Confessions of a location scout.
May 12, 2015 10:04 AM Subscribe
"That’s when I realised we were looking for something that only exists in the movies." (slTheGrauniad)
100 Years of Set Locations - 2,001 Films Mapped
posted by the man of twists and turns at 10:14 AM on May 12, 2015 [4 favorites]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 10:14 AM on May 12, 2015 [4 favorites]
On Daredevil, they explain Hell's Kitchen looking the way it does in part because of the alien invasion from Avengers. I assume that while the big distraction with the giant space monsters was happening around near Grand Central, a bunch of Chitauri snuck off and surreptitiously installed a bunch of Dangerous Back Alleys and Creepy Empty Lots into the neighborhood just for fun.
posted by griphus at 10:22 AM on May 12, 2015 [16 favorites]
posted by griphus at 10:22 AM on May 12, 2015 [16 favorites]
Philadelphia has actual steam-filled shadowy back alleys lit only with flickering neon that you can use as shortcuts. Now those seemed like right proper costumed villain breeding grounds.
posted by The Whelk at 10:24 AM on May 12, 2015 [6 favorites]
posted by The Whelk at 10:24 AM on May 12, 2015 [6 favorites]
I love this kind of insider information, like the fact that there are only 4 alleys that fit the bill in NYC of "terrible-looking, scary alleys."
posted by xingcat at 10:26 AM on May 12, 2015 [5 favorites]
posted by xingcat at 10:26 AM on May 12, 2015 [5 favorites]
Burning barrels! Trash everywhere! Homeless people in the street! Where do we find it?”
Hmm. When I took the train from Boston to DC, there were some scary looking places near Baltimore and Delaware. That's all I got.
posted by Melismata at 10:30 AM on May 12, 2015 [1 favorite]
Hmm. When I took the train from Boston to DC, there were some scary looking places near Baltimore and Delaware. That's all I got.
posted by Melismata at 10:30 AM on May 12, 2015 [1 favorite]
If you watch a lot of 30 Rock you learn the recognize the loading area/corner right outside Silvercup Studioos very quickly
posted by The Whelk at 10:31 AM on May 12, 2015
posted by The Whelk at 10:31 AM on May 12, 2015
I love this kind of insider information, like the fact that there are only 4 alleys that fit the bill in NYC of "terrible-looking, scary alleys."
They're not, though! Not even in the slightest interpretation of scary. There is nothing on earth less scary and intimidating that Great Jones Alley, unless you have specific phobias of a $500 tab at dinner for 2 or bespoke tailoring.
posted by poffin boffin at 10:37 AM on May 12, 2015 [15 favorites]
They're not, though! Not even in the slightest interpretation of scary. There is nothing on earth less scary and intimidating that Great Jones Alley, unless you have specific phobias of a $500 tab at dinner for 2 or bespoke tailoring.
posted by poffin boffin at 10:37 AM on May 12, 2015 [15 favorites]
Carr's "Why Everyone Films At The Same Damn New York Chinese Restaurant" is a classic.
posted by ogooglebar at 10:46 AM on May 12, 2015 [10 favorites]
posted by ogooglebar at 10:46 AM on May 12, 2015 [10 favorites]
Hell, according to this, the MCU Hell's Kitchen is somewhere out past Newark...
posted by Ian A.T. at 10:48 AM on May 12, 2015
posted by Ian A.T. at 10:48 AM on May 12, 2015
I kind of wish I could visit, say, the Garment District, circa 1981, when Ms. 45 (content warning: rape) was shot. Zoë Lund and the city probably have equal credit in maintaining suspension of disbelief in that film. I'd make sure to go in the daytime, though.
posted by topynate at 10:53 AM on May 12, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by topynate at 10:53 AM on May 12, 2015 [1 favorite]
I never bring this up with actual New Yorkers, but I have a secret love for the dirty, magical city they show in Ghostbusters. As a semi-rural kid, my first exposure to city life was Sesame Street, Annie, and The Muppets Take Manhattan. It was a terrifying place where absolutely anything could happen, and I adored it.
