1/17/21

'News of the World' brings tour of Santa Fe County

It's always a blast seeing local scenery in a world class film. Beginning in October, 2019, Tom Hanks, the cast and crew of News of the World spent 53 days shooting in the high desert, forests and mountains surrounding Santa Fe.

The following is an excerpt published in the Abuquerque Journal.
“News of the World” was shot entirely on location in and around Santa Fe. For 53 shooting days, cast and crew touched down at multiple locations, spanning two storied movie ranches, the first Native American-owned film studio, two cultural heritage sites, miles of the breathtaking terrain, and the streets of downtown Santa Fe.
Bonanza Creek Ranch, just outside Santa Fe, has sprawling grounds, a 24-building town and five interior sets, surrounded by an unobstructed 360-degree vista. “If you’ve ever seen a Western,” says location manager and animal wrangler Diego Dominguez, “there’s a good chance it was filmed at Bonanza.” With just four weeks to prepare the location, the challenge was to take one seasoned movie ranch and carve it into four distinct towns fighting their way back from the Civil War. “Bonanza had a lot of character to begin with,” says David Crank, production designer. “So the job was to edit what existed – squashing down the color palette, removing trim and any unnecessary pieces – and making everything feel as real as possible.” Separating the ranch into quadrants, Crank identified distinct characteristics that could serve as visual hallmarks for each town, as well as common pieces that could be reused. Piece-by-piece, Wichita Falls, Red River Station, Dallas and Cranfills Gap began to emerge.
Thirty-five miles from Santa Fe, the team touched down at Cochiti Pueblo, a pristine natural landscape cut through by the Rio Grande. The region proved a versatile stand-in for roads leading to Red River Station and the Red River banks, as well as the Shallow Valley. It is one of the most wooded places the team members found in New Mexico, and they went back several times, as it had so much of what they needed.
An hour’s drive south from Santa Fe revealed true wilderness. Off the grid, ringed by the Cerrillos Hills, and the Ortiz, Sangre de Cristo and Jemez mountain chains – 81,000 acres deep, and roamed by deer, elk, mountain lions and bears – the San Cristóbal Ranch sits on the Galisteo Basin, where archaeological discoveries dating back thousands of years ago were unearthed. “Paul Greengrass was drawn to locations that had gigantic, epic vistas in the background; that’s everywhere at San Cristóbal,” Crank says. “The scale is immense, and it’s a harder and much more open landscape than any of the other ranches where we filmed. But there was also extraordinary diversity; the terrain goes from wide-open trails to gentle rolling hills and towering cliffs to more enclosed spaces.”
At Eaves Ranch, the filmmakers found everything they needed to bring the dark side of the West to life. A workhorse of a Western town since Hollywood moved in to shoot “The Cheyenne Social Club” in 1969, Eaves Ranch has grown to house more than three dozen buildings, including a main square and a church.
The rustic El Rancho de las Golondrinas became the shooting location for Johanna’s destination: the farm of her aunt and uncle, Anna and Wilhelm. A living history museum just south of Santa Fe, El Rancho de las Golondrinas is on 200 acres of rural farmland. It is punctuated by colonial homes that stretch back to the early 18th century, along with reconstructions of structures from across New Mexico – one of which became the Leonberger compound. “We found a log cabin in this wooded valley that had once been a schoolhouse,” Crank says. “It had a rather rough field across from it and an adobe structure nearby, everything we needed to create the more established, yet hardscrabble farm.”
Pieces of downtown Santa Fe were transformed into Kidd’s hometown, San Antonio – which came to life the Camel Rock Casino backlot, where the market was staged; and two restored centuries-old residences downtown. The filmmakers created Kidd’s San Antonio residence at a 200-year-old home that features Spanish-Pueblo Revival-style adobe architecture, known as El Zaguán. Its adjacent section of Canyon Road was transformed into the dirt-covered side street where we see Kidd’s approach. Another key location was the downtown law office of Kidd’s attorney, Mr. Branholme. This was captured at the 1890-era Delgado House, which, like El Zaguán, had been donated to the Historic Santa Fe Foundation to ensure its preservation. The final location on the schedule was an old school on the outskirts of Santa Fe, which was transformed into the grounds of San Antonio’s famed San Fernando Cathedral.
ip photo: a film crew is setting up for scene shoots last November on the Galisteo Dam Road under a gorgeous New Mexico morning sky. Click on it for a better look.

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