Tuesday, January 16, 2007

Yucaipa in the Movies?

The Inland Empire Film Commission promotes what they call "Hollywood's Largest Backlot!" In addition to a directory of local services (hotels, equipment rental, animal trainers and more) and information about getting permits, it has a photo database of potential shooting locations. (NOTE: since I accessed the site last, they added a requirement for free registration)

Not too many Yucaipa locations made the database, but here is what they found promotion-worthy:

Yucaipa
Oak Glen
Loch Leven Summer Camp and Conference Center (Mentone)
The January edition of their newsletter notes that the soon-to-be-released horror movie, Neowolf:The Band From Hell ("Two young lovers face an ancient evil when a strange rock band comes to town.") was filmed, in part, in Yucaipa. At least one of the local shoots was at Crafton Hills College:
Crafton Hills College, a beautiful little-known tree dotted campus in Yucaipa on the edge of the San Bernardino mountains off Interstate 10 recently had sightings of werewolves on the campus and a missing student was reportedly killed in the hills nearby, although not enough of the body was left for positive identification. The mauling was reported by another student, claiming to be a friend of the missing boy, as an attack by werewolves. Police are investigating the incident with agencies of the National Forest Service.
[snip]
We're a good old all-American God-fearing community here and don't get much call to investigate reports of werewolves," said one local police official who requested not to be identified. "Coyotes and mountain lions will attack a hiker from time to time, sure, but we just don't welcome the spawn of evil in our city."
I'll be on the lookout for werewolves, for sure.

According to the IMDb, several other movies used locations in Yucaipa:
  • Son Up (2005): Chapman University student Andrew Shearer won Best Student Film at Cinequest and made the regional finals in the Student Academy Awards for this short drama.
    After spending a few months writing the script, it was time to scout locations which add a moody atmosphere to the film. He decided to shoot in Yucaipa/Calimesa, the small California towns located 60 miles from LA which he had used for his previous film The Way of Dale. "Every Saturday or Sunday, I'd drive out there and just drive around off a few exits from the 10 freeway until I found something that spoke to a certain scene in the film," said Andrew. "Then, I started taking my DP, Marc Levy, out there with me and we'd take pictures. We went every weekend, for nearly two months before the shoot. Sometimes it's overwhelming to decide how to block scenes when you're in wide open spaces."
  • The The Way of Dale (2004): Another short drama by Andrew Shearer, that won the Audience Award at the Asheville Film Festival.
  • Princess and the Pea (2001) : An "old west" version of this fairy tale produced in IMAX format by USC film students. It was also filmed in Goblin Valley State Park, Utah.
  • The Taste of Pomegranate (1998): apparently a romance.
  • Satellites and You (1989): This short documentary features "Issac Newton traveling the world, explaining the benefits of satellites for visitors to Kennedy Space Center." At least one scene takes place in an apple orchard - perhaps that was filmed in Oak Glen?
I may try to find a copy of one of these, just to try to spot familiar locations.

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