Primefilmsites is putting picturesque North Bay locales in the spotlight.
Look closely the next time you see a commercial or look at a catalog—the backdrop just might be in your own backyard, perhaps your favorite winery or even the home of someone you know. Perhaps you’ve thought that your house would make a perfect setting for a camera shoot. Who would you call if you wanted your home featured in the next catalog or if you’re looking for a great place to film your next commercial? Joe Madalena of Primefilmsites.com can find what you need.
Primefilmsites touts itself as the largest database of filming locations in Northern California and supplies photogenic locales in Napa, Sonoma and Marin counties for movies, television shows, commercials and still photography (primarily for catalogs).
“I provide the site and anything else they might need,” explains Madalena. “I can also act as a producer for them, in that I can provide the resources they might need other than the site. In other words, sometimes they might need an RV, vintage motorcycles or other vehicles, wardrobe, caterers, animals and other miscellaneous props.”
Essentially, Madalena acts as a liaison between companies that need locations to help advertise their products and property owners in the North Bay who are willing to have their homes and properties act as backdrops to these advertisements. Previously, companies or producers would hire location services or employ a location scout to help them find suitable settings. Now, they can simply contact Primefilmsites, specify what they’re looking for, and Madalena will send sample photos as suitable location suggestions.
Picture perfect
While requests for locations that depict “Wine Country living” are, of course, very common, requirements can be as diverse as a European-style bridge, a Texas-looking ranch, a Mediterranean villa or an upstate New York-style brick home—all, of course, needed locally. Requests can be quite obscure, like one recent appeal by a production company that was searching for a nonfunctioning winery property with empty wine cellars that could be used to shoot a gladiator in a catacomb. The company wanted a weathered brick or stone look and, if that weren’t enough, the rooms needed to have at least an eight-foot-high clearance because the star was six feet tall. Madalena had just the location.
While there are other firms that provide locations and have databases of suitable settings, Madalena differentiates his business by providing hands-on support. Meaning instead of simply passing a client on to the location owner, he’ll help crews with travel plans, be on-hand during shoots to mediate between the production crew and site owners, and help producers locate resources needed for filming. This can sometimes prove difficult, given that catalogs, for example, are generally produced six months prior to publication.
“Sometimes they’ll need a Christmas tree in July,” says Madalena. “The catalogs are done six months in advance of the actual time, so we’re doing Christmas catalogs in the middle of summer. You have to be aware of some of the places to get things off-season.”
It’s this kind of above-and-beyond client service that earned Madalena the California Film Commission’s On Location Award for Location Professional of the Year for Still Photography in 2003.
Ninety-nine percent of Primefilmsites’ business is currently for print ads—mainly catalogs, a $130-billion-per-year industry that’s growing by approximately 16 percent every year. Madalena doubled his business over the last two years by focusing on catalog work. Major clients include Smith & Hawken, an outdoor furnishing and décor company; Soft Surroundings, a women’s clothing and home furnishings company; Pendleton Woolen Mills, a men’s and women’s clothing and home furnishings company; and Gardener’s Supply Company. Because of the diversity in products—primarily clothing, home furnishings and gardening supplies—Primefilmsites enjoys a fairly noncyclical business. Spring and fall are the biggest selling seasons for clothing. Holiday catalogs are produced in the summer.
“It depends on the merchandise,” explains Madalena. “For example, clothing companies are usually very seasonal, so you have spring and fall, mainly, and they’ll do some summer shooting. Whereas the garden equipment will shoot year-round, right through summer.”
When golf just won’t cut it…
Joe Madalena has a long history of working in the production of films, television shows and commercials. After receiving a master’s degree in television and radio from Syracuse University and working in both New York and Seattle on trade shows, Madalena landed in Los Angeles producing commercials. After 14 years in the business, he went to work as a location manager for various movies and television shows including Lost Boys, the original Beethoven, Last Action Hero, the original Children of the Corn, “Matlock” and “Alfred Hitchcock Presents.” In 1994, after 11 years of working for various studios, Madalena retired and moved to the North Bay. When the typical retirement lifestyle just didn’t suit him, however, Madalena decided to combine his knowledge of the advertising and production industries with his personal passion for photography. He started Primefilmsites in 2001.
“It [the business] keeps me sharp and keeps me out there instead of staying home or playing golf,” quips Madalena. “With my background of doing commercial shoots combined with my movie background, I know both mentalities. I can speak their language, even though it’s a different dialect now.”
Even though Madalena doesn’t conduct the actual photography on site—clients bring their own crews—he uses his lifelong hobby and passion for photography to create his website and build a database of more than 9,500 picture files of potential sites to show prospective clients.
What’s the benefit to the location owner?
So why would site owners—usually those with privately owned estates, houses or wineries—volunteer their property and be willing to have production and camera crews and models tread all over their home or land? With still shoot crews typically averaging up to 14 people and movies often employing up to 130 people or more, giving up your home for a few days to a production crew isn’t exactly a peaceful experience. Given that the homes need to be a minimum of 5,000 square feet (and many are much bigger estates with other structures on site and unique architectural features), surely money isn’t the motivating factor.
