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Category: Film Production

Friday, November 8, 2019

AM Northwest talks 20 years of Oregon casting with Lana Veenker

by admin

On November 7th, Lana dropped in on AM Northwest to chat with Helen Raptis about Cast Iron Studios’ recent anniversary.

As reported by KATU:

Portland’s own Lana Veenker is celebrating 20 years as a casting director! In that time, she’s made a name for herself both here and abroad — having just returned from the Rome Film Festival where she rubbed elbows with Italian film royalty. Lana joined us to look back at the last 20 years of film and TV productions in Oregon. For more information about Lana Veenker, check her out on IMDb.


 

Many thanks to the team at AM Northwest for helping us celebrate this milestone! We’re so grateful for our community.

Wednesday, October 9, 2019

KATU & KGW: Oregon is abuzz with film and TV production

by admin

With series and features such as Trinkets, Stumptown, Pig, and Sorta Like a Rockstar currently underway, Oregon is abuzz with film and television production this fall.

KGW’s Keely Chalmers and KATU’s Lincoln Graves recently dropped in on Casting Director Lana Veenker to get the inside scoop on what it means for Oregon actors and crew.

 

Friday, June 21, 2019

Cast Iron Studios Hosts Intimate Welcome Happy Hour

by Cast Iron Studios Staff

Kicking off the summer season with new connections and old friends

Cast Iron Studios hosted an intimate happy hour this week, celebrating a few new members of the Oregon Media and Production Association.  This select group was joined by the Cast Iron team, along with a handful of studio friends, to connect, discuss the latest up-and-coming production buzz, and enjoy some delicious bites and bevs!

John Srednicki, Ranielle Gray, Eryn Goodman and Lana Veenker from Cast Iron Studios

There was much to celebrate, as the local production community here in Portland and surrounding areas has been a hotbed of activity. As KGW recently reported, eight television series recently wrapped filming in the state, including Netflix’s “Trinkets” and  Freeform’s “Pretty Little Liars: The Perfectionists,” in addition to feature films and stop-motion animation projects, currently on the rise.  Tim Williams, Executive Director of the Oregon Governors Office of Film & Television, quotes an estimated 200 million dollars was spent last year alone. We’re rolling!

 

Guests of the happy hour with Cast Iron K-9 and fan favorite, Calamity Jane

 

Lana Veenker, Owner of Cast Iron Studios & Lilly Joynes, Communications Manager at the OMPA

 

Special shout out to Wine Bridge Imports for sponsoring the event with these three delicious varieties of wine! @winebridgeimports

 

Thanks to everyone who joined in on the fun and conversation.  Cheers to a new season with plenty of exciting, fresh projects barrelling down, or shall we say ‘shooting’ down the local production pipeline!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thursday, May 9, 2019

Oregon feature “Zilla and Zoe” gets distribution deal; comes out this month

by Cast Iron Studios Staff

Word is out that #OregonMade “Zilla and Zoe“–winner of the Best Comedy Film at the Oregon Independent Film Festival–has received a distribution deal with Indican Pictures. We had a great time casting this film, and extend a huge congrats to filmmaker Jessica Scalise, and all of the local cast and crew. See below for all the ways to watch, support and share this gem of a movie.

OPENS MAY 17th!

WATCH THE TRAILER
 The trailer is out! Watch it by clicking here.


WATCH THE FILM IN THEATRE
Z&Z will have a one-week theatrical run in Los Angeles, opening May 17th. Join some of the cast and crew for opening night, or any time that week. The film will run four times a day at the Laemmle Noho Theater, times TBA.


WATCH THE FILM ON VOD, PPV or DVD
Can’t make it to LA? Z&Z comes out on DVD and VOD/PPV in mid-May. Like the project’s Facebook page for updates.
Tuesday, March 28, 2017

A grim future for Portland’s film industry?

by admin

Don’t let the Portland Business Tribune‘s headline scare you!*

While we might not see another Grimm for a while, there are lots of productions coming down the pike in Oregon, from cable series (including The Librarians Season 4), to projects for newer digital platforms (think Hulu, YouTube Red, Amazon and the like), to independent features and commercials.

