London Calling (2024)

London Calling (2024)

The film captures the tale of Josh Duhamel, a contract killer who takes out the family member of Aidan Gillen, a London crime lord. The story also includes a lot of chasing around the US and was filmed by Canadian director Allan Ungar and produced by London Calling, who goes to Los Angeles in search of shelter. However, instead of Los Angeles, it would have made a lot more sense to set London as the second city after the crime was committed, Los Angeles is a hassle of a city to film due to the lack of permits. Nathan Klingher, a partner in the production of Short Porch Pictures, proposed to move filming to South Africa where foreign film gets a 30% rebate. London Calling had to be rushed hence there was no such South African co-production that would have allowed them to receive a 40% rebate. Ungar went to multiple locations and filmed in South Africa, Cape Town, and California looking for a location that would capture the backdrop of London.

Mr. Ungar comments, ‘As we were working out of the business center in Cape Town, there were plenty of street corners that had such kind of architecture that was spot on with the kind of London we were looking for’.

In December 2023, London Calling traveled to South Africa for 26 days of shooting, with the assistance of its Johannesburg co-producer Mannequin Films who made sure to facilitate the image of a bustling metropolis while also providing the requisite permits. ‘We are a little different to your average diverse production service company in that we are producers also’ said Delon Bakker who is the co-executive of Mannequin. ‘Kyle Ambrose [mannequins co-executive] looks after all the physical production here in South Africa, so I deal with the initial stages of all those projects that are intending to come to South Africa’, he added. 

The Mannequin team helped Ungar and his team look for highways that would enable them to replicate the California feel, specifically the Pacific Coast Highway. The director has accepted that he did not see the South African alternative at first. As he describes: ‘The freeways here [in California] are just so much more extensive and more precise.’ However the team found a decommissioned freeway located within a mountain range that looked a lot like California, this was often used as a film set and they were able to adapt this into their film.

“We brought all the decals and signage correcting all the lanes to make the highway appear wider than it actually was as we were working on the 405,” explains Ungar and adds that it was indeed a difficult project. The Southern province of Los Angeles features a distinctive electric fencing architecture in the Constantia region of Hitaka alongside South African features however Durbanville, Melkbosstrand, and Simonstown were purely architectural. “I feel like I’m starting to have a track record as the most absurd cheater that has existed,” asserts Ungar. In the film Bandit which was filmed in Georgia, the dude was also starring, and a Canadian film was shot. So the gentleman is the Bandit now.

Ugar further claims that Ungar believes was “super easy” to find a desert outside of Cape Town to replace with California’s dry landscape. He gives credit to his South African crews for turning up to work throughout the filming.

“About continuous versus straight days which was something that I had to learn about, the interesting thing [in South Africa] is,” he elucidates. “They also do a lot of 10–hour days which is again the European way of doing things. The two of us, my director of photography Alexander Chinnici and I were so incredibly impressed by the work ethic and the pace.” 

The crew had still a peculiar socio

which is all due to the management aspect that I have not accounted for when filming in South Africa: the weather. “There’s this joke that everybody kept reminding me of which is ‘Cape Town is four seasons in a day’,” recalls Ungar. “So I was scared because this ‘Malibu on a sunny summer day’ was the look for our first day. What a blessing it was! The weather was relatively school-perfect & model was ideal for the entire filming. 

“The one thing that became very apparent to us is the wind in Cape Town in November to February is so turbulent,” Ungar says.

While shooting in the desert for two nights, the wind became quite obnoxious to the point that we were making plans about when to bring down our Condor light markers which imitate the look of the moon for a time. In there, the items can go down but then again, ‘if those go down you can’t shoot I, you have no light But again, we were very lucky, is part of this series of miracles that we don’t have to make any shifts to any situation. 

Inquiries into Uncar, “You have so many landscapes, it is so eclectic I tended to think quite a lot of mountains and a desert and sand if one goes up to some parts of South Africa then the aesthetic quest is going to be quite different. That is the aspect that I enjoy most about our line of work, it takes us to places we want to visit but under normal circumstances, we would have no chance of getting to them This I would love to do, go back there and shoot again in Cape Town. 

London Calling has been acquired by US sales company Highland Film Group which owns the worldwide rights for the film and it has been, today, negotiating international sales for the movie during this year’s European Film Market in Berlin.

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