The Hollywood of the High Desert : Production: The Antelope Valley Film Commission attracts crews even though it lacks funds and is largely a one-woman operation. The region’s varied landscape helps the cause.

ATV movie about Rock Hudson needed barren terrain to resemble the Texas oil country in Hudson’s classic film “Giant.”

The NBC series “Quantum Leap” needed a military setting in which to re-create the exploits of the 1950s test pilots immortalized in “The Right Stuff.”

A science fiction movie titled “Circuitry Man,” needed two dozen motorcyclists to portray marauding villains in a futuristic wasteland.

In each case, the folks from Hollywood found what they needed in the high desert region 60 miles northeast of Los Angeles--with a little help from the Antelope Valley Film Commission.

Though it assists the high-profile entertainment industry, the Antelope Valley Film Commission is a decidedly low-profile organization. It operates on a budget of next to nothing. Its principal member runs the organization out of the kitchen and dining room of her modest Lancaster home.

Yet within the industry, the Antelope Valley Film Commission gets high marks for steering producers to scenic locations and rounding up extras who are willing to wear outdated haircuts and odd costumes.

“They provided assistance even during pre-production,” said “Circuitry Man” producer Steven Reich of Universal City-based I.R.S. Media.

Last June the commission helped put the director of “Circuitry Man” in local newspapers and on a cable television news program, with a plea for about two dozen “ninja motorcycle riders” to appear in the film.

Anthony Bowers, a Universal Studios location manager for “Quantum Leap,” said “You would never know” that the commission relies on volunteer work instead of paid work.

But he added, “It would be great to see them have a budget so they could compete with the other film commissions that are just literally bombarding us with requests to come to their area to film. The economic benefits are well-proven.”

Filming in the Antelope Valley is on the increase, industry representatives say. Traffic problems, neighborhood complaints and smog-blemished skies are making location filming in Los Angeles more difficult. In contrast, the Lancaster-Palmdale area generally has clear skies, plenty of parking, and remote roads that can be closed to accommodate filming.

The region also has a varied landscape, ranging from snow-capped mountains to flat, arid terrain dotted with Joshua trees.

In September, the makers of the Rock Hudson film used rolling desert land at Hi Vista, about 20 miles east of Lancaster, as a stand-in for Texas. For “Quantum Leap,” the filmmakers shot jets at Mojave Airport, just over the Kern County line, and captured other scenes at nearby Edwards Air Force Base. The crew also spruced up a defunct tavern near Lancaster for exterior shots of the test pilots’ favorite watering hole.

This fall, director Alan Parker (“Midnight Express,” “Mississippi Burning”) has been in the Palmdale area, filming portions of “Come See the Paradise.” The set has been closed, but the film stars Dennis Quaid and reportedly concerns Japanese-Americans who were placed in internment camps during World War II.

Pete Eskis, manager of the California Employment Development Office in Lancaster, said about a dozen local workers were hired to build internment camp barracks. And the filmmakers put out a casting call for Japanese-American extras in September.”

The Antelope Valley’s production boom means the phone at Stephanie Abrahamson’s house is rarely quiet. As the local commission’s lone full-time volunteer, Abrahamson is the one who shows four photo albums of Antelope Valley scenes to location scouts and helps crew members find local building supplies and overnight accommodations. Abrahamson also contacts the local news media when producers need extras.

“It’s booming, absolutely booming,” Abrahamson said. “Music videos. Commercials. Still (photography) shoots. Features. TV episodes.

“I like to think that means we’ve done a good job. But I know it also means that things in Los Angeles are getting worse. It’s not just that this is such a terrific place. It is because we’re so close to Los Angeles that we could have a minimum of five or six (location) scouts driving around.”

She said the scouts are lured by the region’s open spaces, its roads that lack telephone poles or painted lines, and its ranches, rural gas stations and diners. “They like what they can’t get in the middle of downtown Los Angeles.”