That’s not even counting the magic happening over at LAIKA and other animation companies, our thriving video game production scene, nor the forays into virtual reality and augmented reality, all taking place right here in Oregon.

In all, we’d say that in terms of the entertainment industry, the future is bright for Portland and the whole state!

*We just had to be a little coy at the Portland Business Alliance breakfast, as many of the projects hadn’t been announced yet. Stay tuned!

A grim future for Portland’s film industry?

Portland Business Tribune
Created on Monday, 20 March 2017
Written by Jim Redden

 

‘The Librarians’ will soon be the only series being filmed in Portland.

A mystery worthy of Grimm hung over a discussion of the Oregon film and video industry last Wednesday morning.

To be solved, what is the next major TV series to be shot in Portland after the popular supernatural thriller on NBC wraps up its sixth and final season this year?

Lobbyist Janice Shokrian, executive director of the Oregon Media Production Association, said she has some clues but is sworn to secrecy. Although Shokrian said some new shows are in the works, the next Portland-based one might not be a conventional seasonal network show like Grimm or Portlandia, the cult comedy nearing the end of its run on IFC.

“Traditional series are not something that many companies want to invest in anymore,” said Shokrian, explaining that one-time and short-run series on such subscription-based media platforms as Hulu and YouTube Red are becoming more and more popular.

The question of what follows Grimm and Portlandia in Portland is not merely one about entertainment options. As the Portland Business Alliance learned at its monthly breakfast forum, such productions pump millions of dollars into the state, regional and local economies every year. Film and TV production companies have spent over $350 million on wages, supplies and services in Oregon over the past year and a half, said Shokrian, whose organization was formed in 1982 to advocate for more such productions in the state.

Link to full article.

Thursday, March 2, 2017

Oregon Film Industry in the News

by Georgia Luke

Lana Veenker and Oregon Film Commissioner Tim Williams recently sat down with Mary Loos from KATU to talk about Oregon’s growing film industry. Grimm and Portlandia have ended, but their success, along with Oregon’s reputation and film incentive, make the possibility of higher quality productions in the future probable.

Thursday, February 2, 2017

Northwest Actors Making Good with “Bad Samaritan”

by ranielle

Despite a few weather delays due to the Snowpocalypse of 2017, the Portland-filmed “Bad Samaritan,” starring David Tennant and directed by Dean Devlin, wrapped filming in January.

The film centers on two young car valets (Robert Sheehan and Carlito Olivero) who use their business as a front to burglarize the houses of their unsuspecting patrons. Life is good for the petty thieves until they target the wrong house, changing their lives forever.

Cast Iron Studios was responsible for casting around 20 of the supporting roles, and Director Dean Devlin, a longtime fan of shooting in Oregon, couldn’t stop raving to us about the quality of his Northwest cast.

Kudos to all of our actors! We can’t wait to see the finished product.

Wednesday, March 30, 2016

Lana Returns to AM Northwest with a Film & TV Update

by Georgia Luke

Thanks to TV shows like “The Librarians” and “Portlandia,” show business is booming in Oregon. Casting Director Lana Veenker stopped by AM Northwest on March 30th to talk to Helen Raptis about what types of productions could be coming to the state soon.

Link to original post

 

Wednesday, June 10, 2015

Jobs, Jobs, Jobs: Lana talks to AM Northwest about Oregon film & video

by admin

When TV and film productions come to town, job openings come too!  Casting Director Lana Veenker stopped by AM Northwest on Wednesday, June 10, 2015, to fill us in on what’s going on now, and possible job opportunities too!

Link to original post.

Tuesday, February 3, 2015

KINK Radio: Lana Veenker on casting and Oregon production

by admin

Sheila Hamilton talks with Lana Veenker of Cast Iron Studios about Oregon film and television, and casting for an increasing number of commercials and major motion pictures.

