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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   3692 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for March 19, 2023

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Sometimes I think about how it seems like when new TV shows are made, in America anyway, the default locations are always Los Angeles and New York. And as I understand it, the companies that make them are pretty much all based in those places.

Does it work this way in other countries? Are German television shows always based in Berlin, or in Munich? Are Italian shows always in Rome? Or do you also have studios operating out of Turin, Milan, and Florence?

It seems to me like making a television show is not such an expensive undertaking that you couldn't have more local or regional variants. Why do you not have, for instance, a Cleveland-based studio making Cleveland-set programming for the NE Ohio market? Is it not profitable? Has it been tried and failed? Is it happening and I just don't know about it?

I have a friend who works full-time doing prop management for a TV series in New York. It seems they have a union and everything. Basically, there are multiple significant sub-industries around things like props, set selection and prep, casting and management of minor actors and extras, wardrobe and makeup, etc that are required to put on a good production. They mostly don't exist right now outside of current media centers, and it's an expensive pain to work without them, transport expertise in, or train up new crew, so not a lot of production happens outside of the established areas.

Though on the flip side to that, I believe the Breaking Bad franchise made some waves by doing most of their production work in Albuquerque.

Are German television shows always based in Berlin, or in Munich?

Partially as a result of the defeat in WWII and the Allies' desire to decentralize the German media, Germany maintains a large amount of regional public broadcasters. There are no less than 9 regional TV channels (each covering 1-3 federal states) in addition to two flagship channels (one from Berlin, the other from Mainz) dealing with national and world events (e.g. news or large sports events) plus an additional 10 channels for specific audiences (children) or covering more niche things (high culture, theater, documentaries, that sort of stuff). All of these are broadcasting 24/7. As you can imagine, that's a huge amount of screen time to deal with and especially the regional channels make sure to fill a lot of that with locally relevant stuff.

As an example: the long running and very popular German police crime drama series "Tatort" consists of several different police precincts all across the country, always produced by the respective regional broadcaster. There's even one from Vienna and Zürich. Across the weekly screenings of new episodes throughout the year, a viewer will be taken to big cities such as Berlin or Frankfurt but also smaller towns like Saarbrücken or Weimar.

Am I seeing this right - it's been going on since 1970 and is on episode 1240? That's some anime level longevity.

Is there a way to watch it with English subs?

Sadly no, as far as I can tell. Here are the latest ones with German subtitles, if that helps (though they might not be available in some countries). I found this guy on YouTube who translated the subtitles of an entire episode from 12 years ago, but that seems to be the only such effort on the internet.

In Canada, it effectively still is usually major American cities because all of our best talent goes to the US and Americans don't make shows that take place in Canada, with few exceptions. We do have Canadian content rules that force a certain amount of content that is set in Canada to be produced for Canadian audiences, but it's generally bad, so people don't watch it much. We mostly watch American content, which features a lot of Canadian actors and writers, and much of it is shot in Canada, but they never portray Canada. The setting is always in the US. For example, my home province of Nova Scotia often shows up in shows set in Maine (e.g. Haven, the Sinner, the Lighthouse), but almost nothing set in Nova Scotia is ever produced.

So, I watch so little content that is actually set in Canada that I couldn't tell you where in the country it is usually set. It's probably Toronto though. Quebec has its own media world with stars that are very well known to French Canadians that I, as an anglophone, would have never heard of. So, their default locations may be Montreal or Quebec I guess, but I really have no idea.

In Canada, in addition to the CanCon rules that artificially inflate the supply of local production, provincial governments subsidize the local industry to produce films by foreign studios. There are production crews that live permanently in Montreal and Toronto that regularly help produce films that are set in New York. In Nova Scotia, we have locals who help produce films that take place in rural or small town New England. There is almost always at least one film or TV show in production here that employs locals. But they are almost never set in Canada.

It's not an insignificant part of the economy. I know several people employed by the film industry, have been randomly asked to be an extra in an American TV show, and have multiple times randomly run into film or TV sets walking down the street.

In the UK, there has been a quite conscious effort by successive governments to get the BBC out of London, since it's already our political, economic and cultural capital and there is a desire to spread wealth and cultural relevance to the provinces.

This has lead to things like Media City in Manchester, or Aliens in Cardiff.

And yet they still cast on London demographics...

Some of that has to do with cities that have specialized themselves, either intentionally or out of necessity, in streamlining the permit approval process that legitimate filming companies have to follow. IIRC, New York used to be famously difficult to work with and very little was filmed there for a long time, except guerilla-style.

Want to get a filming permit in L. A.? No problem, contact the department that handles that, fill out the clear application that anticipates your needs, have a decision relatively quickly. Other cities have no process, so prepare to start working individual bureaucrats none of whom want it to be their job.

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