A Tennessee production company spent two days in San Diego filming a pilot for Lifetime. The TV series will focus on missing persons, with the goal of solving the cases. The crew filmed near the U.S. and Mexico border in San Ysidro as well as Balboa Park. These reality-based shows have been very successful in educating the public on cases of missing people and cases have been solved as a result. Of course, this show will film all over the United States tracking missing people. “ABC’s Extreme Make Over: Home Edition” sent a family of five on a San Diego vacation while their home was being built in Florida. Although we regret that they didn’t find a contestant here in San Diego to build a home for, the vacation with film crew attached was like a travel log for the show, giving millions of viewers a commercial for San Diego. The family stayed in a hotel located in Mission Bay Park and visited icon locations throughout San Diego. Downtown San Diego continues to be attractive to filmmakers. Commercials, print shoots, TV movies and series, as well as feature films like what downtown has to offer. Several commercials filmed this month, and one for the U.S. Navy shot some footage of Balboa Park. We worked on two music videos, one that filmed on C Street for recording artist Danielle Lo Presti. Travel films were another popular genre that includes downtown as an icon location. Gaslamp and Little Italy are favorite film sites as well as our beautiful skyline. The San Diego Film Commission has been busy scouting, with some potential new production. Usually the script drives the locations of the scout although sometimes there is an opportunity to show location managers interesting prospects for other projects they may have. Whether we can bring in that work or not, scouting is important for future work and lasting impressions with location managers and scouts. — Cathy Anderson is the president and CEO of the San Diego Film Commission, and film commissioner of San Diego. Anderson has earned a national reputation for developing programs to foster the growth of the production industry in the region and for making San Diego “Hollywood South.”