Video Production Budapest films behind the scenes for major Hollywood studios
Video Production Budapest films behind the scenes since the fall of the iron curtain in 1989. Hungary was one of the first former Eastern Bloc countries to introduce generous tax incentives for filmmakers. This resulted in a massive influx of Hollywood production to the country. As producer Howard Ellis of Budapest-based Mid Atlantic Films explained: “The talent and maturity of crew, deep infrastructure for film and very reliable and attractive tax incentives created the perfect storm — in a good way — for filmmakers.” Hungary has now 4 large film studios located in Budapest or very close to the capitol. One of the biggest movie studios of Europe, “Origo” is in Budapest. Next in size “Korda Studios” located some 20 km away from the city, west of Budapest. There are 2 smaller studios “Stern Studios” and “Mafilm Studios” for lower budget movie enterprises.
Video Production Budapest’s Hungarian offices are just 15 km away from Korda Studios and we filmed there quite a few times for Showtime and NatGeo. Showtime trusted us with filming EPK-s of every season of the “The Borgias” and for NatGeo we filmed behind the scenes of the “Genius: Picasso” starring Antonia Banderas. In 2019 Showtime trusted us to film behind the scenes of their new series “HALO”, which aired the first episode in March 2022. We filmed behind the scenes of “HALO’s first season in December 2019 and then in April 2021. The gap was due to the COVID pandemic, which halted production for almost a year. In the meantime Paramount+ took over the “HALO” production from Showtime. Both Showtime and NatGeo producers are praised our video crews (3 video crews on “The Borgias” and one camera crew on “Picasso”) for being absolutely invisible on sets, but still getting the best shots of the action possible. Gear wise “The Borgias” behind the scenes films were recorded first with Sony HDW-F900R CineAlta 24P HDCAM cameras using HD tapes. From the second season we were using Sony PMW-500 Solid State memory camcorders. Today both cameras are discontinued by Sony. As for “Picasso” and “HALO” our video crew was using the Canon C300 Mark II. digital cinema cameras with cinema zooms and primes.
Video Crew Budapest filming with Antonio Banderas
Video Crew Budapest filming with Jeremy Irons at “The Borgias”
Video Crew Budapest interviewing Jeremy Irons for Showtime
Video Crew Budapest interviewing Holliday Grainger on The Borgias set
Here you can watch some of the interviews we did during the shoot of HALO’s first season.
Video Production Budapest interviewing Pablo Schreiber (Master Chief) on HALO shoot
Video Production Budapest’s DOP films b-roll on HALO shoot
Video Production Budapest interviwing Yerin Ha (Kwan Ha) on Halo shoot
