Lights... camera... BIKE RIDE! Hollywood movie edition
First part of an ongoing series
Not too long ago Disney wrapped the first season of National Treasure: Edge of History. Baton Rouge is so prominently featured in the series it’s more like a character than a location. And many of those shoots happened around Downtown East. That inspired the idea of a bike ride highlighting movies that were filmed here. But which ones should be highlighted? There have been so many!
This is the first in an ongoing series of rides that will explore the film industry in Baton Rouge, as well as in Louisiana. To kick things off, let’s start with an overview.
Over 1,000 productions have been filmed in the Bayou State over the last decade. In fact, at one point in time Louisiana was outpacing some of the largest players in the country. Much of that was due to tax credits, which were established in 1992 and then largely revamped in 2017.
For the Greater Baton Rouge area, more than $200 million has been spent on film production over the last five years, according to executive director of the Baton Rouge Film Commission, Katie Pryor.
The Baton Rouge Film Commission is relatively new. It was founded in 2006 and was a big priority for then Mayor-President Kip Holden. Film projects were already utilizing the state’s tax credits, but most of that was going to New Orleans. Holden, inspired during a trip to a film set in California, realized how much money was being left on the table.
"When you go behind the scenes and you look at the number of employees, there are maybe 300 to 400 working on just one set," he said in an article published by The Advocate. "It's very labor-intensive."
Around the time Holden began working on establishing the film commission, several large projects had been completed in the Capitol City; “The Dukes of Hazzard,” “All the King’s Men” and “The Reaping.”
While the shooting happened here, all the post-production work was being done in California and New York. And that’s where we were missing out.
Throughout this series of bike rides, we will explore the full magnitude of the film industry and the infrastructure needed to make a city a viable place for productions. Each ride will also feature different productions that have filmed here, specifically in the downtown/mid city area. Of course there are many other fantastic locations throughout the parish, and the state, that have been featured, but this is a bike ride, folks! We can only go so far in two hours.
If you haven’t joined us yet for a ride, we meet every Monday at 6 p.m. at the Electric Depot. You can find out the topics of each ride every Monday morning on the Downtown East Facebook Group, and of course I’ll be sending out little love notes here on Substack as well.
Here are the films featured during the Monday, March 27 ride
“National Treasure: Edge of History,” 2022
As mentioned earlier, this film so prominently features Baton Rouge it could have been produced by Visit Baton Rouge. It wasn’t, but it totally could have and it would have been a justifiable expense.
Unlike the two other, this is a television series. The entire first season aired on Disney+, which is really a sign of the development happening within the film industry.
Streaming is the preferred way to watch a movie these days, but if your goal is to keep people on your platform, a series is going to do a better job of that than a single movie. Bing watching an entire series (I literally did it this weekend) has replaced going to the movie theater and spending too much money on junk food while missing out on the entire reason for sitting through The Sixth Sense because you went to the bathroom (happened to my boyfriend at the time).
The streaming series is based on Disney’s “National Treasure” films. A third film is also in the works and it is possible they could overlap the tv series characters in the third film, which will again feature Nicholas Cage.
Whether or not the series will get a second season is also up for debate. The first season could continue on to another season, but it could also be a standalone. At this time, no word has been given as to whether or not the show will return, so who knows if they will return here or branch out to a new location.
This scene was filmed in downtown Baton Rouge in the median across from the courthouse.
“Sex, Lies, and Videotape,” 1989
No matter how many big movies have been filmed here, when mention of the film industry in Baton Rouge comes up, people will always mention “Sex, Lies, and Videotape,” the film that launched Steven Soderbergh’s career.
Although not born in Baton Rouge, Soderbergh’s family relocated here when he was very young. His father got a job at LSU in the dean of the College of Education. When Steven turned 15-years-old, his father enrolled him in a film animation class during the summer of 1977. 11 years later, he wrote and directed and filmed Sex, Lies and Video Tape.
“Well, I guess it’s all downhill from here,” the Associated Press quoted Soderberg telling the festival crowd in accepting his award during the 42nd Cannes International Film Festival.
But it wasn’t. From there Soderbergh went on to direct “Out of Sight,” which was also filmed in Baton Rouge and his two most famous films, “Erin Brockovich (2000)” and Traffic (2000)
Steven Soderbergh and Peter Gallagher on the set of sex, lies, and videotape, 1989. Production still photographer: Diana Gary © Miramax Films, Outlaw Productions, Virgin
“Pitch Perfect 1 & 2,” 2012, 1015
“Pitch Perfect” is a fun series of comedies featuring epic musical numbers that became a “sleeper hit” after it debuted in October 2012.
The story is about a college all-girl singing group called The Bellas and it’s set at the fictional Barden University, for which LSU is utilized as its beautiful stand-in. Additional locations are also seen throughout the film, such as the Old Governor’s Mansion doubled as the Barden University dean’s office, and the gymnasium at Baton Rouge High.
Much like “Sex, Lies, and Videotape,” the low budget film exceeded expectations and was a huge win for the first-time-feature-film director Jason Moore. In fact, it grossed over six times its budget, which spawned two more films.
In Pitch Perfect 2, was also filmed in Baton Rouge. It was released in 2015. The third film, however, was filmed in Atlanta. Louisiana has been losing out to many film projects. The state started pushing hard in 2008 with a generous tax incentive program. Much of that was due to the movie “Ray” being filmed in Louisiana even though the film was about Ray Charles, a Georgia native.
The cast of Pitch Perfect making their way across LSU’s campus.
Sources used for this story:
https://www.inregister.com/features/baton-rouge-filmed-movies
https://screenrant.com/pitch-perfect-2-movie-where-filmed-locations/
Very cool idea
Thanks, that was interesting. Guess what, I was in one of Stephen's BR films. I was a maid that answered the door and I believe I even had a line or two. But when I went to see the film, some years later, I never saw that scene. The end of my film career but it was a fun experience.