I got to visit for the first time when I was about eleven. It was the first time I had ever been north of the Mason-Dixon Line, and I kept my parents in close view as we walked. Just once, thought, I made a wrong turn, not following them into a little antique shop as I thought I would, but into the open door of someone's studio, where a pair of mopeygoths were at work on la vie boheme. One of them was playing a guitar; the other, an androgynous young creature in full black, leaned against the wall and glared at me. I squeaked and ran away, terrified, then exhilarated -- New York! I thought. This is NEW YORK!
New Yorkers hate this kind of thing, and I do not blame them. The city today is cleaner and calmer, and I have never been the kind of person who would move to a place and rail about how much better and more authentic it was before a bunch of people moved there. Certainly, I would expect a set designer to understand that, as Wodehouse once ruefully said of his own settings, old New York is "gone with the Wind and is one with Nineveh and Tyre."
posted by Countess Elena at 10:57 AM on May 12, 2015 [10 favorites]
I got to visit for the first time when I was about eleven. It was the first time I had ever been north of the Mason-Dixon Line, and I kept my parents in close view as we walked. Just once, thought, I made a wrong turn, not following them into a little antique shop as I thought I would, but into the open door of someone's studio, where a pair of mopeygoths were at work on la vie boheme. One of them was playing a guitar; the other, an androgynous young creature in full black, leaned against the wall and glared at me. I squeaked and ran away, terrified, then exhilarated -- New York! I thought. This is NEW YORK!
New Yorkers hate this kind of thing, and I do not blame them. The city today is cleaner and calmer, and I have never been the kind of person who would move to a place and rail about how much better and more authentic it was before a bunch of people moved there. Certainly, I would expect a set designer to understand that, as Wodehouse once ruefully said of his own settings, old New York is "gone with the Wind and is one with Nineveh and Tyre."
posted by Countess Elena at 10:57 AM on May 12, 2015 [10 favorites]
And yet the Bronx reminded me of my travels in the midwest, where a visit to the grocery store might lead to a five-minute conversation with a clerk you’ve never met before about your recent vacation to Hawaii. There’s a wonderful, almost small-town spirit that permeates much of the Bronx, and I can easily say it’s the friendliest borough in New York.
So true. The Bronx is amazing. The setting sometimes looks very scary-gritty-New York, but then you talk to the people there and it is way more Mayberry than grimdark cop dramas would ever lead you to believe.
posted by a fiendish thingy at 11:14 AM on May 12, 2015
So true. The Bronx is amazing. The setting sometimes looks very scary-gritty-New York, but then you talk to the people there and it is way more Mayberry than grimdark cop dramas would ever lead you to believe.
posted by a fiendish thingy at 11:14 AM on May 12, 2015
Similarly, the South does not consist of red dirt and shacks built on stacks of river rocks with five old yellow dogs under the porch. The Kowloon Walled City has been demolished. Vietnam doesn't consist only of jungles...
posted by sonic meat machine at 11:29 AM on May 12, 2015 [4 favorites]
posted by sonic meat machine at 11:29 AM on May 12, 2015 [4 favorites]
I love this kind of insider information, like the fact that there are only 4 alleys that fit the bill in NYC of "terrible-looking, scary alleys."
Me too! Not just locations, but sets as well (as well as backlots that straddle the distinction between sets and locations -- the Munsters living on Wisteria Lane near the Psycho House, or Kirk and Spock wandering the ruined streets of Mayberry.
To take a single example for sets, I watched The West Wing quite closely and noticed that for the first few seasons, whenever Bartlet and staff flew anywhere, all the shots on Air Force One seemed to be at night. This was apparently because they had inherited their Air Force One set from, er, Air Force One which was set at night and so just had black velvet over the windows. Conversely, Bartlet's Oval Office got a minor makeover to be Kennedy's Oval Office for Thirteen Days.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 11:38 AM on May 12, 2015 [5 favorites]
Me too! Not just locations, but sets as well (as well as backlots that straddle the distinction between sets and locations -- the Munsters living on Wisteria Lane near the Psycho House, or Kirk and Spock wandering the ruined streets of Mayberry.
