Is this deliberately done to make them more mysterious or just by accident? The credits are extremely detailed in listing all the actors and crew etc. and then only a couple lines for filming locations and sometimes not at all.
For Homegrown (1998), it says “Filmed in part in Santa Cruz, CA”
And that’s it! When the most incredible and memorable location in the film is in Humboldt County which is north of Santa Cruz County.
It can be frustrating, especially with Homegrown, when I would like to know where specific locations are and it’s not listed anywhere or on IMDB, simply because fans most likely don’t know the exact locations either. So it just remains a mystery, on purpose or by accident. When a filming location is found by locations scouts there’s clearly something special about them and it’s too bad that it’s not possible to know where some are, and we will die not knowing.
I realize that many locations are private homes etc. although that doesn’t stop the Home Alone house location from being on IMDB, maybe because it’s so popular. It really seems like films just do it if they want to.
Actors and crew have long standing agreements about who gets credits (pretty much everyone as far as I can see) and the relative prominence of them. No such agreements exist about locations, so they don’t have to show them. Actually, if your house appeared in a popular film, would you really want the fans to be able to find it easily?
On the other hand your house is in a major movie because of its aesthetic value and attractive vicinity and that’s something very few can check off their bucket list. Imagine locations scouts showing up at your house and being like well we want this in a Hollywood movie and people from all over the world will get satisfaction from your house and land.
Why should they be required to do it? I mean, I get curious about film locations myself sometimes, but that doesn’t mean there should be a rule that indulges my curiosity.
Yes it would, by letting others know about the locations so future movies/shows can film there or at least have a chance. Like the upscale restaurant in Homegrown, is it a real restaurant? The film gives us an amazing view of a restaurant on the coast and what if I want that in a film in the future? What if it’s a real restaurant and I could go there if I could afford it? Instead it remains a mystery and all the credits of the film gives us is “Filmed in part in Santa Cruz, CA” haha.
Because there’s no guild on union fighting for it. Hollywood doesn’t do movie credits because it enjoys them, the details about what go into a movie credit are stipulated through a network of contracts and laws.
When a location grants tax credits or subsidies for a film, it can sometimes negotiate inclusion into the credits as part of the deal. But if nobody is forcing them to put something in the credits, then why would they?
If the restaurant were so inclined, they could have negotiated a reduced fee for filming in return for inclusion into the credits. They weren’t, so they didn’t.
The thing is that it would literally take less than five more minutes of work to add the filming locations by copying and pasting because they’re clearly written down somewhere anyway; especially for businesses and public locations.
People live in the E.T. house and it’s the very top house on the hill, all the houses around it are inferior because it’s the only one to have a longer driveway with the mountain directly behind it, it’s fascinating for me to think about the house being found when it’s so tucked away, (although there weren’t trees blocking it when it was filmed). It’s perfect for Elliot to ride his bike down the driveway and to get a view of the neighborhood and mountains PLUS being farther behind the other houses so it’s believable that E.T. would go there first.
Filming locations can be very interesting and it’s a shame that they can’t take 5 more minutes even if it doesn’t serve a financial purpose.
Guanolad has the answer. From the movie producer’s point of view, there’s no reason to. It has no effect on the movie or who sees it. Also, the property owner may not want people traipsing all over after the movie is released.
You may want to see the E.T. house, but the owners don’t want a steady stream of fans disrupting their lives. It grows old very fast. And their rights are more important since it’s their property.
What do you mean, required? Required by whom? Do you think Congress should pass a law requiring this? And what should be the punishment for breaking said law? Does every goddamn thing in the world have to be either prohibited or mandatory?
Do you also want them to be required to say exactly who originated every word of dialog or every movement or gesture? Or who applied every actor’s makeup or sewed every article of clothing?
It’s not just five more minutes of work. It would make the credits longer, adding expense to their production–probably a lot more than you realize. Also, they don’t know which shots are going to make it to the final cut when they make the credits. In any case, as mentioned above, credit production is governed by rather specific requirements, and they will mention locations when there is a real reason to do so.
And are you suggesting a list of addresses? Really? And that it be “required”? As panache says, by whom? That would be like a restaurant being forced to list on their menu the brand of the utensils they use: an obscure point of information of interest to only a very few people.
In the end, such a practice would be contrary to the whole make-believe tradition of (fiction) film making, where the purpose is to make the audience believe that the things you see are part of the world of the story, not reality.
That said, though, I often am curious about these things, especially when they film around here.
I hate it when they use locations I know because it causes a dissonance in me. The Wife and I were watching a film shot mostly in lower Fairfield County CT, and we kept hitting a wall whenever a character would, for instance, drive along a road in Westport, turn into the gates of a cemetery in Bridgeport, and pull up to a mausoleum which was who-knows-where.
I don’t know whenthis website was published, but the people behind it deserve a medal.
If anyone has seen Baraka, take a look at the site. In the past, there was a static list of locations in the credits, but nothing to tie scenes to the place. This site has clickable stills from the film that pop up on a map with the name, location, additional pictures and a behind-the-scenes shot or two.