This segment airs on KINK FM 101.9 on Sunday, February 8th, 2015 at 6:30 AM, and again on KXL FM 101.1 at 7:00 AM.

It will also be part of the morning news cycle on KINK on Wednesday, February 4th, 2015 at 7:30 and 8:30 AM.

Monday, December 15, 2014

PHOTOS: Portland’s ‘Wild’ Cast & Crew Screening

by ranielle

If you attended Portland’s Wild cast and crew screening on Wednesday, December 10, 2014 at the Hollywood Theatre, or just want to see fabulous photos from the event, this is the blog post for you! This is just a sampling of photos taken on the night. You can find the full gallery of photos here.

Photo Credits: Nathan Coltrane & amber smith with SpokenRAD

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Lights, camera, action at the Hollywood Theatre!
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Casting Director Lana Veenker, author Cheryl Strayed, Casting Director Eryn Goodman, and Casting Associate Ranielle Gray.
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Actors Jeffree Newman and Robert Alan Barnett.
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Actor Randy Schulman with author Cheryl Strayed.
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Agent Mary Dangerfield, author Cheryl Strayed, and actress Jeanine Jackson.
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Ranger danger? Ranger awesomeness!
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Actors Greg James and Jerry Bell.
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Author Cheryl Strayed with actor Jerry Carlton.

Full gallery of photos here.

Wednesday, September 3, 2014

Oregon Film & Video Update on KATU’s AM Northwest

by admin

Lana dropped by the KATU studios this morning to give Dave Anderson and Helen Raptis an update on all the film and television activity in Oregon in recent months.

From the new TNT series “The Librarians” to the early Oscar buzz on “Wild” (the new film based on Cheryl Strayed’s bestselling memoir), business is booming!

Hear all about it:

http://www.katu.com/amnw/segments/Oregon-Film–Video-Update-273790971.html

Monday, August 25, 2014

Portland Film Fest to host powerhouses at Women In Film panel

by ranielle

Actress Abbe Meryl Feder, POWFest Executive Director Tara Johnson-Medinger, Director Alicia J. Rose, and Casting Director Lana Veenker will participate in a panel THIS WEDNESDAY, August 27th as part of the Portland Film Festival.

5:30 PM at the Mission Theater. Networking before and after! Be there or be square.

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Women In Film
Networking Event & Panel

Portland Film Festival
Wednesday, August 27, 2014
5:30 pm-7:00 pm

Mission Theater
1624 NW Glisan St
Portland, OR 97209

Panel moderated by Alexandra Blatt and Amy Conway. This is the monthly meetup for the Women In Film non-profit in Portland, OR. Anyone interested in film should attend and learn from the over 50 years of experience from the panelists. Space is limited. RSVP today.

Friday, April 25, 2014

Portland casting director raising funds to finance Oregon-made films

by admin

A peek at what has been happening behind the scenes at Cast Iron Studios, thanks to the Portland Business Journal.

By Erik Siemers
Apr 24, 2014

Lana Veenker has played a role in some of the biggest film and TV productions to work their way through Oregon.

As president of Portland-based  Cast Iron Studios, Veenker served as casting director to NBC’s “Grimm” and TNT Network’s “Leverage,” as well as feature films including “Twilight” and “The Road.” More recently she’s working on the film version of the Cheryl Strayed book, “Wild,” that recently wrapped up filming around Oregon and starring Reese Witherspoon, and “The Librarians,” the latest TNT series by “Leverage” producer Dean Devlin.

Now she’s hoping to attract investors to finance projects featuring Oregon writers, actors, crew and locations.

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Photo Credit: Cathy Cheney

“I’d like a slate of projects to take advantage of all the benefits that Oregon has: good crews, a good talent base, amazing locations, lower prices,” she said. “I’m trying to find some great, socially progressive stories that we could turn into movies and keep people busy here.”

