GUELPH POLITICAST #187 - Living Next to Gilead

It takes literally thousands of people to make a movie or TV show, including that one person who finds the places where each scene in the production is shot, the location manager. It's a big job, you have to know where all the cool places to shoot are, and would it surprise you to learn that one of the most in-demand locations in show biz right now is just a 20-minute drive down the road?

If you're a location manager it wouldn't surprise you because your union, the Location Managers Guild, has nominated the City of Cambridge for Outstanding Film Commission at the annual LMGI Awards. Believe it or, despite all the production that takes places in Toronto, Vancouver, and even parts of Alberta, this is the first time that a Canadian film office has been nominated.

Why Cambridge? It's because of the city's role doubling for the tyrannical Republic of Gilead, the setting of the Emmy Award-winning drama The Handmaid's Tale. Interiors and exteriors in the City of Cambridge have appeared in all three seasons (so far) of the series, and it's one of the primary drivers of a remarkable 42-day stretch of filming in Cambridge in the first eight months of this year.

So what's driving that success? Why are camera rolling so often in Cambridge, and is it a matter of giving productions what they want, or giving them what they need? These are a couple of the questions we're going to put to our special guests this week.

First, we’ll hear from Anne Richardson, who’s been one of the location managers for The Handmaid’s Tale since season two, and ask her about working with Cambridge, and what she expects from her position when it comes to working with municipal partners. After that, we’ll hear from Devon Hogue, the Business Information Officer of the City of Cambridge, and she'll discuss the intricacies of her job, and how she put together an award-nominated film office.

So let's go behind the scenes of turning your town into a movie set on this week's edition of the Guelph Politicast!

The sixth annual LMGI awards will be held in Santa Monica, California on Saturday September 21. To learn more about filming in Cambridge, and when something's filming in Cambridge, you can visit the City of Cambridge website here.

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