Shooting for Philadelphia

To find the set of Kevin Bacon’s latest movie, “The Woodsman,” drive past the mothballed World War II naval vessels, turn left on Kitty Hawk Avenue and stop at Building 11. Once inside the abandoned structure, pass through the room with the holding cells, go through the door marked “Department of Defense Police,” and there you’ll find Bacon, David Alan Grier and the rapper Eve rehearsing a scene for this drama about an ex-con pedophile trying to turn his life around.

This is not exactly your typical Hollywood filming experience. “The Woodsman” is shooting scenes on the grounds of the now mostly deserted Philadelphia Navy Yard, and Building 11, which once housed Defense Department, FBI and naval police offices, is serving as a set. It isn’t an optimal location -- outside, jets landing at Philadelphia International Airport pass just a few hundred feet overhead -- but hey, you make do when you’re filming in a city without a conventional sound stage.

Besides, the absence of a Los Angeles- or New York-like moviemaking infrastructure hasn’t stopped Philly from enjoying a production boom the likes of which it has never seen before.

In the past year alone, Philly’s streets have played host to the CBS series “Hack,” Kevin Smith’s “Jersey Girl,” “The Italian Job” and several indie productions. Lee Daniels, who is producing “The Woodsman” and also produced “Monster’s Ball,” plans to film “Shadow Boxer,” starring Anjelica Huston and Wes Bentley, here this summer. The upcoming CBS series “Cold Case” will do some shooting in town. And M. Night Shyamalan, a resident who has filmed “The Sixth Sense,” “Unbreakable” and “Signs” in the area, is in pre-production on “The Woods,” a thriller starring Adrien Brody and Sigourney Weaver that will be made locally. The city will also be getting some of “National Treasure,” a new Nicolas Cage vehicle.

“Philadelphia has a vibe -- it doesn’t feel like Boston or New York,” says Bacon, a Philly native. “There are a tremendous amount of looks you can get. You have a downtown that feels like an urban center, and you’re not gonna find as many diverse working-class neighborhoods” elsewhere. And the country, he notes, is only 40 minutes away.

This is all good news for a city whose cinematic image is still defined by the gritty, working-class feel of “Rocky” -- which wasn’t even shot here in its entirety. In fact, Jonathan Demme’s 1992 “Philadelphia” was a studio-film rarity for being completely shot in this city of 1.5 million. Since then, Philly has played host to 50 feature films, 35 made entirely in the region, 20 of them studio productions, including Terry Gilliam’s “Twelve Monkeys” and Demme’s “Beloved.”

A mid-Atlantic Toronto?

That may sound like chump change compared with such big production centers as New York or L.A., but in the world of second-tier locations, Philly is doing just fine. And if Sharon Pinkenson, executive director of the Greater Philadelphia Film Office, has her way, the city will overshadow Toronto as a cheap place to shoot with wildly varying locations, experienced crews and top-of-the-line production facilities.

“All film commissions are responsible for marketing their location, and all of them on some level get involved in the details of coordinating production,” says Pinkenson, a former costume designer. “But we’re also like having a free producer. Like if you need an apartment for Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick, or crew housing, we have a person in the office dedicated just to housing. But we’re also involved in the big picture -- my goal is to turn Philadelphia and Pennsylvania into the next Toronto by creating government incentives that will lure production.”

As with many regional film commissions, Pinkenson’s will go the extra yard to attract production. Like the time a producer demanded tee time at an exclusive golf club. Pinkenson arranged it. Or when the 1998 Denzel Washington film “Fallen” was looking for a specific location that could not be found in the Philadelphia area but did exist near Atlantic City, N.J. To avoid losing the entire shoot to Chicago, Pinkenson told the producers about it, and most of “Fallen” was made in Philly.

But it’s not just the aggressiveness of the film office that keeps luring production to Philly. Filmmakers unanimously agree that the unions are cooperative, and the city has an unexploited freshness. “Philly just looks different; it hasn’t been overshot,” says “Hack” producer Nan Bernstein. “There’s a history there that’s still apparent.”

“We have neighborhoods where you can turn the camera 360 degrees and get everything from pre-Revolutionary housing to Victorian right up to modern skyscrapers,” Pinkenson says.

Still, Philly has to deal with its nearness to New York -- less than 100 miles away -- which is both a blessing and a curse. A curse because Gotham is the 500-pound gorilla Philly will never overshadow. But, says Shyamalan, who processes his films in the Big Apple and uses some crew from there, “working out of Philly is in a way like working in a suburb of New York. You also get lower production costs in Philadelphia. And the people here aren’t jaded; they’re not shouting out the windows at you to ‘turn off those lights!’ ”

“The hospitality in the city is greater, because there’s not as much production,” adds Nick Stagliano, who recently shot the indie film “The 24th Day,” with James Marsden, in the city. “The actors loved it. You get a little more of the homey, one-on-one treatment.”

More sound stages needed

But there’s also a downside that the city is trying hard to overcome. First and foremost is the lack of sound-stage space. In addition to the abandoned Navy Yard buildings, the city has converted the Civic Center, a cavernous, 1930s structure that used to hold everything from track meets to political conventions, into a production facility. Shyamalan shot parts of “The Sixth Sense” and “Unbreakable” here, and although adequate, it is no one’s idea of a top-of-the-line production facility. “The city has a lot of small studios where they can shoot industrials or commercials,” Stagliano says, “but if they get overbooked, you’d be hard-pressed to shoot a major feature there.”

Cameras have to be rented out of New York, and film processing is also done there. Local crews are experienced, but there isn’t enough depth to sustain several productions at once. “If I’m shooting and there’s another big film in town, the city will be tapped out” in terms of crew, Shyamalan says.

Pinkenson says the city is committed to building a full-service studio complex, with a location to be chosen by year’s end. She also notes that with NFL Films’ new 200,000-square-foot production facility in nearby Mount Laurel, N.J., film companies can now process their dailies locally.

Still, there’s the fear that Philly, like Pittsburgh and Baltimore before it, is just the Filmland flavor of the month. “The industry has cycles,” says “Hack’s” Bernstein. “For a city like Philadelphia, it takes a balance of the unions staying levelheaded, and the city and producers keeping the talks flowing. The minute one of those things gets out of balance, people will say ‘let’s move.’ ”

But the locals are nothing if not optimistic. Shyamalan, who says he shoots here because “it makes me comfortable to create a lifestyle where you’re home for dinner,” believes that once a sound-stage facility is built, production and crews will flock to the city. He feels Philly’s relaxed lifestyle and cheaper costs -- including housing prices that are among the lowest in the Northeast -- will create an enticing atmosphere for film industry professionals to settle down in. The city’s proximity to the Big Apple will only be a plus, he adds.

“If we had a permanent structure for movies, people would move here,” he says. “There’s so much film production 90 miles up the road, and people are looking to make films cheaper on the East Coast. It’s not like we want to go to Toronto. We could get the benefit of being so close to New York. I bet we could be this giant source of film production.”