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Features
6 September 2015 2.00 h

Tarragona shoots up in rank

Tarragona has recently created a commission with the aim of making the work of the local Film Office easier in order to boost the shooting of international audio visual projects in the city

The care­fully pre­served Roman her­itage sites in the city cen­tre, the nar­row, wind­ing streets of the Part Alta, the beaches and em­blem­atic sites, such as the Balcó del Mediter­rani, are some of the urban cor­ners that have been the set­ting of many film shoots or pho­tog­ra­phy ses­sions in Tar­rag­ona. The city has now to set it­self the ob­jec­tive of rais­ing its pro­file as a venue for all kinds of audio vi­sual pro­jects, after fours years of growth, thanks to the work done by the Tar­rag­ona Film Of­fice.

As the third Cata­lan city with the most film shoots every year, the city coun­cil has been work­ing on for­mu­las to make the pro­ce­dures even eas­ier for teams of film and pho­tog­ra­phy pro­fes­sion­als with an in­ter­est in shoot­ing in the area. More specif­i­cally, the coun­cil has re­cently ap­proved var­i­ous mea­sures and has cre­ated a spe­cial com­mis­sion with the aim of giv­ing sup­port to the local Tar­rag­ona Film Of­fice, which was cre­ated in 2010 as the main or­gan­ism to at­tract and en­cour­age film and pho­tog­ra­phy pro­duc­tion com­pa­nies to shoot in the area.

Mul­ti­plied by six

In the past five years, the local Tar­rag­ona Film Of­fice has prac­ti­cally man­aged to mul­ti­ply by six the num­ber of pro­duc­tions that have cho­sen the city as the main set­ting for their pro­jects. If in 2010 there were only 19 audio vi­sual pro­duc­tions, last year the num­ber had risen to 101 pro­jects, among them films, pho­tog­ra­phy ses­sions, ad­verts and even var­i­ous tele­vi­sion pro­grammes. This year, the mu­nic­i­pal or­gan­i­sa­tion has kept up the good work done so far, with 52 pro­duc­tions reg­is­tered in only the first half of 2015.

All of these fig­ures have es­tab­lished Tar­rag­ona as the third city in Cat­alo­nia with the most shoots, only sur­passed by Hos­pi­talet de Llo­bre­gat (Barcelonès), where last year 108 pro­duc­tions took place, and Barcelona, which ob­vi­ously out­strips any other venue in the rank­ing, with a total of 2,494 pro­duc­tions.

In fact, Tar­rag­ona has oc­cu­pied this po­si­tion since 2012, when it made the step up from the fifth po­si­tion that it had pre­vi­ously oc­cu­pied in the Cata­lan rank­ing.

A positive impact on tourism

The fact that a particular city has become the setting for an important film project also has clear benefits for the local tourism sector. The settings of productions that, once finished and released, are advertised all over the world also means free publicity for the city, which then ends up having a positive impact on tourism. In fact, an emerging source of revenue for the local tourism industry has been the many visits to the settings of famous film or TV series shoots. According to a recent British study, some 36% of foreign visitors to the city have confirmed that the reason for their visit was because Tarragona had been chosen as the setting for an audio visual production. Only last year, Tarragona was the host to the shooting of five films, two short documentaries, 14 music videos, eight adverts and 19 photography sessions.

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