On location: how to get a piece of the action.

• Author: Smith, Cheryl
• Position: Film productions in Utah generate money for local businesses - Includes personal narrative of motion picture double for Suzanne Pleshette

On Location How to Get a Piece of the Action

It's 5:30 a.m. in Arches National Park in southeastern Utah. For a few moments the scene looks wild and primordial as the rising sun chases wild shadows across the red towers of the desert. A lizard scurries over a boulder; a jack rabbit sits as though frozen, his ears tuned, his nose quivering at the distant sound of human voices. He bolts. People emerge from trailers. Trucks and jeeps arrive at the scene, transporting the cast and crew from nearby Moab, where they've rented homes. (Some homeowners are planning some great vacations and big purchases they've been putting off.) A lighting technician yawns and stretches, stiff from last night's drive from Provo where he lives. Back in Moab, the film commission is working with a school principal to clear one part of the local high school for a few hours. In Salt Lake City, a climatologist at Weather Bank is updating a 30-day forecast to make sure it won't rain on this parade.

Utah: Hollywood's Backlot

When movie crews come to Utah, their activities impact all types of local businesses - including sound studios and screening facilities, animation and graphic artists, office suppliers and hardware stores, furniture and equipment rental companies.

The current filming of the television series "The Boys of Twilight" in and around Park City spends approximately $500,000 per episode in the community, according to the Park City Film Commission. Last December the production of "A Midnight Clear" spent $2 million in the state in less than four months.

When the producers of "Boys of Twilight" learned of the fundraising efforts to preserve and maintain a local historic cemetery where they were filming, they offered to contribute financially to the cause. The crew also rented a vacant lot to park their equipment trailers and vans.

Location scouts may visit an area for a few days, spending thousands of dollars on hotel rooms, car and helicopter rentals, skiing, or shopping. The final project may never come to town, even though much money was spent in Utah.

What They Need Locally

The film's producer usually brings a core group of people including the director, director of photography, unit production manager, gaffer (lighting director), and possibly a production accountant. The gaffer, in turn, will choose who he wants to provide lighting and grip equipment. The unit production manager, then searches locally for the rest of the crew, including grips, administrative people, script coordinators, electricians, caterers, set decorators and builders, prop managers, and local actors and extras.

The Utah Film Commission monitors the impact filmmaking has on Utah's economy. Several years ago, it was common for the production companies to hire only 20 percent of their crews locally. "We're striving to get more and more people hired within...