Tenerife’s audiovisual sector is close to full employment and is showing an increasingly high degree of experience and specialisation
Just around the corner from Europe, with record tax incentives, the Canary Islands have become a preferred and safe destination for filming. Of these, the island of Tenerife exhibits an increasingly high degree of experience and specialisation, attracting the filming of high-impact national and international films.
Numerous productions have been shot on the island in recent months, including the British series Stags, a Paramount+ and Sony production.
Also since May, Secuoya Studios, together with Atresmedia, the leading media group in Spain, has been producing the series La encrucijada, one of the first projects resulting from its alliance with the Turkish company Ay Yapim, in different locations in Tenerife.
Buendía Estudios Canarias, in collaboration with Diagonal (Banijay Iberia) and DeAPlaneta, produces the erotic-romantic fiction A qué estás esperando? also for Atresmedia.
Extending its close ties with Tenerife, the German production company Bavaria Fiction has shot the second season of the series Für Immer Sommer for ARD Degeto, with production services by Seven Islands Film. The successful BBC drama The Gold was also filmed on the island.
Under the Volcano, directed by Damian Kocur and produced by Lizart Film and service in Tenerife by InsightProject, which has just premiered at the Toronto Film Festival. It tells the story of a Ukrainian family stranded in Tenerife at the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and was shot on the island.
Other film projects that have come to the island include El cuento del lobo, a Secuoya, Álamo and A Contracorriente production directed by Norberto López Amado, and Isla, by Meridional Producciones, BTF Media and AF Films, starring Ana Belén.
Film Canary Islands in ‘Stags’
Filming of the series Stags in La Laguna, Tenerife, courtesy of Film Canary Islands.
An Eleven Film production for Paramount+ and Sony, Stags shot its first three episodes in Tenerife during 2023 and the next three in 2024.
The involvement of local service production company Film Canary Islands in the project ranged “from the client’s first visit to the island to the incorporation of the SL (SPV) for all operations related to the shoot and the application for the tax incentive,” explains Patrick Klossas.
“We set up a technical and creative team of almost 180 people. We shot for 70 days in locations all over the island, and our main location was the old Abades Leprosarium,” he added.
Klossas underlines the extraordinary evolution of the audiovisual services industry in Tenerife and the rest of the Canary Islands. “In the 1990s, there was practically no audiovisual material on the islands. Today, more than 150 companies are active in the sector, and there is a huge level of specialisation. In terms of technicians, services and audiovisual material, we are on a par with any North American blockbuster. And what we don’t have on the islands, we can bring in very quickly thanks to the communication channels opened up by the continuous demand from the Canary Islands industry.”
“In the past, bringing a Panavision camera, a Peewee dolly or a Technocrane was very complicated because it had never been done before and the industry lacked the necessary contacts. Nowadays, it’s as easy as calling the usual supplier, who will solve any need,” he points out.
While the most important production Film Canary Islands was involved in during the 2023/2024 period may have been Stags, it also shot a documentary on the Santa Cruz de Tenerife Carnival for the Los Angeles-based production company Breakwater. It is now in pre-production on a North American feature film scheduled to shoot for six weeks in November.
River Flow Pictures’ extensive track record
With an extensive track record that includes productions such as Montecristo, Zorro, Mamá o papá, El test, Superagente Makey, Camp Newton and La bandera, River Flow Pictures kicked off 2024 with the production in Gran Canaria of the independent feature film Comandante Fritz, a tragicomedy set in Havana in the 1970s.
‘Bajo un volcán’, entirely on location in Tenerife
Secuoya Studios
In the second quarter of the year, River Flow Pictures prepared and carried out the production of the Secuoya Studios film Bajo un volcán, shot entirely in Tenerife over a period of six weeks.
With locations in such Tenerife municipalities as Garachico, Los Silos, El Tanque and Icod, this production featured 90% local talent and Canary Island companies such as Macaronesia Films, The Boss Transports, Gomeralia and Canary Islands Vehicles, among others.
Bajo un volcán was the second time River Flow Pictures had shot with William Levy, the Cuban-American actor, an international star after his participation in the Netflix series Café con aroma de mujer, who has his own production company, William Levy Entertainment.
“Levy feels at home here; the actor’s connection with the entire production team is very good and that helps the work environment,” says Guillermo Ríos, CEO of River Flow Pictures.
River Flow Pictures carried out the production service of Bajo un volcán, where the company’s usual team was available for important positions such as production manager, head of production, location manager and coordination. The assistants came from Tenerife, so they have continued to broaden their experience and contribute their knowledge to the production.