To take a single example for sets, I watched The West Wing quite closely and noticed that for the first few seasons, whenever Bartlet and staff flew anywhere, all the shots on Air Force One seemed to be at night. This was apparently because they had inherited their Air Force One set from, er, Air Force One which was set at night and so just had black velvet over the windows. Conversely, Bartlet's Oval Office got a minor makeover to be Kennedy's Oval Office for Thirteen Days.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 11:38 AM on May 12, 2015 [5 favorites]
Don't get me started on "Little House on the Prairie" and its depiction of Minnesota (that looks an awful lot like southern California) ...
posted by Melismata at 11:43 AM on May 12, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by Melismata at 11:43 AM on May 12, 2015 [1 favorite]
Don't get me started on "Little House on the Prairie" and its depiction of Minnesota (that looks an awful lot like southern California) ...
When I was a kid, I'd watch all of the network shows (Little House, MASH, Brady Bunch, etc) and it never occurred to me that the backgrounds all look the same.
Then, as an adult, I moved to Southern California, and driving down the freeway looking at the hills, it just hit me that, wow, everything really does look like CHiPS.
Now, I can't watch a movie/TV show without seeing it.
I imagine that people in Vancouver have the same problem these days.
posted by madajb at 12:00 PM on May 12, 2015 [9 favorites]
When I was a kid, I'd watch all of the network shows (Little House, MASH, Brady Bunch, etc) and it never occurred to me that the backgrounds all look the same.
Then, as an adult, I moved to Southern California, and driving down the freeway looking at the hills, it just hit me that, wow, everything really does look like CHiPS.
Now, I can't watch a movie/TV show without seeing it.
I imagine that people in Vancouver have the same problem these days.
posted by madajb at 12:00 PM on May 12, 2015 [9 favorites]
Don't get me started on "Little House on the Prairie" and its depiction of Minnesota (that looks an awful lot like southern California) ...
Similarly, I never quite got over the recently-concluded Justified using the brown, dusty hills of California as a stand-in for the green forests and hollers of my ancestral homeland of eastern Kentucky.
posted by HillbillyInBC at 12:12 PM on May 12, 2015 [4 favorites]
Similarly, I never quite got over the recently-concluded Justified using the brown, dusty hills of California as a stand-in for the green forests and hollers of my ancestral homeland of eastern Kentucky.
posted by HillbillyInBC at 12:12 PM on May 12, 2015 [4 favorites]
On another message board that I frequent, we were discussing the slightly disorienting experience of sitting in a movie theatre and seeing a scene shot outside of that same theatre. I briefly won the thread by relating my experience of sitting in a theatre auditorium and watching a scene shot in that same auditorium, which I likened to looking onto a mirror and not seeing yourself there.
However, I happily relinquished my crown to a guy who mentioned some otherwise forgettable YA film which had a scene filmed in a diner popular for film shoots. The guy related that across the street from the diner is a cinema, and during one shot of the two leads talking over dinner at a table by the plate-glass front window, he noticed an out-of-focus figure arriving at the front doors of the cinema and unlocking them, then entering. That was the cinema where he worked, that was him opening the door to come in one afternoon, and he noticed his inadvertent cameo while working as a projectionist, showing that film in that theatre. "Huh. There I am coming to work."
posted by ricochet biscuit at 12:15 PM on May 12, 2015 [48 favorites]
However, I happily relinquished my crown to a guy who mentioned some otherwise forgettable YA film which had a scene filmed in a diner popular for film shoots. The guy related that across the street from the diner is a cinema, and during one shot of the two leads talking over dinner at a table by the plate-glass front window, he noticed an out-of-focus figure arriving at the front doors of the cinema and unlocking them, then entering. That was the cinema where he worked, that was him opening the door to come in one afternoon, and he noticed his inadvertent cameo while working as a projectionist, showing that film in that theatre. "Huh. There I am coming to work."
posted by ricochet biscuit at 12:15 PM on May 12, 2015 [48 favorites]
i was probably in my late 20s before i finally realized that Bronx wasn't short for Brooklyn.
i thought it was some kind of native slang, like SoHo or The Village.
