In the almost 30 years since Steven Spielberg’s “The Lost World: Jurassic Park” was shot in Costa Rica, much has changed in the country’s film industry. From a virtually nonexistent market in the late ’90s to a burgeoning powerhouse whose exports are sweeping awards at major festivals such as Cannes and Berlin, Costa Rica has invested heavily not only in boosting its own cinematic output but also in attracting major international productions to shoot in its territory.
At this year’s Costa Rica Media Market, the country’s leading industry event, experts in global production gathered to discuss how major players choose where to take their big shoots in a panel titled “The Decision Behind the Location: How Global Studios Choose Where to Film.”
Michael Woolston, Manager of Physical Production at The Walt Disney Studios and an experienced producer who worked on films such as “Avatar: Fire and Ash” and “The Little Mermaid,” said that the decision to take a production to a foreign country relies on the availability of two key assets: crew and talent.
Speaking about his process, Woolston said that when comparing countries with similar budget ranges, variables become make-or-break factors. “You’re looking at all those other variables, and crew and talent are probably one of the biggest. Maybe we’ll bring, obviously, the director, producer, maybe a production designer, but we would love to hire all the local talent that we can.”
“The goal is to have that talent here that we can just pull from,” he added. “Costume designers, even the construction crew and the craftsmen. That’s a big thing for us. We like to make beautiful visuals, and we’re all about the craftsmanship of it. If you can provide those people, that’s going to be really important to us.”
Sandino Saravia, executive director at Cimarrón Cine — which has headquarters in Uruguay, Argentina, Brazil and Mexico — noted another talent-related issue that can largely influence location choice: “Actors want to be close to their families.”
“They travel a lot,” he continued. “It’s not always an option, especially for seasoned talent, to be away from home in another country for six months, so the project also has to be worthwhile or there has to be a financial discussion about it. So sometimes it also ends up defining where that project will be filmed, not necessarily for economic efficiency, but because we need and want to have talent.”
Speaking of efficiency, having production service companies, veteran producers, and readily available film commissioners who understand how to make local laws and policies digestible and easy to manage for foreign productions is a major asset for a country looking to attract big shoots. Woolston said that, in order for a massive studio to come to a country like Costa Rica to shoot a project, the “boots on the ground need to handle everything for us.”
“The Walt Disney Company is under a microscope, so if something goes wrong, then it’s news,” he said. “We really heavily rely on those production service companies, those local producers, to make sure that we’re doing everything in the following of the laws and all of the policies that we need to.”
The Disney exec then noted categorically: “Mitigate the risk. We already have so many other risks going on. If you’re comparing several countries, you take the least risk.”
Isaac Toussier, VP of content and development at Mexico’s Lemon Studios, echoes Woolston’s comments on the importance of efficiency. “If a camera takes eight days to arrive instead of two, that can already cause a turn-off for a production.”
That being said, Toussier believes Costa Rica is “in a very good place” as a country with a young market, as it has the chance to mould its industry to function under best practices. “In addition to its biodiversity and its people, Costa can build an industry with best practices, which can be difficult in other places. It is much harder to change an industry than to generate a new one.”
“It is much more viable for a company to return to a place where they had a good experience with people who could solve things under pressure,” he went on. “It’s not like you can ask ChatGPT to find you five horses first thing in the morning. You need people who can solve things for you. The real competition is no longer tax incentives, which are the norm in all countries now, but rather how well the country is adapted to receiving these productions.”
Another key topic in the conversation was how film is a “relationship industry.” Often, locations grow to become popular destinations thanks to good feedback from producers who braved previously unexplored countries.
“Hollywood is kind of small in a way where we talk closely with all the other studios and executives,” said Woolston. “I think that’s really great. Even Mark Johnson is a close friend of ours, and getting his experience here in the country is the thumbs-up for us to feel comfortable coming back and saying, ‘Alright, we can do that too.’”
“We talk to all the executives at Netflix, Warner Bros.,” he continued. “They are our competitors but also our friends. If somebody has great experiences and we see that they shot here recently, that’s an easy phone call to make. But the opposite can also happen, where someone has a terrible experience and then that makes it really hard to come back.”
Toussier agreed, saying the “people’s personalities and the synergy created between creative and production teams” are of major importance when choosing where to work. This focus on personal compatibility is a major advantage to Latin America, according to the producer. “Latin America has something very interesting in that we share idiosyncrasies unlike other regions in the world.”
“Spain does not share much with Italy in terms of culture, but we Latin Americans share a lot,” he said. “These dynamics make it so you can skip many cultural steps when travelling between Colombia, Costa Rica, Argentina, Uruguay than when recording outside of Latin America. That’s a big advantage that exists here.”
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