‘Ultimate Fighter’ taping 14th season with Bisping, Miller

Talk about a quick turnaround.

UFC's "The Ultimate Fighter" crowned its 13th-season winner Saturday at the Palms -- and begins production on the show's 14th season this week.

The six-week schedule will take the shoot through mid-July, reports Jamie Campione, supervising producer for the Spike series.

And while the 14th season may feature competitors in two new weight classes, the rest of the picture remains pretty much the same.

Fourteen contenders will compete for the latest "Ultimate Fighter" title -- and a UFC contract -- under the tutelage of coaches Michael Bisping and Jason "Mayhem" Miller.

The aspiring fighters are in the 135- and 145-pound weight classes, which UFC never featured before this year's merger with World Extreme Cagefighting.

The contenders and coaches aren't the only members of the "Ultimate Fighter" team, however.

About 70 crew members follow their moves, Campione notes; many are from Las Vegas, but others come from Los Angeles, Florida, New York and Hawaii.

And while the show has settled into a comfortable production routine, "every season is different," she says, "and you have to roll with the punches."

Reality check: Elsewhere on the reality-TV beat, A&E's "After the First 48" returns to Las Vegas on Thursday for a four-day shoot, updating viewers on the aftermath of 2005's Timothy Hadland murder case.

Hadland, a former Palomino Club doorman, was found shot to death near Lake Mead, reportedly for bad-mouthing the club to cabdrivers; ex-Palomino owner Luis Hidalgo Jr., son Luis Hidalgo III and Deangelo Carroll all were convicted in the murder-for-hire case.

The Food Network's "Cupcake Wars" also plans a Las Vegas return, with Serendipity 3 at Caesars Palace a scheduled location for the third-season visit. British TV's "Justin Lee Collins: Weird & Wonderful Vegas Adventure" is expected to wrap a three-week shoot at locations including the Marriage Bureau downtown.

And Comedy Central's "Sports Show" anticipated a Saturday-night visit to Nitro Circus at the MGM Grand Garden -- without host Norm Macdonald, but with Norm's "nephew" Kyle (alias performer Kyle Mooney) reporting from the field.

School pictures: A pair of student films also figure in the local production picture.

Friday and Saturday, "A Roadtrip Story" is scheduled to hit the Strip -- and, before that, the road into town -- for a coming-of-age comedy about four friends who travel from Dallas to L.A. to rescue a friend in trouble.

In addition to its on-the-way location, however, Las Vegas "provides a locale for the guys to experience what the 'grown-up' world is like in a fast-paced, overwhelming atmosphere," explains student filmmaker Charles Wallace of Arkansas' Hendrix College.

And, over the weekend, students from the New York Film Academy were expected for a three-day shoot on "The Edge," a short about a 28-year-old man who chooses success over love -- and comes to regret that choice.

In addition to the inevitable Strip scenes (shot from a limousine), the production also will visit two local nightclubs, according to producer Daniel Topandasani), who's co-directing the film with screenwriter Yoshua Shelton.

It may be "a town of excess and debauchery, but it is also a town of glamour and glitz," Topandasani explains. "Las Vegas speaks to the audience like no other city in the world could, and we found that this filled a vital requirement as part of our visual storytelling exercise."

Carol Cling's Shooting Stars column runs Mondays. Contact her at ccling@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0272.