Non-VA shooting locations for The New World movie?

October 28, 2010 8:40 AM

In the 2005 film The New World, by Terence Malick, there are a few scenes featuring John Smith, post-Jamestown, hanging out with Inuits on a gray rocky shoreline. Any idea where they shot that?
posted by schampeo to media & arts (5 answers total)

IMDB lists these filming locations.
posted by JohnFredra at 8:47 AM on October 28, 2010

It's entirely possible that those scenes were also shot in Virginia - almost any geographical location can be doubled for another with the right casting, costumes, and set dressing.

I worked for years on a police procedural that shoots out of New York, and we could turn Staten Island into just about any other place, from North Carolina to Somalia.
posted by Sara C. at 9:05 AM on October 28, 2010

Thanks. I ask because Smith supposedly explored the Maine and Massachusetts Bay coastline, which is sure what it looked like in the movie. I grew up in Maine and it looked very familiar. I'm pretty sure it wasn't anywhere in Virginia, though. Too rocky, bleak. Also, the scenes had natives wearing parkas.
posted by schampeo at 10:15 AM on October 28, 2010

Yeah, that's kind of the thing. You can order up a rocky coastline from a prop house. You can cast "natives" and dress them in traditional Iroquois dress (afaik the Inuit didn't hang out as far south as New England).

Voila, coastal New England circa 1600 for a quarter of the cost of shipping a crew to a third location!
posted by Sara C. at 11:21 AM on October 28, 2010

These days the only thing the prop house needs to provide is lots of green or blue to change locations. It has become much better these days than those old rear projection systems (although I'm not sure what is up with White Collar, they just can't seem to do it right on that show).
posted by cftarnas at 10:20 PM on October 28, 2010