Abrahamson’s involvement with the film commission did not spring from a lifelong desire to meet movie stars. Her ties to the industry were born out of a need to fill rooms at a Holiday Inn in Palmdale. While working as its sales director in 1984, she would try to find film crews shooting in the area and persuade them to check in.

Abrahamson said her early successes included crews from “Fletch,” starring Chevy Chase, and the TV series “Airwolf.” Hoping to market the area to other producers, she began taking photographs, including “Airwolf” scenes at El Mirage.

“About a week later,” she recalled, “a company from Ireland came in, and they wanted a dry lake bed with deep cracks.”

She showed the “Airwolf” photos, and the Irish visitors said the location was perfect.

By 1986, Abrahamson left the Holiday Inn but continued working with local business leaders to set up a film commission. The group sought funding from the cities of Palmdale and Lancaster but was unsuccessful.

Since then, Abrahamson has been working harder to document the amount of filming that takes place in the region and its impact on the local economy. The Antelope Valley Film Commission, governed by a volunteer board of directors, was incorporated as a nonprofit group in 1988. It is one of 52 promotional groups statewide sanctioned by the California Film Commission.

Film commission board members recently asked Palmdale and Lancaster officials again for funding. Under three options with varying service levels, the commission’s annual budget would be $114,000 to $216,000. Proponents say the commission should be funded out of bed taxes the two cities collect from local hotels--the chief beneficiary of film company visits. They also argue that promoting local film production will boost local bed and sales tax revenue, so the commission will pay for itself.

City officials, concerned that sharing tax revenue with one nonprofit group will open a floodgate of similar requests, are still studying the request.

To bolster the group’s arguments, Abrahamson has compiled figures on how much money film makers spend in the community. She calculated that the four days of “Circuitry Man” filming generated $30,865 for the local economy, including a $9,000 hotel bill and the $85-per-day paid to each motorcycle riding extra.

Another theatrical feature, “Sam’s Spa’s,” agreed to film in the Antelope Valley after Abrahamson found the producers a rundown mobile home park in Rosamond as a setting. The crew filmed about five weeks last summer in the region and ran up a hotel bill of $40,000. The producers also spent money to fix up the mobile home park. Overall, the film spent $226,580 in the region, Abrahamson said.

“Quantum Leap” location manager Bowers said his project required more than 200 Lancaster-Palmdale area hotel rooms at one point. He estimated his company spent at least $150,000 during its 15 days of shooting.

“It has a tremendous economic impact to the benefit of both of those cities,” said Frank W. Pierson, director of Los Angeles County’s Office of Motion Picture and Television Development. “Far more than you’d ever guess if you just counted the number of permits for filming in the cities.”

If the cities opt to fund the commission, Abrahamson’s would be one of two paid staff positions. Under California Film Commission affiliate rules, she can now ask a film company to reimburse expenses she incurs, but she cannot charge them a fee for her services. She earns some funds through an advertising flyer given to film crews, by presenting seminars to help local hotels attract Hollywood guests and by selling the hotels a mailing list of film industry contacts.

But Abrahamson has no other full-time employment, and her patience is wearing thin. “I can’t continue to do this in this way,” she said. “This film commission can’t go on operating on nothing. We get no respect. We get no money. We get nothing.”

Lisa Rawlins, director of the California Film Commission, said most of the 52 members of FLICS, Film Liaisons in California Statewide, receive public funding to cover the costs of at least a part-time film commissioner.

“However, in the Antelope Valley, we have Stephanie Abrahamson who does it full-time, and she’s a real dynamo,” Rawlins said. “In fact, I’d put her in the top five statewide in terms of her aggressiveness and the development of her program, and how she’s been able to satisfy the requests as they’ve come in.”

A study prepared for Rawlins’ commission found that California is losing about $3 billion a year to other states in runaway production. The same study concluded that the state could recover $750 million of that annually by streamlining its permits, promoting California locations more aggressively and other steps.

By marketing its proximity to the Los Angeles studios and its rugged terrain, the Antelope Valley could lure film dollars that might otherwise go to Arizona and Texas, Rawlins said.