A massive indoor water tank for filmmakers to shoot underwater shots, said to be among only three in North America, will become part of a North Carolina studio that also will soon include the largest sound stage built east of California.
Forced inside by inclement weather, EUE/Screen Gems Ltd. officials held a groundbreaking ceremony Thursday to discuss the stage and the 283,000-gallon tank, which they say already attracts six availability inquiries a month.
By next spring, the studio will be home to a 37,500-square-foot, no-column sound stage, the 10th on the 50-acre lot.
Filmmakers use the indoor tanks to shoot everything from ocean to river scenes.
“The dream stage is really a dream come true for North Carolina,” said Gov. Mike Easley, who directed the show, advising others to turn their gold shovels.
“I do this a lot,” Easley said to Chris Cooney, president of EUE/Screen Gems, and others. “One, two three … action.”
The stage and 60-foot-by-60-foot indoor water tank will “fill a void that the major Hollywood studios and the best international producers and directors have demanded,” said Bill Vassar, executive vice president of the Wilmington studio.
“The … stage will accommodate the almost daily advances in technology for special effects and the countless emerging production platforms,” he said. “Wilmington is on the verge of becoming one of he major film production centers in the world.”
EUE/Screen Gems researched film industry needs for three years before deciding on what the studio calls a dream stage and the tank. The other indoor tanks at Universal and Warner Brothers in Los Angeles are typically reserved for productions by those studios, Vassar said.
He said studio reaction in California last week was positive and that filming is much less expensive in North Carolina than Los Angeles.
Also scheduled for Thursday is the second North Carolina screening of “Nights in Rodanthe,” which stars Richard Gere and Diane Lane. The movie, which involves a surgeon, a separated wife and an approaching hurricane, seems determined to attract storms.
A system that eventually became subtropical storm Andrea interrupted filming in May 2007, and on Thursday, high winds and heavy rain were hitting the coast. Despite the weather, locals packed a screening held Wednesday in Kill Devil Hills, said Carolyn McCormick, managing director of the Outer Banks Visitors Bureau.
Jackie Fearing, 54, of Kitty Hawk, and her husband, Charles, 61, were extras in the movie, appearing during filming of the ferry scene. “Tonight we’ll find out if they cut us or kept us,” Jackie Fearing said. “Even if they did cut us, we’re still excited about seeing it tonight.”
The scene was supposed to involve a sunny day, but a nor’easter was at sea, so the couple spent much of their time waiting for better weather. Finally, the crew set up bright lights to get the look they wanted, she said.
The weather was cold and windy, and the extras spent their day “going back and forth, back and forth” on the ferry between Hatteras and Ocracoke, she said.
Cooney and others used the day to push for film incentives higher than North Carolina’s current 15 percent, and Sen. Julia Boseman, D-New Hanover, said legislators will discuss it when they reconvene in January.
“We really believe that this industry needs a shot in the arm – a bigger facility to house larger-scale productions or we’re going to lose them to the states that have the tax incentives ready to go,” Cooney said in an interview. “And we’ll do our part, and we would just love the state to step up and do its part to be competitive.”
Easley, meanwhile, indicated he’s looking toward a career in film after his second term in office ends in January.
“I’m looking forward to learning more about this industry when I get out of office,” he s aid.
“So if you’ve got a typecast situation for a village idiot or the town drunk like Otis Campbell in Andy Griffith or someone who can wreck a race car, I’m your guy,” he added in a veiled reference to his racing skills.
In 2003, he slammed a stock car into a wall at 120 mph at Lowe’s Motor Speedway near Charlotte; and in 2005, he ran a stock car up a curb and just missed a parked car and a utility pole. He left both accidents unscathed, saying only his ego was hurt.
Apple and Google Face UK Investigation Into Mobile Browser Dominance
Apple and Google aren't giving consumers a genuine choice of mobile web browsers, a British watchdog said Friday in a report that recommends they face an investigation under new U.K. digital rules taking effect next year.
The Competition and Markets Authority took aim at Apple, saying the iPhone maker's tactics hold back innovation by stopping rivals from giving users new features like faster webpage loading. Apple does this by restricting progressive web apps, which don't need to be downloaded from an app store and aren't subject to app store commissions, the report said.
"This technology is not able to fully take off on iOS devices," the watchdog said in a provisional report on its investigation into mobile browsers that it opened after an initial study concluded that Apple and Google effectively have a chokehold on "mobile ecosystems."
The CMA's report also found that Apple and Google manipulate the choices given to mobile phone users to make their own browsers "the clearest or easiest option."
And it said that the a revenue-sharing deal between the two U.S. Big Tech companies "significantly reduces their financial incentives" to compete in mobile browsers on Apple's iOS operating system for iPhones.
Both companies said they will "engage constructively" with the CMA.
Apple said it disagreed with the findings and said it was concerned that the recommendations would undermine user privacy and security.
Google said the openness of its Android mobile operating system "has helped to expand choice, reduce prices and democratize access to smartphones and apps" and that it's "committed to open platforms that empower consumers."
It's the latest move by regulators on both sides of the Atlantic to crack down on the... Read More