Shooting TV Commercials Overseas
By Massimo Martinotti
Some commercials have always been shot abroad, basically for climate or location reasons. The streets of Rome, the desert of Morocco, and the bridges in Paris were used when the storyboard required that. A few other projects used to be shot in Canada, especially in Toronto and Vancouver but also in Montreal, taking advantage of lower costs, favorable exchange rates and incentives from the Canadian government.
But in the year 2,000 the Sag strike made some clients and some agencies to explore the possibility of shooting abroad. One year later 9/11 was the beginning of a yearlong crisis in the production industry. Budgets became smaller, the number of productions shrunk and the production companies were desperate.
At the same time some countries went through complex economical turmoil and their currency was devaluated against the US dollar. Argentina, for instance, became overnight 70 % cheaper and something similar happened to Brazil. 1 US Dollar was equal to 1 Argentine Peso in January 2002 but one year later 1 US Dollar was equal to 3.37 Pesos. This means that a production that had a cost of $100,000 at the beginning of 2002 could have been realized for less than $30,000 only 12 months later.
The same situation had occurred previously in Mexico at the beginning of the 90's or in Spain in 1998 , but the situation in the US was not ready to attract the attention of agencies and clients to the global production. Part of the reason is that, by then, the technological gap between the production industries in the US and abroad (with the exclusion of some European countries, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, etc) was huge, while in 2,001 the difference had substantially decreased. Argentina and Brazil, for instance, besides having cut the costs by two thirds because of the devaluation, had proved in the Advertising Festivals that the quality of their industries was exceptional. According to the Gunn Report Brazil and Argentina were the 4th and the 5th most awarded countries during 2001, way ahead of France (6th), Japan (7th), South Africa (9th) or Australia (11th).
A desperate need for reducing the budget combined with a drop in costs in other countries made the pressure to go and shoot abroad very strong. Suddenly some countries started to receive an unexpected number of productions and, even if their production structures were reasonably well developed, the size of their industries was not apt to absorb a so spectacular increase of work. In countries like Argentina or Brazil and also in South Africa and New Zealand there were many competent crewmembers but their number was not enough to serve 20 or 30 foreign productions at the same time. If you were lucky and you were the first in booking the crew, everything went very smoothly but if you were the 15th in line, you probably ended up with a pretty amateurish crew. Sometimes it happens in Los Angeles, the biggest production center in the entire World, that you cannot find a good location manager or a talented production designer available for your job. Imagine what the situation could be in an incomparably smaller industry environment. As a consequence of this some international experiences was very good while some others were less than satisfactory.
Experienced producers with a solid network of contacts around the Globe are well positioned to chose the right country where to shoot taking into account all the parameters of the specific production.
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