Why movie fans are obsessed with this map app
A group of filmmakers have created an app to help travellers who love hunting down famous movie and TV filming locations.
Movies and TV shows can have a big influence on tourists’ travel plans.
Whether it’s being inspired to visit Sicily after watching season two of The White Lotus or hunting down exact locations to recreate iconic film scenes in New York, screen or film tourism is growing in popularity.
One person who knows this type of tourism well is Erik Nachtrieb, a former adventure filmmaker turned co-founder of the app SetJetters – an idea created by a group of filmmakers during the Covid pandemic.
It is a free map app that helps people find the real-life locations where movie and TV shows were filmed.
When you open the app, it can either pick up your location and show you what is around, or you can search for a specific location. Users can also upload pictures and have discussions with other movie buffs.
“We have 91,000 movies but we only have 6000 published so you can see we have a lot of work to do as far as movies [goes],” Mr Nachtrieb told Andrew Bucklow on news.com.au’s I’ve Got News For You podcast.
“We actually intend to have movies in the hundreds of thousands eventually.”
Mr Nachtrieb said the people on the app who were “craziest” about tracking down film locations were fans of the movies Twilight (2008) and The Goonies (1985).
“The biggest scenes, I would say, the craziest people about scenes are Twilight people. And the people who love the movie The Goonies from the ’80s,” he said, noting while the app is global, the majority of its scene locations are in the US as that’s where the app started.
SetJetters plans to eventually have enough data to determine the most popular scenes and locations in the world, which will be used to help local economies better understand their screen tourism industries.
One of the unique features of the app is the “ShotSync camera” which helps people get the perfect picture while recreating their favourite scenes on location.
“We find that a lot of users like to take a picture immersing themselves in the scene. They want to be right where their favourite actor stood or inside their favourite scene,” he said.
“There’s a really large emotional attachment to the scene and reliving it, so this was a way that we could develop this for them.
“You bring up your camera and there’s a slider on your camera that comes up inside the app, and it shows the image of the scene.
“Whoever is taking the picture can slide the slider back and forth to make it transparent, so you can line it up almost exactly. You can even cosplay with your favourite costume.
“Take the picture. It’ll show like how it was in the movie and how it is with you there. A lot of the background changes. People love that ‘then and now’ kind of thing.”
For the more adventurous traveller, the app also has “challenge scenes”, which are locations that are more challenging to get to.
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