One of the reasons that Seoul remains a relatively unvisited tourist estination despite its rapid rise to prominence over the past few decades is because most people never get to see what the city is like unless they actually come here.
To overcome such an obstacle, the capital city last year launched the "Seoul Location Incentive Program", a plan to encourage the creation of foreign movies and so on right here in the city by partially paying for expenses.
Seoul is having some success in attracting films and documentaries that are jointly produced by Koreans and visitors. This is partly thanks to the heightened interest in Korean films abroad which began around 2003-2004.
"Film producers in countries like Japan, Hong Kong and India has been showing some interest in filming in Korea. Several films from Japan have even shot scenes in other regions like Busan", said Alex Seo, head of the Planning Team at Seoul Film Commission (Open the link), in her interview with the Korean Overseas Information Service.
Overseas filmmakers who decide to use Seoul as a setting for a movie can receive up to 25 percent of the production cost, or $100,000 in cash, according to the Commission, in charge of receiving online applications. Seoul has allotted 500 million won to these incentives alone. This also covers additional expenses to cover flights and lodgings for film staff coming to Korea to check out filming locations.
Some of the films the Commission has attracted include Treeless Mountain by Soanbrad Inc.(USA), about a five-year old Korean girl's journey to maturity, set in Busan in the 1970s. Other American independent films have also been discussed.
"Most American films that will be filmed in Seoul are indie movies, but on the scale and expense of an average Korean movie, so it should not be underestimated", Seo said. "Stories mostly revolve around Korean adoptees".
The most common beneficiary of Seoul's incentive program are films co-produced by Korea and Japan. Programs like news, sports or films less than 60 minutes in length are excluded from the incentive program, however.
Korea's award winning director Kim Ki-duk shot "Sad Dream", a joint production with Japan, which depicts a love story between Korean man and a Japanese woman.
National Geographic Channel and the Korean Broadcasting Institute also joined hands to produce three documentaries on the pacer of life in Seoul; "Traffic in Seoul", "Quick, quick Korea" and "Digital Korean".
The prospects look better down the road as the Commission late last year clinched a deal to assist the filming of a new Hollywood movie by Fox Atomic, an affiliate of 20th Century Fox.
The Korean-American film producer Roy Lee, who came to check out the city last November, revealed that some 80 percent of the shooting will take place in Seoul for a movie inspired by the earlier film "Black Rain (1989) by director Ridley Scott. If all goes well, this would be
the first blockbuster movie to be shot in Seoul.
"I was particularly impressed with N Seoul Tower, where you can see the whole of Seoul", Lee was quoted as saying in the daily Chosun Ilbo newspaper upon his visit to Korea last November.
The director reportedly visited various sites in Seoul including Bukcheon Hanok Village and Nakwon musical instrument market in Jongno-gu in downtown Seoul before making up his mind. It is told the final clincher was the "better production value" Lee saw in Seoul than Shanghai or Japan.
Other films under discussion -- as there are so many variables in the movie industry -- include S(e)oul Station, a horror thriller by Luca Production (USA), The Hanji Box, a melodrama by Fire Circle Films LLC and A Brand-New Life, a drama by Gloria Films (France).
Two other Japanese films by Be-Wild Productions and AtRandom Inc, one an action-melodrama and one, a musical drama are also being mulled. "Vertigo Entertainment, which intends to re-make Roman Polanski's Frantic, is also considering shooting in Seoul and several other documentaries too", Seo also added she almost succeeded in attracting people from Bollywood last year. "Indians like Seoul's atmosphere because it is so different from their home country. But in the end the staff couldn't film because of visa problems".
To learn more about the incentive program please visit Open the link or contact Mark Siegmund, Phone: +82 2 777 7092, Fax: +82 2 777 7097, email: mark@seoulfc.or.kr
By Kim Hee-sung
Korea.net staff writer
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