Oregon Film on Substack

Oregon is a state where monsters live. I mean, come on, have you ever been here?

And we’re not just talking about Sasquatch. Yes, this is Squatchville. Bigfootland. Skookumtown. They lurk in the trees and mountains and rivers quietly avoiding the cameras. Since they don’t really care about proper

We’re just gonna say it. We have a chip on our shoulder.

It isn’t large and it’s not necessarily uncomfortable but it’s a chip.

And we’re fine with it. Really. We’re fine.

Let’s say, for argument’s sake, there’s a project looking for a Pacific Northwest

One of the best kept secrets held by Los Angeles based producers who work here in Oregon is the ease of the commute. Seriously. From LAX to Portland it is a quick jump.

And, to top it off, the journey gives you a bird’s eye view of the Cascades – Crater Lake, Three Sisters and Mt. Hood. In fact,

Every film you’ve seen was built by people you’ve never heard of.

Not the director. Not the actor. The people who found the location, dressed the room, designed the light, chose the fabric on the character’s coat. The people who made the world inside the frame look like it was always there, waiting

Let’s go through the obligatory locations “lookbook” first, because that’s where this conversation starts.

You need a coastline. Oregon has 363 miles of public coast. Every inch of it, from the sea stacks at Cannon Beach to the ancient sand dunes at Florence to the storm-battered headlands south of

Here’s the thing about Portland.

It doesn’t look like anywhere else. And by that we don’t just mean the bridges, or the light, or the very large trees or that particular quality of green that saturates everything west of the Cascades for nine months of the year. We mean the people. The way the city

Oregon Film worked with 58 projects through its incentive programs in 2025. In 2024, it had worked with 54. More projects. More productions. More films being made in Oregon than the year before.

That can be seen as growth.

But then there’s another number: the average project budget dropped from $3.6

#OregonMade keeps winning things and launching careers.

Not all the time. Not every year. Not on every project. But with a frequency that, when you lay it out in sequence, stops looking like luck and starts looking like something else.

There’s something about this place. Oregon.

Something about the

About four hours east on I-84 from PDX airport, past the Gorge and the wheat fields and the Blue Mountains, into the Grande Ronde Valley here in Oregon, a bowl of farmland ringed by the Wallowas and the Elkhorns, lies the city of La Grande. Elevation 2,778 feet, population just under 13,000, home

“I’ve covered box office results literally hundreds of times over the past 20ish years. In that time, there’s been a very clear formula: Franchises are the most reliable way to get butts in movie theater seats. Marvel, Star Wars, Harry Potter, Transformers, Fast & Furious, Minions, etc. etc. If you