Yesterday, I headed down to Caerwent to see if I could find out anything about the earlier reports that Captain America: The First Avenger will indeed be filming just a mere half an hour from where I live. Well, the answer is seemingly yes. Of course, DCMarvelFreshman‘s article did point out that they wouldn’t be in Caerwent until September so I didn’t go there expecting to them right in the middle of filming! However, I did manage to grab a few quick pictures on my iPhone (so apologies in advance for them not being fantastic quality…I plan on taking a proper camera with me in September as long as I can find out when they‘re there!) to give you guys an idea of where I was told they’ll be shooting along with the statements from several people who helped confirm that Caerwent is indeed one of the locations for the Marvel Studios blockbuster!
Caerwent is home to a WWII era military base and Royal Navy propellant factory, the main building of which you can see below.
This location, along with the surrounding buildings on the site, have been used several times in the past to film BBC Wales TV shows like Doctor Who and Torchwood. When I asked a couple who live nearby the camp whether they had seen any sign of film crews nearby they told me that they did see a lot of activity around the area a few months ago and what they described as a “crew” who were looking around the base for several hours at a time, taking photographs and using cameras. I checked to see whether this could have actually been anything to do with the BBC but they said it was unlikely as they’re usually in black “BBC” vans whereas these people were in people carriers and unmarked white vans.
As you can see from the pictures above, I wasn’t really able to get that close. This was for a few reasons. Firstly, they’re doing a lot of building work outside of the camp which meant a lot of the surrounding site was cut off and secondly, the whole place is private military property and when I tried to approach the main West entrance to ask the guys there whether they could tell me anything about the movie I was asked to leave. Immediately!
I did snap a quick close up of one of the buildings though, which as you can see is (like the majority of those I could see) is in a pretty derelict condition.
Before I left, I spent some time asking around the village to see whether anyone had seen anything and while I was unable to get any concrete information, I was told by one person that they knew for a fact that a “big Hollywood blockbuster” would be filming in the area this Autumn (would that be “Fall” to you guys in the US!?) and when I started asking whether anyone had seen anything around the vicinity of the base saying “Frostbite” or “Captain America“ several people said they had seen signs appear a few months ago, corroborating the story I was told that a crew had been there, but they couldn’t remember exactly what they said. However, two people did say that “Frostbite” sounded familiar.
So there you have it. I may not have come away with any pictures of Chris Evans as Captain America or Hugo Weaving as the Red Skull but I hope I’ve given you guys a better idea of where they’re planning on filming part of this movie. With any luck, I’ll be able to find out exactly when they’ll be in the area because despite the fact that this is a huge piece of land (which surely makes it perfect for filming the type of scenes you might expect in a movie set during WWII) it’s also quite exposed, which should make it easy to take a pile of decent pictures of the action this September!