FILM LIAISON HELPS PUMP MILLIONS INTO ECONOMY.Byline: Jim Skeen Daily News Staff Writer Breaking away from his office at City Hall, Jeff McNeil drives his red mini-van out along Avenue I, where a student filmmaker plans to park equipment trucks while filming at a Lancaster mobile home park. The side street looks like it is big enough so parked trucks won't choke off traffic, and McNeil heads out to another location - the Lake Los Angeles Los Angeles (lôs ăn`jələs, lŏs, ăn`jəlēz'), city (1990 pop. 3,485,398), seat of Los Angeles co., S Calif.; inc. 1850. movie set called ``Club Ed,'' where he gets to schmooze with a gorgeous Swedish rock Sweden has long been a powerhouse of rock and with either poppy rock or heavy metal. Some of these examples include:
McNeil is the Antelope Valley This article is about the Los Angeles County region. For the census-designated place in Wyoming, see Antelope Valley-Crestview, Wyoming. The Antelope Valley film liaison, a post the city of Lancaster The City of Lancaster (2002 population: 133,914) is a local government district with city status in Lancashire, England. Its main town is Lancaster, from which it obtained its city status. Other towns in the district include Morecambe, Heysham, Slyne, and Carnforth. created to give filmmakers a single contact to get information about shooting locations and services available in the region. The idea is to encourage more filming and help boost the Antelope Valley's economy. There were 123 productions in the Antelope Valley in 1996, including 48 feature films. The productions, ranging from a Neil Young music video to filming of ``The Flood,'' pumped $22.1 million into Antelope Valley's economy. ``If a producer walks up here with a script, we can get his movie made,'' McNeil said. ``That's what `The Flood' basically did. We helped them with locations, crews, technical services, where to stay and medical services.'' ``The Flood,'' an action feature from Paramount Studio, was the biggest production in the Antelope Valley in 1996. The movie, which stars Christian Slater Christian Slater (born August 18, 1969) is an American actor. Biography Early life Slater was born Christian Michael Leonard Hawkins in New York, New York, the son of Mary Jo Slater, a casting executive, and Michael Hawkins, an actor who was also known as and Morgan Freeman, was filmed inside a hangar in Palmdale originally used for building B-1B bombers. McNeil estimates the production company spent $1.5 million a month during the filming, which started in September and wrapped up two weeks ago. McNeil helped the movie crew find a number of services, including referrals for cleaning companies and a health food store, said Kelli Cole, a production assistant on ``The Flood.'' ``He's been enormously helpful,'' Cole said. ``He always gives us options, and he would help us find it.'' For ``Dorf on the Diamond,'' one of comedian Tim Conway's made-for-video adventures of a pint-sized smart aleck smart al·eck n. Informal 1. A person regarded as obnoxiously self-assertive. 2. An impudent person. [Perhaps after Aleck named Dorf, McNeil helped with referrals for hotels and RV rentals, and with negotiations with Lancaster for the rental of the city's baseball stadium. ``Any time we had a problem, he had a list of people we could talk to,'' said Chuck Burbage, executive producer of the video. As film liaison, McNeil said he has to be part production manager, part location scout and a ``miniature Henry Kissinger.'' ``You have to get everything ready for these people,'' McNeil said. ``You have to make sure they have the right location.'' It helps, McNeil said, that he grew up in the Antelope Valley. It also helps that McNeil, 37, was in the film business himself. McNeil had gone to film school at the University of Southern California The U.S. News & World Report ranked USC 27th among all universities in the United States in its 2008 ranking of "America's Best Colleges", also designating it as one of the "most selective universities" for admitting 8,634 of the almost 34,000 who applied for freshman admission but landed a film production job and left school. His first job was as a grip on the 1982 Harrison Ford science-fiction thriller ``Blade Runner.'' McNeil later became a camera operator and worked on movies such as ``Lethal Weapon 3'' and ``Terminator (1) A character that ends a string of alphanumeric characters. (2) A hardware component that is connected to the last peripheral device in a series or the last node in a network. 