“As in any film, the tone is important and this is achieved through many narrative elements, but the first is the location. Here, after seeing several of the options offered on the island, we fell in love when we did the scouting in Garachico, Los Silos and El Tanque. Both the director and the executive producer quickly fell in love with the place, adapting part of the script to the environment and everything flowed,” says Ríos.
“All filming is hard; there are intense days of work, so it was important to try to unify the locations to avoid lots of transfers, making the production as sustainable as possible, both ecologically and in human terms,” he says.
“We shot in the summer, but the area we chose worked well for us; there was great collaboration and good treatment from the local people, as well as the temperature that accompanied us throughout the production.”
For Ríos, there is an evident growth of the audiovisual services industry on the island.
“This is a reality. To set up a production nowadays seems easier than it was a few years ago, but it’s a whole financial engineering process that has its time constraints and risks. The incentives and, above all, the great demand from consumers and platforms mean that this sector continues to grow,” he explains.
The drive of the advertising sector
Filming of Cerruti with production servicefrom Boudika Productions.
The vitality of Tenerife’s industry in the production of films and series is also expanding thanks to the drive of the advertising sector.
Major international brands such as Cerruti, Giorgio Armani, Citroen and Merrell extend the long tradition of the island as a destination for advertising shoots.
Boudika Productions has been filming the international campaign for the American sports shoe brand Merrell, produced by LiveTribe, on Tenerife for two consecutive years. Thanks to the fact that the Los Angeles production company saw the island’s varied landscape in the piece ‘A Thousand Planets’ (https://vimeo.com/437709547), a project headed up by Boudika Productions that was shot remotely during the pandemic with the selfless participation of almost 20 local companies.
Founded in 2013 by professionals with more than 20 years of experience offering production and location services, Boudika has participated in productions such as Oro, by Agustín Díaz-Yanes, distributed by Sony Pictures International, and30 Monedas, by Álex de la Iglesia for HBO.
“We undertook the production service for the Merrell advertising commercial for the Los Angeles production company LiveTribe Productions, which has relied on Boudika for two consecutive years. Some of these advertising commercials have been selected for the Berlin Commercial Festival,” says producer Izaskun Montilla.
The advertising commercial entitled Weightless, which shows spectacular images of Tenerife’s nature, was shot on the island under the direction of Kaia Lavender and Gary Ravenscroft.
“This year, among others, we have also worked on advertising commercials for brands such as North Face, Reebok and Cerruti’s Vivo 1881 perfume with the prestigious director and photographer Paul Maclean,” says Montilla.
The Cerruti advertising commercial, produced by the French company Broadcast General Pop, also included the participation in the production service of the company Palma Pictures.
Filming of Citroen C3 Air Cross with production service by Solworks.
Under the direction of James F. Cotton and with Denis Guth as director of photography, the advertising commercial All New – Citroen C3 Air Cross was also filmed in Tenerife, with production service by Solworks.
“From the outset, our involvement in the project was to help both the brand Citroen and the French production company Continental Productions to choose the perfect island to develop all the creativity in the best locations”, says Álvaro Iglesias, founder and producer of Solworks.
“Once the locations were chosen”, he adds, “we began to put together all the logistics to be able to carry out this shoot with all due creative and security guarantees. From the hotels to accommodate more than 50 people from France to all the human and technical resources for the perfect development of the shoot, without forgetting the artistic role of the actors, art direction and wardrobe. We provided all the necessary services so that the idea of Citroen and the director James F. Cotton could become a reality.”
“Tenerife is becoming an increasingly attractive destination for filming,” Iglesias acknowledges. “Its good air connections with its two airports and hotel infrastructure make it an easy destination to offer. Its variety of landscapes is perfect for shoots like Citroen, where you have to capture several destinations in a single territory. Desert, beach, jungle, urban and classic city. This, together with an increasing number of professionals and equipment rental companies, means that the island is growing in its capacity to host different audiovisual projects.”
Tenerife’s audiovisual industry is currently experiencing a period of maturity, with a sound, consolidated service industry and the growth of local production. This is thanks, among other reasons, to the extensive experience accumulated by the continuous visit of large film shoots and the ever-increasing institutional support.
“The last quarter of the year will be spectacular”
And the expectations are promising, according to Guillermo Ríos. “At present, I would say that we are almost at full employment in the audiovisual sector. The last quarter of the year will be spectacular; I think all the companies, in one way or another, are active in production. It’s good for everyone,” he stresses.
Finally, Ríos expresses his wishes for the industry, “We must be united and help each other, weave a fabric, forge strength, but prudently, bearing in mind that we are a sector that works on a project basis and there may be complicated moments. The outlook is optimistic, and the objective must be stability and professionalism in general.”