Veenker spent much of the past year vetting potential screenplays, fielding as many as 150 scripts and coming away impressed at the writing talent in Oregon.

She’s taken strategy meetings in Los Angeles. As one of the only U.S.-based members of the International Casting Directors Network, she’s also hoping to lean on her global contacts.

“To be able to draw on all those things to do projects in Oregon hasn’t been done before,” she said.

Many of those calls have been to assess the types of projects that might spur interest in Oregon.

How much she’ll raise and where it will come from remains an open question.

“Some of the funding will come from Oregon, some from overseas and bigger markets,” she said. “We want to keep as much of it local as possible because that gives us the leverage to keep the projects local.”

Veenker is the subject of the Business Journal’s PBJ Interview, which will appear in this week’s print edition, available to subscribers on Friday.

Link to original article.

Thursday, June 6, 2013

Cast Iron Studios in Horizon’s in-flight magazine

by ranielle

In the June 2013 Horizon edition of the Alaska Airlines Magazine, Eric Gold explores the Portland locations and local businesses that play an important part in the film and television industry.

The 10-page article features Oregon location scout Roger Faires, Portlandia producer David Cress, the Oscar-nominated animation company LAIKA, prominent animation-industry players Will Vinton, Jim Blashfield, Joan Gratz, Joanna Priestley and Bill Plympton, directors Gus Van Sant and Todd Haynes, Shelly Midthun of the City of Portland, Ray DiCarlo, Chel White and David Daniels of Bent Image Lab, actors Carrie Brownstein, Fred Armisen, Danny Bruno, Robert Blanche, Diego Velazquez and Gabe Nevins, and Vince Porter of the Governor’s Office of Film and Television, among others.

His segment on Cast Iron Studios is excerpted below.

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Cast Iron Studios

For live-action needs, many filmmakers and TV producers call Lana Veenker, founder and owner of Cast Iron Studios. The onetime stage actor, originally from Portland, learned casting in Europe, where her employers included a London casting office. When she returned to Portland in 1999, she thought it would be just a pit stop on the way to a bigger city, but “people found out I had done casting and started hiring me,” she says. “Next thing you know, I’ve got a company.”

As casting directors, Veenker and her associates find actors who fit specified parts, then represent producers in contract negotiations with the talent agents who represent the performers. “We’re like the buffer between the creative artists and the money people,” Veenker says. Her firm draws primarily from talent-agency rosters and from its own database of unrepresented local actors, but occasionally uses other methods, such as when it turned to social media to find cast members for Van Sant’s Paranoid Park. Van Sant wanted “real kids,” not movie stars, for his film focused on a high school skateboarder, Veenker says. A post on MySpace invited teenagers ranging from skaters to honor roll students, from shy kids to class clowns, to attend cattle call auditions. The posting drew 2,971 Portland-area teens. One of them, skateboarder Gabe Nevins, landed the lead role.

Generally, out-of-town productions will come to Portland with a few celebrities attached, then hire everyone else locally, Veenker says. The requirements for each role are different and go beyond acting. A director’s preferences, the physical stature of the stars the other actors will play alongside, and stunt ability can all be considerations.

Danny Bruno

A typical episode of a TV series such as Grimm, which Cast Iron Studios handles, could involve five to 20 roles. A feature film could involve 30 or more roles. In recent years, Veenker’s company has cast the gothic phenomenon Twilight; the Harrison Ford film Extraordinary Measures (including casting Portland’s Diego Velazquez in the role of a son); and the romantic comedy Management, starring Jennifer Aniston. Two Portland actors her company cast for Grimm—Danny Bruno (as a beaverlike refrigerator repairman) and Robert Blanche (as a Portland police officer)—have seen their roles evolve into recurring parts. Television commercials for companies such as Nike, Intel, Apple and Facebook keep her staff busy between film and television work.