Well now don't I feel like the world's biggest dumbfuck hayseed from Oblivious Ignorantville. 39 lashes with a New York slice, if you please. One for every year of ignorance.
posted by romakimmy at 12:19 PM on May 12, 2015
i thought it was some kind of native slang, like SoHo or The Village.
Well now don't I feel like the world's biggest dumbfuck hayseed from Oblivious Ignorantville. 39 lashes with a New York slice, if you please. One for every year of ignorance.
posted by romakimmy at 12:19 PM on May 12, 2015
you are both exiled to trenton now, sorry.
posted by poffin boffin at 12:27 PM on May 12, 2015 [4 favorites]
posted by poffin boffin at 12:27 PM on May 12, 2015 [4 favorites]
My favourite Help Wanted ad of all time was from Highlander when it filmed in Vancouver. It went something like "Your job is to find a place where my guy can cut off someone's head, every week."
posted by wenat at 12:31 PM on May 12, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by wenat at 12:31 PM on May 12, 2015 [2 favorites]
Of course, these days, Vancouver is the set for just about every other TV show, from Once Upon a Time to iZombie to Flash -- and this summer, the next Star Trek movie!
posted by wenat at 12:37 PM on May 12, 2015
posted by wenat at 12:37 PM on May 12, 2015
Similarly, the South does not consist of red dirt and shacks built on stacks of river rocks with five old yellow dogs under the porch
Too true! Real southerners know it's usually five fat orange cats.
posted by thivaia at 12:47 PM on May 12, 2015
Too true! Real southerners know it's usually five fat orange cats.
posted by thivaia at 12:47 PM on May 12, 2015
omg it's Jersey
That's how one is supposed to react to Jersey, right? Like in the movies? 'Cause this whole Bronx/Brooklyn revelation has me all aflustered and discombobulated...
posted by romakimmy at 12:53 PM on May 12, 2015 [1 favorite]
That's how one is supposed to react to Jersey, right? Like in the movies? 'Cause this whole Bronx/Brooklyn revelation has me all aflustered and discombobulated...
posted by romakimmy at 12:53 PM on May 12, 2015 [1 favorite]
I wish there were alleys here to alleviate the mountains of garbage lining the streets every few days.
posted by Sangermaine at 12:55 PM on May 12, 2015
posted by Sangermaine at 12:55 PM on May 12, 2015
"The French Connection" captures the real New York of the early 1970s. That's the way it looked and that's the way it was. Also good are "The Taking of Pelham 1-2-3" (not the new version), "Godspell", and "Midnight Cowboy" (okay, that was 1960s). Not "Taxi Driver", interestingly enough. That was a kind of fakey, romanticized "bad" Manhattan. The real thing was more mundane and desolate. I like the way Gore Vidal put it during a talk show appearance in the 1970s: "You know you're in New York when you're riding in the cab from LaGuardia, and you look out the window, and every single piece of metal you see is battered and twisted -- all the guard rails, light posts, fences, benches -- as if it were being bent and distorted by all the anger in the city."
posted by Modest House at 12:57 PM on May 12, 2015 [6 favorites]
posted by Modest House at 12:57 PM on May 12, 2015 [6 favorites]
Metafilter: an alley to alleviate the mountains of garbage lining the Internet
posted by ogooglebar at 1:18 PM on May 12, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by ogooglebar at 1:18 PM on May 12, 2015 [1 favorite]
Don't get me started on "Little House on the Prairie" and its depiction of Minnesota (that looks an awful lot like southern California) ...
