Northward, Ho!

This promotional short shows how a movie studio must often prepare a remote location before shooting one foot of film. In this case, MGM went to an area near the Payette Lakes in Idaho to film Northwest Passage (1940). After loggers clear several acres of trees, the ground is graded. Studio carpenters then build a 'remote studio,' as well as buildings that will eventually look like a town on the American frontier in the mid-1700s.