Jef Nickerson
This afternoon Mathewson Street stood in for Philadelphia as a crew filmed a pilot for an ABC program Body of Evidence. It is one of them Medical Examiner solves crimes type shows zzzzzzzzzz… sorry, I fell asleep.
Hopefully it gets picked up though. It would be good for the economy to have another show filmed in the city. ProJo wrote about the show the other day.
Photos by Jef Nickerson
Greater City Providence
so, they’re filming a show in providence but it is set in philly?
It pisses me off that nothing filmed here is actually set here. If you’re going to show up in a city, disrupt everyone and everything to shoot your stupid show, and expect us to give you a tax break, do us a favor and give us the credit for being here. That suck fest of a movie “27 Dresses” blocked off every piece of prime real estate in the city a couple of years ago, only to use scenes shot indoors for a film that was set in New York, because we gave them a tax break. Don’t even get me started on what Disney did to us in 2005, but at least they were nice enough to actually show the city.
I’m not sure having movies/shows shot actually -is- that good for the economy. Sure, it’s better than nothing, but I’ll bet more business happens on Westminster Street on a daily basis than what a day of movie shooting does.
From a philosophical perspective, I think the idea of ‘building an economy’ with tax credits is a self-defeating proposition… You have to raise money to pay the credits, so instead of fostering the types of businesses that would organically exist in an area, you end up -taxing- the ‘natural’ businesses in order to get a shiny square-peg industry into a round hole economy.
Very, very, VERY few shows are shot in the same city they take place in.
Take Fringe for example. The pilot was shot in Toronto. The rest of the season 1 in the NYC area. The show of course, takes place in Boston. Even worse, season 2, which has many episodes set in NYC….is entirely filmed in Toronto.
90% of shows are filmed in Toronto, Vancouver and LA. It’s a good thing that someone is filming in Providence.
http://gizmodo.com/5473819/outdoor-green-screen-use-on-tv-is-insane
This is the future of “location shooting”
ABC picked up this show for at least 12 episodes.