The end of Parks and Recreation was especially amusing for that. Look, a national park in Indiana! With dramatic mountains, covered in pine trees.
Here's the highest peak in Indiana; Here's Parks and Rec.
posted by damayanti at 2:08 PM on May 12, 2015 [9 favorites]
The end of Parks and Recreation was especially amusing for that. Look, a national park in Indiana! With dramatic mountains, covered in pine trees.
Here's the highest peak in Indiana; Here's Parks and Rec.
posted by damayanti at 2:08 PM on May 12, 2015 [9 favorites]
They even lampshade that in Eagleton "how do you have palm trees!?" " We're a microclimate"
posted by The Whelk at 2:53 PM on May 12, 2015 [4 favorites]
posted by The Whelk at 2:53 PM on May 12, 2015 [4 favorites]
Melismata: “Don't get me started on "Little House on the Prairie" and its depiction of Minnesota (that looks an awful lot like southern California) ...”That's funny, I thought it looked like Korea.
posted by ob1quixote at 3:24 PM on May 12, 2015
Don't forget about those famous Bronx mountains.
posted by octothorpe at 3:29 PM on May 12, 2015 [3 favorites]
posted by octothorpe at 3:29 PM on May 12, 2015 [3 favorites]
I annoy or astound my friends when we watch a movie shot in Montana and I accurately call out where they are in the landscape. Sometimes I even have pictures of the same spot. A benefit of having traveled over 500,000 miles in one state while working and recreating.
posted by ITravelMontana at 4:15 PM on May 12, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by ITravelMontana at 4:15 PM on May 12, 2015 [2 favorites]
There actually are some decent hills in southern Indiana, but they're mostly impressive because they're rising out of lower areas, whereas Hoosier Hill is just the highest point of a high-elevation (by Indiana standards) area. Take 37 south out of Indy toward Bloomington and you'll see some nice inclines.
posted by Pope Guilty at 4:18 PM on May 12, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by Pope Guilty at 4:18 PM on May 12, 2015 [1 favorite]
maybe they should just film in Detroit
posted by Jacqueline at 5:58 PM on May 12, 2015
posted by Jacqueline at 5:58 PM on May 12, 2015
> Don't get me started on "Little House on the Prairie" and its depiction of Minnesota (that looks an awful lot like southern California)
I grew up in So Cal. Most movies took place in very familiar landscapes and people eating breakfast had the same brand of milk we did. Sometimes when I'm riding the subway (in Boston) I forget and think I'm on one of the more boring Disneyland rides.
posted by benito.strauss at 6:11 PM on May 12, 2015
I grew up in So Cal. Most movies took place in very familiar landscapes and people eating breakfast had the same brand of milk we did. Sometimes when I'm riding the subway (in Boston) I forget and think I'm on one of the more boring Disneyland rides.
posted by benito.strauss at 6:11 PM on May 12, 2015
I had the uncanny experience of realizing that the sniper in an episode of The Americans was aiming directly at the front door of my building. I guess it passes for a DC hotel from the '80s.
posted by stargell at 6:34 PM on May 12, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by stargell at 6:34 PM on May 12, 2015 [1 favorite]
you are both exiled to trenton now, sorry.
And contrary to what you might have seen on old bridges, Trenton no longer makes and the world no longer takes.
posted by Drinky Die at 6:44 PM on May 12, 2015 [1 favorite]
And contrary to what you might have seen on old bridges, Trenton no longer makes and the world no longer takes.
posted by Drinky Die at 6:44 PM on May 12, 2015 [1 favorite]
“You know what I mean – the bad neighbourhoods! Burning barrels! Trash everywhere! Homeless people in the street! Where do we find it?”
