Is North Carolina the new Hollywood!?!

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You might be surprised at how many movies and TV shows are made in North Carolina - especially within the last few years. This blog provides a SAS graph that will make the list of films even easier to read!

A recent story by the Tar Heel Traveler, and an exhibit at the NC Museum of History, piqued my interest about movies made in North Carolina. Some of the famous movies filmed in NC includes: Iron Man 3 (part of which was filmed at the SAS headquarters!), The Hunger Games, Sleepy Hollow, Forrest Gump, Bull Durham, Dirty Dancing, and Firestarter (just to name a few).

Here's a photo my friend Jennifer took of Ironman 3 being filmed:

film_ironman

With my curiosity in full gear, I set about finding a list of the NC movies, so I could graph the data. Luckily, I found the ncfilm.com website, which provided a good basis for my data. I saved their html code, deleted out unwanted lines, did a bit of hand-editing, and then wrote some SAS code to parse the name, year, and IMDb links out of their list. I used SAS/Graph Proc Gchart to create the bar chart, and got a little tricky with my SAS code so I could color certain movies red so they'd stand out. Click my chart below to see the interactive version, where each box has hover-text with the movie name, and drilldown to the IMDb page.

ncfilm

 


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 The Photo Album Section:

If you live in NC, it's possible you will be in a movie, and probable you will know somebody (or know somebody that knows somebody) that's been in a movie!  Below are some examples from my friends. Some of these are a bit gory, but rest assured that no friends were harmed in the making of these pictures! :-)

This one is my friend Patricia's friend Eric, as CD Cenobite in Hellraiser III in Greensboro:

Hellraiser III

 

Here's my friend Joy (such a sweetheart) in the horror movie Pieces of Talent:

Pieces of Talent

 

This one is from Joy's friend J.R. Aiello. It's the Historic Interpretations production of Let Tyrants Fear. It was written, directed, and edited by J.R., and is a period short film about the attack of the Spanish Armada, and what Queen Elizabeth had to do to reassure her troops at Tilbury.

Let Tyrants Fear

 

Here's my friend Rodi (former Rollergirl all-star) in the zombie movie Fistful of Brains:

Fistful of Brains

 

And my co-worker Mike in Fistful of Brains:

Fistful of Brains

 

And Joy in Fistful of Brains, after the zombies have been gnawing on her leg.

Fistful of Brains

 

Here's a shot from Joy's producer/director/editor friend Christine Parker at the Fix It In Post screening in Chapel Hill.

Fix It in Post

 

And here's my friend Stacy's son, who is an up-and-coming actor & director, filming his own movie in NC:

Stacy's son

 

 

Have you ever been in a movie, or met someone who has?  Feel free to leave a comment about your "brush with fame"!

 

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About Author

Robert Allison

The Graph Guy!

Robert has worked at SAS for over a quarter century, and his specialty is customizing graphs and maps - adding those little extra touches that help them answer your questions at a glance. His educational background is in Computer Science, and he holds a BS, MS, and PhD from NC State University.

2 Comments

  1. Roger Muller on

    Wasn't The Andy Griffith Show about life in Mayberry NC??? Went to Wikipedia and found out the town was fictional (but in NC) and the production was on a set in Desilu studies in Hollywood. Article I read said it was never less than 7th place in ratings while it ran and was number 1 during its last year. Went out on high note!

    • Robert Allison
      Robert Allison on

      When I worked at Shell Oil in Houston (20+ years ago), the Andy Griffith Show was *always* playing somewhere on cable, any given hour day or night! :)

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