Why Didn’t Twilight Get Filmed in Washington State or Forks?

We get asked this question all the time in our email and at the Twilight Conventions. Part of the reason is that Forks is so remote and small that the support services needed to house an entire filming crew for months weren’t there. The other part is that Washington State doesn’t make it easy on filming company’s budgets. The more a company has to pay to be at a certain location, the less money they have for post-production things like CGI, 3-D, etc.

The Northwest News has an comparison in incentives in the Pacfic Northwest. The numbers really speak for themselves. Washington is losing money to Oregon and British Columbia (AKA Vancouver) because they aren’t keeping pace.

“BC [British Columbia]set aside $40 million in incentives for 2011. Oregon may give away up to $12.5 million. Washington is only scheduled to provide $4 million in incentives.

British Columbia appears to be getting a significant bang for its buck. There were 239 film and television productions in BC in 2009, and Washington only had 14.
“We need to keep our vampires, our Washington state vampires,” says Sen. Jeanne Kohl-Welles, D-Seattle, about the movie “Twilight.”  The 2008 movie, based in Forks, was shot largely in Oregon and BC.”
Check out the full story on Northwest News.
So why did much of breaking Dawn film in Louisiana? Answer: great money incentives and a fantastic facility in the Celtic Media Center.