Stealing The Scene

There's magic in that feeling of déja vu you get when you visit a place you've seen only in dreams, or in the waking dream of film. San Diego has its share of film-famous scenery, from downtown's Kansas City Barbeque seen in Top Gun, or the courthouse from Traffic, to the aerial view of the harbor that establishes San Diego in the opening shots of Anchorman (yes, they showed our new convention center in a film set in 1978).

As any local knows, San Diego enjoys all of the natural advantages of its neighbor Hollywood, with few of the drawbacks. With almost every kind of environment and nearly year-round sun, it can stand in for any location, real or invented, and the easy permit process and the less jaded, mercenary attitude of location hosts in L.A. makes San Diego a dream come true for film and television crews.

Since 1976, the San Diego Film Commission (SDFC) has sought to publicize America's Finest City as a location for film and TV, and their work has steadily paid off for the local economy. In both production volume and dollars, San Diego is second only to Los Angeles in California. For the last fiscal year, 329 productions shot in San Diego, and spent $77,812,000. This is down from the previous year's total of nearly $100 million, largely because budget cuts have limited the SDFC's resources for chasing business.

Every day, 20 to 30 commercials and from 20 to 100 print advertising photo shoots — for catalogs and fashion and car magazines — take place on the streets of San Diego. Of the motion picture production shot locally, 95 percent is for television. Network dramas like Veronica Mars and the reality program Beach Patrol are based in San Diego, and a recent telenovela explosion — late night Latino soap operas in English for Fox's MyNetwork — is pioneering a new model for grinding out domestic drama. With 65 episodes scripted for each storyline, and four storylines shooting concurrently, the telenovelas have sparked a frenzy of activity that should grow like wildfire, as expanded cable services demand more programming.

The SDFC works to fan the fire by highlighting San Diego's obvious natural attributes and sweetening the pot for prospective producers. "We're in a competition for every project we come across," says SDFC spokesperson Cathy Anderson. "Anchorman was written for Portland. But when they called us, I put them in touch with JW August and [KGTV's '70s anchorman] Jack White, who's known for being an archivist. He had all these scrapbooks and stories about the '70s, and that totally sold them."

Unlike many other locales, San Diego doesn't charge crews to shoot in public places. Anderson explains, "We don't charge the public to drive on the street or take their families to the park. We're not making money, but we may be able to attract something that might not come otherwise."

Where Canadian locations have become less attractive due to higher union rates up north, San Diego has moved to compete with shooting favorites New Mexico and Vancouver. SDFC also surveys all its productions to keep track of locals employed, hotel rooms booked, and location costs.

San Diego's renaissance as a TV hub owes much of its momentum to Stu Seagal, whose multistage lot on Ruffin Road was built to produce shows like Silk Stalkings and Renegade, and currently hosts the popular Veronica Mars, which shot all 22 episodes of its third season in San Diego, at an average budget of $2 million per episode.

With the SDFC's partnership, Seagal has positioned his lot as a supermarket for all kinds of television work, with 11 stages and five crews ready to go to work, and even a subsidiary extra casting agency, Background San Diego. Seagal's production factory stands alone in the local scene, but hires about 100 workers per show, and a couple hundred extras per week, creating a viable living alternative to Hollywood for working
TV professionals.

James Cameron focused the world's attention on San Diego when he shot Titanic at the specially-constructed shoreside lot at Rosarito, but since then, the lot has languished for lack of regular work. But rumors buzz constantly over more studio investment in San Diego. A full-sized, film soundstage would elevate San Diego as a feature film location, but Anderson says it would take a bankable star or studio executive's commitment to make such an investment, which could, in turn, make San Diego a world-class movie industry destination.

Anderson is now preparing to pitch San Diego as the locale for a Baywatch theatrical film. This one got by us once before. When the series relocated to refresh its stale plotlines, Anderson highlighted San Diego's virtues, as well as the dramatic gold to be mined out of its troubled border and military presence, "but Hawaii has a government-owned soundstage they let them use for practically nothing. So we didn't get it."
— Cody Goodfellow, photography by Vincent Knakal and supplied by the San Diego Film Commission