Malta Film Studios

Where it sits. Malta Film Studios occupies a stretch of the Rinella headland in Kalkara, on the coast just east of the Grand Harbour entrance, between Fort Ricasoli and Fort Rinella. From the coast road you see a fenced compound, low buildings, and — the reason the place exists — the rims of two very large open-air water tanks set on the cliff edge above the sea. The location was not chosen for scenery. It was chosen because the ground here is high, flat and directly above deep blue water on an east-facing coast with reliable light.

The story behind it. The complex opened in 1964 as Mediterranean Film Studios, at a moment when European producers were looking for somewhere in the Mediterranean to shoot marine sequences without the expense and unpredictability of working at sea. It has since passed into state hands and now operates as Malta Film Studios under the country's film commission. Its business has never really been sound stages; Malta's stages are modest by international standards. The business is water, and the studios have spent six decades as one of a very short list of places on earth where a production can sink a ship on schedule.

How the tanks work. There are two principal exterior tanks: a large, relatively shallow one for surface work, and a smaller but much deeper one for underwater and submerged photography, plus a covered tank for controlled interior shooting. The trick that makes them valuable is the horizon. Each exterior tank is built with its seaward wall dropped to the level of the water surface, so that when the tank is filled the water inside runs visually into the Mediterranean beyond. Frame a camera low across the tank and there is no join: the actor is apparently in the open ocean, while in reality standing on a rig in two metres of controlled, warm, filtered water with a crane, a wave machine and a safety diver just out of shot. Weather at this latitude is dependable enough that a schedule can be planned around it, which is the other half of the proposition.

On screen. The tanks' filmography reads as a history of maritime cinema. A famously over-budget 1980 adaptation of Raise the Titanic drove the enlargement of the deep tank; Ridley Scott's White Squall used the facility in the mid-1990s; the submarine drama U-571 worked here in 1999 and 2000. Later productions include Troy, Steven Spielberg's Munich, Captain Phillips and 13 Hours. Many of these shot elsewhere in Malta as well — Fort Ricasoli, ten minutes along the same road, has hosted the large exterior sets for Gladiator, Game of Thrones and Troy — so a single production often used the fort for land and the tanks for water. Malta backs this with a cash rebate on qualifying local spend that has been set at rates competitive with anywhere in Europe, which is why crews keep returning.

How the real place differs. Visitors sometimes expect a back lot with standing sets and a gift shop. It is not that. Between productions the tanks are drained, and what you see is a pair of enormous empty concrete basins with a rusting gantry, some containers, and a windsock. The magic is entirely a matter of camera height and post-production; standing on the rim, the illusion of a continuous sea is invisible from anywhere except roughly where the lens goes. That gap between the industrial reality and the screen result is the most interesting thing about the site.

What you can actually do. The studios are a working facility and are not open for casual visits; there is no ticketed tour, and during a production the perimeter is closed and patrolled. What is open is the coast road and the ground around it, from which you can see the compound and the tank walls, and Rinella Bay just below, a small rocky inlet used by local swimmers. Occasional open days and film festival events have given the public access in the past, and there are recurring government plans to expand the site with new sound stages, so current status is worth checking. For anyone interested in how the island earns its screen credits, the honest itinerary is to look at the studios from the road, then walk to Fort Rinella, which is properly open, and view Fort Ricasoli from the outside or from a harbour boat.

Getting there and timing. Buses from Valletta and the Three Cities serve Kalkara and the Rinella coast road; by car it is about fifteen minutes from Valletta around the head of the harbour. There is no shade on this stretch of coast, so the cooler half of the year is more comfortable for walking it. Late afternoon light coming off the water towards the harbour mouth is the best of the day. Allow an hour for the whole Rinella stretch — studios, bay and battery — and add the naval cemetery on the ridge above if you have a second hour.