With sites bringing in up to $2,500 per day, and a typical catalog shoot lasting two to three days, monetary gain does indeed appear to be the driving factor behind site owners who are willing to open their homes to camera crews. In fact, Madalena paid out $200,000 in location fees in 2006.
“With big estates, maintenance fees are very high now, so this can offset their costs,” explains Madalena. “I just worked on a site where the owner put in an access road that cost him $100,000.”
Another major benefit besides net dollars is an interesting, little-known loophole in the tax law that lets a property owner rent out his or her home for up to 14 days per year without having to report the income. There’s no limit on the amount of income earned in this period, as long as the time does not exceed 14 days.
And, of course, bragging rights and an interesting dinner conversation can be seen as a benefit as well.
“[Site owners often enjoy] watching a professional group use their home and then seeing it in a catalog,” says Madalena. Clients often take several copies of the finished catalogs to show their friends and feel honored to have their homes chosen as unique and interesting sites.
Benefits all around
Besides the obvious monetary benefits to the site owners, the benefits and economic impact reach much farther than simply creating more wealth for already prosperous estate owners. Local hotels, restaurants, stores, wineries—the entire tourism industry—all benefit when production crews and talent come to town. One Chevrolet television commercial that Madalena arranged in January 2006 had a crew of 40 people who stayed two nights at the Hilton Garden Inn in Napa. A multimedia ATV (all-terrain vehicle) campaign for French Canadian company Bombardier spent $163,000 in Santa Rosa during an 11-day shoot. From January through November 2006, Primefilmsites’ clients contributed $320,000 to local hotels, $94,000 to local vendors (car rentals, florists and so forth) and $222,000 to food and beverage establishments. All in all, Primefilmsites was responsible for bringing almost $1 million worth of business into the local economy.
“And it’s all clean business,” Madalena adds. “There’s no industrial pollution or anything else, and little wear and tear on the community or environment.”
Not all glitz and glamour
While Madalena clearly enjoys his work in the movie, television production and still photography industry—he says if you’re not having fun, there’s something wrong—the business doesn’t come without its challenges.
“The most difficult part of my job,” says Madalena, “is to get into my clients’ heads and find out what they’re really looking for in terms of a site. The articulation of an idea is very difficult for some people. I love to work with people who know exactly what they want.”
Because Madalena is so well-versed in production due to his past career, he can often resolve this issue by asking the right questions or “backing” clients into the right site by finding out what they don’t want. Besides finding just the right location, Madalena explains that most out-of-town clients want to be as close to the San Francisco or Oakland airports as possible to minimize travel time and costs.
Another difficulty can be quickly sorting through the database of 9,500 picture files to promptly get prospective clients suitable locations. Madalena recounts a recent experience for a television commercial project where the producer was seeking a rolling hills site with bowl-shaped terrain. After sending his prospective client photographs of a suitable location, a Sonoma ranch, the producer booked the location for the following week and Madalena obtained a group rate at a local hotel for the crew as well as recommendations for local talent agents, a lighting technician, a sound mixer and an assistant cameraman.
Upon reviewing the ranch in person, however, Madalena realized the site was unusable for a television commercial using sound, since a new road was being put into the property and a crew would be working on it all week, including the day of production.
“I quickly got into my mental file mode to think through all the files I have on my website for a suitable substitute that was accessible with SUVs and within an hour’s drive from the hotel,” recounts Madalena. “I thought of a ranch in Petaluma, called the owner, and went there directly from the Sonoma ranch. The Petaluma ranch, however, was only accessible with an ATV because of recent rain. I then thought of another Petaluma site with SUV access, called the owner and went there right away. I took new photographs of the location, finished placing those files on my site at 10 p.m. that evening, and emailed the very nervous producer. I told her the files were online and asked her to call me with her evaluation. She called me at 1 p.m. the next day to tell me she and her client ‘loved’ the SUV-accessible site. We both drew a sigh of relief. The shoot went off successfully.”
The future looks bright, with the catalog business growing at a forecasted 16 percent per year. Madalena credits that growth to the Internet, which has made consumers more and more accustomed to buying products without visiting a store.
“Years ago, just before the dot-com bust, everyone was overestimating the growth [of Internet and catalog sales],” says Madalena. “Now it’s come to fruition; it’s really taking off and is much more stable.”
What about your home?
Think your home would be perfect for the next Pottery Barn catalog shoot? Madalena says he’s always looking for sites to add to his database. Appropriate homes need to be located in the North Bay, have a minimum of 5,000 square feet and offer a lot of light with many windows and high ceilings. The larger the surrounding property, the more structures there are on the property and the more interesting the layout, the more time production crews will spend on the property—meaning higher revenues for the site owner. Also, the more photogenic and unique the site or home is, the more likely it will be chosen.
“It’s really the extensiveness of the property, in terms of both the interior and the exterior,” says Madalena of the criteria he looks for in a potential site. “And the look, the one-of-a-kind authentic look…in other words, I’m looking for houses that have soul. I can tell immediately when I walk into a house whether it has soul or not. It’s very difficult to put into words.”