When not casting, Veenker travels internationally to speak about the industry, and locally, she lobbies legislators in Oregon’s capital of Salem. The industry generally has strong bipartisan support, she says, especially when legislators are able to visit a set. “It’s not just these Hollywood types drinking lattes,” she says. “It’s a lot of local carpenters and electricians. Good jobs.”

Portland's Attributes

Many thanks to Eric Gold for his thorough coverage of Oregon Film & TV!

Link to PDF of ‘Supporting Roles’ article.

Link to full magazine.

Monday, April 22, 2013

Oregon Actors: Urgent Call to Action

by admin

If you’re an actor in Oregon and you want more film and TV productions to shoot in our state, we need your help right now, so get out those headshots and resumes and a Sharpie!

Please follow the instructions below and share this with all the Oregon actors you know.

This is in support of our efforts to expand OPIF, the Oregon Production Incentive Fund, which is responsible for the huge increase in production in Oregon over the past few years. If our bill passes (HB2267), the fund will DOUBLE, meaning twice as much work for all of us. Time is of essence.

1. First, go to http://ompa.org/events and RSVP for our Industry Day on Thursday, May 2nd at the State Capitol.

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This is the crux of our campaign to increase Oregon’s film incentive program and we need a HUGE turnout to demonstrate to legislators how badly we want it.

Clear your schedule and plan to stay the whole day, if you possibly can. If not, at least plan to be on the steps of the Capitol Building in Salem on May 2nd from 12:45-1:45 pm for our rally and photo op. We need the crowd to be MASSIVE.  Be there and bring friends, but be sure to RSVP first.

2. Get out TWO headshots and resumes and TWO manila envelopes.

3. Address one of the envelopes to:

Senator Richard Devlin
900 Court St. NE, S-211
Salem, OR 97301

4. Address the other to:

Representative Peter Buckley
900 Court St. NE, H-272
Salem, OR 97301

5. Make sure each of your headshots is stapled back-to-back to your resume.

6. Hand write a truthful personal note about how you have benefited from film & TV production in Oregon.

Write on the resumes themselves or on sticky notes attached to the resumes.

Examples:

  • “Thanks to Grimm, I got braces for my kid. Please support HB2267.”
  • “I’m still receiving residual checks from Twilight. Please support HB2267 and expand our incentive program.”
  • “I haven’t had to move to Hollywood, thanks to Oregon’s film incentive program. Please support HB2267.”
  • “I want to work more in my home state. Please support HB2267 and expand OPIF.”
  • “2012 was Oregon’s busiest year yet for film & TV production. Let’s keep building this clean, green, creative, high-tech industry.”
  • “Look at all the credits on my resume from projects that shot in Oregon! Help build the momentum and expand OPIF. Support HB2267.”

 

OPIF Resume

IMPORTANT: IF YOU LIVE OR WORK IN THE DISTRICTS OF SENATOR DEVLIN (Tualatin and surrounding areas) OR REPRESENTATIVE BUCKLEY (Ashland and surrounding areas), PLEASE SAY SO ON THE APPROPRIATE NOTE.

Devlin’s District Map:

Devlin Map

Buckley’s District Map:

Buckley Map

7. Put one headshot/resume in each envelope.

8. Put $1.12 in postage on each envelope and MAIL THEM NOW.

Senator Devlin and Representative Buckley are co-chairs of the Oregon Legislature’s Ways & Means Committee. Their support of the expansion is critical. We want to bombard their offices with hundreds of headshots and resumes prior to Industry Day on May 2nd.

9. Share this blog post with all of the Oregon actors you know, via social media, email and word of mouth.

Click the share button, copy and paste the URL, or get on the phone now.

THANKS FOR YOUR HELP. Together we can blow the lid off of Oregon production, creating more jobs for all.

PS: If you’re not an actor, but you work in the Oregon film & television industry, you can mail letters to the same effect to Devlin and Buckley. Include your production resume and a personal note. Be sure to mention if your home or business are in their districts.

Let’s do this!