Scenic Road Film Locations In South Africa

Scenic roads suitable for film
locations can be hard to find.
That perfect stretch of road
curving into the distance is
often marred by ugly
buildings, or perhaps it's just right but local authorities
aren't prepared to close it to
traffic for the time needed for
filming.

South Africa is a favourite
destination for productions
making car commercials,
precisely because it has such a
wide variety of wide open
spaces, and roads of all types. Wide freeways, winding small
local roads, dust roads in
assorted colours from red to
grey to gold or white,
mountain roads, coast roads,
farm roads and roads through wilderness. Here are just a few
of the car commercial
industry's favourite scenic
roads to film on, all of them
within a very easy distance of
Cape Town.

Chapman's Peak Drive
This dramatic road winds
along the shoulders of the Cape
Peninsula from Hout Bay to
Noordhoek. Steep mountain
slopes plunge down into the ocean and the road hairpins
through pristine vegetation
against the blue backdrop of
the ocean. Its beautiful setting
and hair-raising twists and
turns make it a popular location for filming both in
commercials and movies. As a
toll road that is regularly
closed for maintenance or
during bad weather
conditions, it is quite straightforward to close the
road temporarily for filming.

Philadelphia Farmlands
The rolling wheat fields of the
Swartland just north of Cape
Town are frequently chosen
for car commercials. The road
winds, rises and dips through expansive emerald green fields
in winter and early spring,
followed by gold in summer
with the horizon defined by a
long line of mountains
receding into the distance. A network of minor provincial
roads criss-crosses this
farmland, where traffic isn't
heavy and can be stopped as
necessary during filming.

Avenues
Whether it is the endless
avenues of towering blue gum
trees lining some of the old
roads north of Cape Town, or
picturesque avenues of ancient oaks leading up to the great
wine estates, in the Cape
Winelands there is plenty of
choice if dappled shade and
serried ranks of tree trunks are
on the location brief.