I took a wrong turn in Detroit a couple of years ago and encountered a scene that was so directly out of central casting that it was eerie. The vacant lot had an actual burning trash barrel, decrepit couch, and everything else that you see in those movie scenes. The guys around the barrel waved, I waved back, and I kept driving, but that moment has stayed with me. It's not often that life echoes cinema that closely.
posted by Dip Flash at 7:41 PM on May 12, 2015 [2 favorites]
I took a wrong turn in Detroit a couple of years ago and encountered a scene that was so directly out of central casting that it was eerie. The vacant lot had an actual burning trash barrel, decrepit couch, and everything else that you see in those movie scenes. The guys around the barrel waved, I waved back, and I kept driving, but that moment has stayed with me. It's not often that life echoes cinema that closely.
posted by Dip Flash at 7:41 PM on May 12, 2015 [2 favorites]
Don't get me started on "Little House on the Prairie" and its depiction of Minnesota (that looks an awful lot like southern California)
I live in New Mexico and every time something is supposed to take place here it seems to actually be filmed in, like, Arizona or something. We have enough film incentives here for someone to have attempted to get people to call it "Tamalewood", which never caught on but I find hilarious, and everything that's actually filmed here takes place in, like, Ohio or some shit. (Breaking Bad is, of course, the exception.)
posted by NoraReed at 8:31 PM on May 12, 2015
I live in New Mexico and every time something is supposed to take place here it seems to actually be filmed in, like, Arizona or something. We have enough film incentives here for someone to have attempted to get people to call it "Tamalewood", which never caught on but I find hilarious, and everything that's actually filmed here takes place in, like, Ohio or some shit. (Breaking Bad is, of course, the exception.)
posted by NoraReed at 8:31 PM on May 12, 2015
@NoraReed: they've just started filming the second season of Manhattan here in Santa Fe. While it's so much better than if it were filmed in AZ (hey! look! cholla and piñon and juniper! no saguaro cacti!) or CA, the terrain still isn't quite right. They're pretty careful about shooting vistas, but if you've ever seen the views from Los Alamos, you know that ain't it.
posted by mon-ma-tron at 8:59 PM on May 12, 2015
posted by mon-ma-tron at 8:59 PM on May 12, 2015
I was thrilled about Manhattan until I realized it was all about fictional people and not a dramatization of what actually happened and then I lost interest. Is it any good?
posted by NoraReed at 9:25 PM on May 12, 2015
posted by NoraReed at 9:25 PM on May 12, 2015
Now when I see the opening of M.A.S.H I keep thinking they are going to a medevac at Max Hardcore's house.
posted by Meatbomb at 9:41 PM on May 12, 2015
posted by Meatbomb at 9:41 PM on May 12, 2015
I live in New Mexico and every time something is supposed to take place here it seems to actually be filmed in, like, Arizona or something.
Having grown up in SoCal I can tell you that if it looks like Arizona its probably the Inland Empire. It's where, ironically enough, Breaking Bad was originally set to take place.
posted by joedan at 3:48 AM on May 13, 2015 [1 favorite]
Having grown up in SoCal I can tell you that if it looks like Arizona its probably the Inland Empire. It's where, ironically enough, Breaking Bad was originally set to take place.
posted by joedan at 3:48 AM on May 13, 2015 [1 favorite]
Weirdly, the series Banshee which is set in a small town in rural Pennsylvania is actually filming it's next season in a small town in rural Pennsylvania.
posted by octothorpe at 5:06 AM on May 13, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by octothorpe at 5:06 AM on May 13, 2015 [1 favorite]
My wife and I have sort the opposite problem. We spot backlot locations from various studios. The Universal Town Square set is an easy example. Mostly known for being Hill Valley in the Back to the Future movies, we wound up watching Bye Bye Birdie, and there it is, looking pretty similar, 22 years earlier.
