, to the enthusiastic welcome it received upon its return to the region where it was filmed. In conclusion, the movie ceases to be a mere product of a particular era and industry; it becomes a mirror of the needs and wishes of a community in transition.

In the past decade, Hungary has grown from a peripheral destination of Hollywood runaway productions into the second biggest European filming location. At the same time, after decades of absence from the domestic and international scenes, local productions have made a return, filling national cinemas and winning prestigious international awards. This article investigates the development of Hollywood runaway production in socialist and post-socialist Hungary. On the macro level, it explores how political and economic tendencies, together with individual agents' networks, affected local industries and Hollywood runaway production from the 1960s to the present. On the micro level, the article looks at Hungarian crew members' self-perceptions and professional identity formation. Doing so, the article strives to reveal the possible links between the two tiers and the effect of wage-work on domestic production.

Anthony Minghella’s recent movie, Cold Mountain, was an adaptation of Charles Frasier’s bestselling novel.  The plot: A wounded confederate soldier leaves his hospital bed in Raleigh, North Carolina and makes a treacherous journey home to Cold Mountain.  The book’s narrative is so thoroughly embedded in the sense of place and regional culture of North Carolina and Appalachia that it is impossible to separate place and narrative.  It therefore came as quite a shock to many that the filming of Cold Mountain took place primarily in Romania.  In this essay I examine how just such a thing can happen; how Cold Mountain, North Carolina becomes Cold Mountain, Romania.  Hollywood is now in its third wave of runaway production, or the outsourcing of feature film and television production to foreign countries.  I scrutinize each of these three waves of runaway production as they relate to two key issues: economics and geographic realism.  Where economics relates to keeping the cost of a production down, geographic realism plays a role in determining the suitability of a location for a narrative.  All locational decisions relating to film production deal with geographic realism and economics.  In the end, economics trumped geographic realism and Cold Mountain’s locational choices were determined by Miramax’s attitude that a “A Tree is a Tree.”

with Melis Behlil and Ignacio M. Sánchez Prado, in: The Cultural Life of James Bond: Specters of 007, ed. Jaap Verheul (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2020),

This chapter dissects the opening sequences of Skyfall (2012) in Istanbul and Spectre (2015) in Mexico City in order to argue that Eon’s predilection for runaway productions has begun began to influence the textual composition of the James Bond film series. Eon Productions often modifies the narratives and settings of its Bond features in order to exploit the increasingly global availability of funding schemes, tax incentives, and cheap labor, and to secure, on a global scale, profitable distribution deals, enhanced visibility, and greater revenues from merchandizing. In the process, the Bondian runaway production fashions a colonial imaginary of exotic non-places, which has since long been a staple of the brand of Bond.

This article develops an interdisciplinary theoretical method for assessing the environmental values articulated and practiced by dispersive or “mobile” film production practices, aiming toward applicable strategies to make media practices more environmentally conscientious and sustainable. Providing a social and environmental study of the local relational values, political economy, and ecosystem ramifications of runaway productions and film incentive programs, this study draws on contemporary international green production practices as entryways into environmentally positive film industry change. Offering an overview of the potential use of a relational values approach to media production cultures, the essay uses two opposing models (the Michigan film incentive and the underwater cinematography culture of South Florida) in order to assess the political dynamics, social consequences, and environmental threats of Hollywood’s mobile practices—as well as their potential as sites, beyond Hollywood, to converge environmental values with local media culture.

Local labor laws in Taiwan push migrant workers to run away from contracted employment arrangements and become undocumented. This article examines the common forms of struggle pursued by runaway Indonesian migrant workers with a focus on the informal organizational structures that support their daily survival. To open space for maneuver within nation-state borders, runaway migrant workers utilize their agency and negotiate state and non-state structures such as recruitment companies, NGOs and civil society organizations, migrant communities, illegal agency services, and taxi drivers.

... kind or another is assured once a place has been packaged for the screen, and that ... in place from this first fateful day, despite the somewhat haphazard nature of the tour experience ... year and the release of the final film.7 In the meantime, Tourism New Zealand, beginning shortly ...

Though film-induced tourism has become a relatively new aspect of tourism studies, it nevertheless belongs to the numerous contemporay tourism-linked activities bringing people to a specific country... (https://journals.openedition.org/inmedia/)