Locations - Part 7 - Melody Ranch Con't

I got in contact with the people from Melody Ranch and unfortunately this small little show entitled Deadwood, being shot for some small company called HBO or something has the location booked for the next year. So the hunt continues.

Locations - Part 7 - Melody Ranch

It is amazing what you can finda, even when you think you have looked every place imaginable. After thinking I had seen every western town set in Southern California I stumbled across another very promising location by a tip from a fellow filmmaker friend of mine. This location is in Newhall, CA and is called Melody Ranch Motion Picture Studio. It is about the same distance as the Paramount Ranch location and looks to be the most practicle place to shoot.

The next determining factor is the cost. Due to our current super ultra low budget it the location fees, if any. Will either give us hope towards making this movie or wave us on in our journey to find an affordable location. The studio's website is http://www.melodyranchstudio.com. I plan on making a visit to the location within the next week.

Locations - Part 6 - Montana

The trip to Montana proved to be a very productive one. I give special thanks to Bill Kuney of the Montana Film office who assisted in making contact with the appropriate people to show around the locations we had scheduled to visit. The film office for any state or county is one of the most resourceful places in assisting in your locations scouting.

While in Montana I visited four locations that had the possibility of working for our story: Virginia City, Nevada City, Bannak and Hellroaring Gulch in Butte. With it being winter the average temperature was around 0*F, which prompted us to where warmer clothing as compared to the weather in California.

Nevada City was a great location due the amount of buildings and the access that it had to lodging and some other nearby towns. The town was about 1 mile away from Virginia City and both were under the supervision of the Heritage Commission in Montana. Nevada City was unique in that the buildings were preserved buildings that were brought from all over Montana to create the town. There were a number of interiors and movies such as Return to Lonesome Dove was shot there and Seabiscuit seriously considering shooting there.

Bannak was about 90 miles away from Nevada City and was also under the Heritage Commission. The town was preserved from its original state in the 1800s and some of the buildings were being restored for safety. Unlike a lot of Ghost towns I've been to, you were able to free walk in a lot of the buildings. There was a large two story Hotel that we were allowed to walk around in. Inside there were a number of rooms and a couple of safes. In the upstairs of the building the ceilings were extremely tall. The downfall with this location was that it was out of the way and to dress some of the sets would prove to be difficult. The upside of the town was its authenticity. The town was almost exactly the way it was over 100 years ago.

When I arrived in Montana the temperature dropped to -15*F and then by the time I left warmed up to around 15 to 20*F. While doing our scout the cold weather proved to not get along with my camera all that well. I was constantly putting the camera in my coat and rubbing it in attempt to warm it up so that it would operate. I ended up having artifacting to a lot of the footage due to the cold and by the end the tape mysteriously decided to stop reading the info on the tape. I will have to try playing it back on a different machine to see if it is just the camera.

One interesting thing to note is that each of the locations I have been happy with I have seen a cotton tail rabbit hoping around. If I can get the footage restore from the tape then I will post some pictures of the rabbits.