2.'' Some two years ago, McNeil served on the committee that recommended an official film office be created for the Antelope Valley to make things easier for companies to film here. In February, the Lancaster City Council voted to spend $50,000 to create the film bureau. The film bureau opened in April, with McNeil hired as a contractor. Office support is provided by Lancaster's Department of Parks, Recreation and Arts, which also oversees the film bureau. McNeil said he gets two or three calls a day from people looking for Looking for In the context of general equities, this describing a buy interest in which a dealer is asked to offer stock, often involving a capital commitment. Antithesis of in touch with. specific locations. ``One guy wanted a drive-in theater A drive-in theater is a form of cinema structure consisting of a large screen, a projection booth, a concession stand and a large parking area for automobiles. The screen can be as simple as a wall that is painted white, or it can be a complex steel truss structure with a complex in the middle of nowhere, and it had to be facing southwest,'' McNeil said. ``I said, we've got land you can build on. He said, `No, it's got to be already existing.' '' The last of Antelope Valley's drive-in theaters passed from the scene years ago. The solution: a farmer's hay barn draped drape v. draped, drap·ing, drapes v.tr. 1. To cover, dress, or hang with or as if with cloth in loose folds: draped the coffin with a flag; a robe that draped her figure. in fabric. The makeshift drive-in was used for a Lexus auto commercial. ``The graphics department had to do some work because there were a couple of poles we couldn't remove,'' McNeil said. In addition to fielding the calls and making visits to locations, he sends out a weekly mailing to about 100 prospective shows to inform them about the Antelope Valley and the film office. McNeil will also be attending a film location expo in February. After the mobile home park, the next stop is ``Club Ed,'' a movie set originally built for the 1990 film ``Eye of the Storm'' with Dennis Hopper. Built against the rocky buttes Rocky Butte is an extinct volcanic cinder cone in Portland, Oregon. It is one of three, along with Powell Butte, and Mount Tabor, inside the city that are each home to a city park, Rocky Butte playing host to James Wood Hill Park. north of Lake Los Angeles, the location includes a dinner, a motel, a gas station and an auto parts Auto parts are components of automobiles. They mainly are, in alphabetic order (only car specific articles or articles with car section):
On this day, the auto parts store is being used as a backdrop for a music video for Ann Louise Hansson, a Swedish rock singer. McNeil introduces himself to the production manager and makes sure everything is OK. McNeil is on his way out when Hansson herself comes out of a room. McNeil makes some small talk, asks if she and her crew have everything they need, and poses with Hansson for some pictures taken by her producer. ``That's what I do: come out, talk and schmooze,'' McNeil said. Foreign film production like the Hansson video represent about 20 percent of the filming in the Antelope Valley, McNeil said. ``We get a lot of European and Japanese productions - stuff that will never be seen in the Antelope Valley,'' McNeil said. Club Ed was recently used for the filming of ``Nothing to Lose'' with Tim Robbins Timothy Francis Robbins (born October 16, 1958) is an American Academy Award-winning actor, screenwriter, director, producer, activist and musician. He is the longtime partner of actress Susan Sarandon, with whom he shares liberal political views. and Martin Lawrence Martin Fitzgerald Lawrence[1] (born April 16, 1965) is an American actor, comedian, director and producer. He came to fame during the 1990s, establishing a Hollywood career as a leading actor. , and ``Retroactive'' with Jim Belushi. Those two projects illustrate a point McNeil wants to make - the Antelope Valley can provide a variety of looks for filmmakers. `` `Nothing to Lose' was supposed to have been shot in Arizona. We stole that. `Retroactive' was supposed to be shot in Texas. We stole that,'' McNeil said. The west side has served as Nebraska and Kansas in some productions. There's one more east side stop - another video shoot, filming a car driving along a side road off Highway 138 in Llano lla·no n. pl. lla·nos A large, grassy, almost treeless plain, especially one in Latin America. [Spanish, plain, from Latin pl - and then it's back to the office. When he gets back, the phone rings. Someone is looking for a church to film. Usually, when someone calls looking for four different locations, McNeil said, he can refer them immediately to three of the four. ``It's the fourth one I have to go out and find,'' McNeil said. CAPTION(S): Photo Photo: A small town was built and flooded inside a Palmdale hangar for the movie ``The Flood.'' |
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