On location: Jordan

Digital Studio takes a look at filming locations in Jordan and the services the country provides to filmmakers.

Biggest incentives:

The Royal Film Commission of Jordan is actively involved in offering attractive incentives to both local and international filmmakers looking to shoot within the Kingdom.

Governmental institutions are also becoming increasingly cooperative with directors, as the country’s location services market continues to develop. During the recent filming of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, the country’s air force was deployed to appear in certain scenes.

In comparison with many of its GCC neighbours, Jordan’s climate is of a much milder nature, and filming during summer months should rarely become an impossibility outside of the Syrian desert in the country’s East. Snow can even occur in some of the Northern parts of the country, which is definitely a rarity throughout the MENA region.

Jordan has recently proven its ability to host large scale productions, and has enjoyed consistent film infrastructure growth since the late 1980s, when the filming of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade took place at the ancient city of Petra. The third installment of the Speilberg trilogy provided the Jordanian film industry with a much needed kick-start after the lull which followed Lawrence of Arabia in the 1960s.

The country has recently become one of the MENA region’s top shooting locations, providing some stiff industry competition for the likes of Morocco and Egypt.

Biggest drawbacks:

Although rapidly growing, Jordan’s film infrastructure is not quite on-par with that found elsewhere in the Middle East, in countries such as Morocco and the UAE.

While the list of production houses providing location services is adequate, the country’s equipment rental services and film-related infrastructure is not yet able to handle a large volume of simultaneous big-budget films, without filmmakers having to import much of their own crew and equipment.

Steps are being taken to correct these admittedly narrow gaps in local infrastructure, which will see Jordan shoot ahead in popularity with international filmmakers.

What the Kingdom lacks in on-location infrastructure, it makes up for in animation and post production services. While this will have little impact on the country’s popularity with some of Hollywood’s big names, it will certainly help to encourage growth within the local filmmaking and production industry, and produce a knock-on effect for the nation’s film industry infrastructure capabilities.

Natural features:

Varied geographical anomalies make Jordan one of the most diverse landscapes of the MENA region, rivaling that of location juggernaut, Morocco.

Many such features also bare cultural and religious significance dating back hundreds of years, as well as being aesthetically impressive.

The shore of the highly-saline Dead Sea is widely accepted as holding the mantle of ‘the lowest point of dry land on the planet’ at approximately 400 metres below sea level. Water-wise, the River Jordan also cuts a path north to south, marking the country’s Western border and attracting a collection flora and fauna to its banks.

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