The ultimate travel guide for film fanatics
More often than not, the stunning landscapes and sweeping vistas in film and television leave audiences craving a trip to fantasy worlds, with little to no idea how to get there.
And for the talented team over at SetJetters, this was a problem they had to tackle. From their efforts came “the best way to search for, navigate to, and share your trips to the great film and television locations around the world”, all with their handy dandy “handheld travel guide”.
SetJetters is a free app that allows people all across the globe to find the real-world locations where some of their favourite moments from the screen were filmed, and even offers them the opportunity to upload their own images and share their thoughts with fellow film fanatics.
“Whether you’re a location geek out in the field or a film buff binge-watching at home and wondering where a great scene was filmed, SetJetters will not only help you find the answer – but also help you get to the location and right into the action,” SetJetters’ official Instagram account explained in a post.
“Whether it’s close to home or across the globe, SetJetters is designed to be your handheld travel guide to the most exciting film locations, from the biggest studio franchises – like Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, Game of Thrones, and Mission: Impossible – to smaller independent films and classics.”
And as Erik Nachtriev - a former filmmaker and co-founder of SetJetters - explained to Andrew Bucklow on the I’ve Got News For You podcast, the idea came about for the group during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. And they have no intentions of slowing down any time soon, with so much more still to be added to their passion project.
“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 [go],” he said.
“We actually intend to have movies in the hundreds of thousands eventually.”
The team also hope to one day have enough data that they can determine the world’s most popular scenes and locations, something they believe may assist local economies in understanding the impact of big screen tourism in their area.
“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 of their findings so far, before adding that while their app has a global reach, most of its locations are focussed where the app originated - the United States of America.
As well as its innovative map, the app also features something it calls the ‘ShotSync camera’, which allows users to place themselves directly into their favourite on-screen scenes.
“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,” Nachtriev explained.
“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 [it] 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.”
Images: setjetters.com, @setjetters / Instagram