The biggest one we spot is the town square on the Warner Brother's lot. We took a tour there, and my wife is a big fan of Gilmore Girls. They were in the process of filming the final season, so the town square was still dressed out as Stars Hollow, CT. My wife had a blast when they let us walk around the set for a few minutes. Now they film Pretty Little Liars there, and all my wife does is call out what each building was in Gilmore Girls. The entire set was originally built for The Music Man, so obviously that is spotted as well. They did say that they tend to let the whole set rest a bit between productions so it isn't quite as obvious that they used it a few months back for a different show. We did sorta feel bad for the rest of the people in our group, because stuff they wanted to see wasn't filming so we saw a LOT of Gilmore Girls stuff.
It gets bad when we watch something set in New York, and see the occasional Palm Tree shows up in the distance, peeking over a set wall. I'm looking at you "Uptown Funk" Video. The WB New York Alley set is used all the damn time as well.
posted by Badgermann at 6:54 AM on May 13, 2015 [2 favorites]
The biggest one we spot is the town square on the Warner Brother's lot. We took a tour there, and my wife is a big fan of Gilmore Girls. They were in the process of filming the final season, so the town square was still dressed out as Stars Hollow, CT. My wife had a blast when they let us walk around the set for a few minutes. Now they film Pretty Little Liars there, and all my wife does is call out what each building was in Gilmore Girls. The entire set was originally built for The Music Man, so obviously that is spotted as well. They did say that they tend to let the whole set rest a bit between productions so it isn't quite as obvious that they used it a few months back for a different show. We did sorta feel bad for the rest of the people in our group, because stuff they wanted to see wasn't filming so we saw a LOT of Gilmore Girls stuff.
It gets bad when we watch something set in New York, and see the occasional Palm Tree shows up in the distance, peeking over a set wall. I'm looking at you "Uptown Funk" Video. The WB New York Alley set is used all the damn time as well.
posted by Badgermann at 6:54 AM on May 13, 2015 [2 favorites]
Dark Knight Rises was weird in how little bother they went to in making the NYC, Los Angeles and Pittsburgh scenes mesh together. In this shot from the truck/batwing chase, they went to the trouble of digitally erasing the cart holding the wing up but not Mt. Washington rising in the background. There are other shots where you clearly see billboards and logos for local Pittsburgh companies like Giant Eagle and UPMC that they could have easily masked but didn't bother. It all made for a really unconvincing Gotham City.
posted by octothorpe at 7:16 AM on May 13, 2015
posted by octothorpe at 7:16 AM on May 13, 2015
Here in DC, my friends and I always play the game "is that actually Metro?" whenever they do a scene involving a Metro stop. I'm pretty used to seeing it all the time, but visitors and tourist always comment on how distinctive the subway here looks, so when a movie sets up a fake metro station, it's really obvious. Not to mention the few times where it was definitely a NY Subway car with DC Metro's logos slapped on for "realism".
posted by numaner at 7:55 AM on May 13, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by numaner at 7:55 AM on May 13, 2015 [2 favorites]
I should add: some of the logistic involved in filming in DC Metro has to do with special guidelines that WMATA has set up. "If you can't do it on Metro, you can't do it on TV."
posted by numaner at 8:04 AM on May 13, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by numaner at 8:04 AM on May 13, 2015 [1 favorite]
@NoraReed: The first season had "cameos" by Niels Bohr and Oppenheimer (and they name drop people like Graves), and it's about the 2 development groups (implosion vs explosion), but it's mostly an ensemble drama, kinda soapy. Not quite Desperate Housewives of Los Alamos. The hubs is obsessed with anything to do with the Manhattan Project, so we're watching it. Overall, it's a well-acted WWII period piece. If you liked Homefront, you'll like Manhattan.
posted by mon-ma-tron at 5:21 PM on May 16, 2015
posted by mon-ma-tron at 5:21 PM on May 16, 2015
« Older The Man Who Beat HIV at Its Own Game for 30 Years | In search of One Lost Day Newer »
This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments
Previously on MetaFilter.
posted by yeahlikethat at 10:11 AM on May 12, 2015 [11 favorites]