Black; and The Mick, which is set in genteel, affluent Greenwich, Connecticut. Other shows that have featured the Red Cross building include Mascots, Scandal and CSI: Cyber,” Garrett says. It’s no surprise that Los Angeles is where a significant proportion of California’s filming activity takes place. But what is less well known is the city’s chameleon-like ability to be ‘somewhere else’. “Good Girls Revolt, set in New York, was based at a sound stage in Santa Clarita, but the outdoor shots were done in downtown Los Angeles,” says Amy Lemisch, director of the California Film Commission. “Doubling for New York in Los Angeles’ downtown area happens a lot. We also had CSI: New York shooting there. And Ballers, the American football series featuring The Rock, is set in Miami, but it also filmed in Los Angeles.” “California can also do period very well,” says FLICS (Film Liaisons in California Statewide) president and film commissioner for Humboldt and Del Norte Counties, Cassandra Hesseltine. “The Ben Affleck film Argo used parts of Los Angeles to re-create the Seventies, and the Beverly Hills Hilton, and parts of Crescent City are very Sixties-looking. There’s also a bluff in Crescent City that doubles for the East Coast, and up in Humboldt we’ve doubled
Ireland and Scotland. In the rainforest up there, we’ve also doubled Northern Europe. And then there’s the light. Mexican director Juan Andres Bueno [Amorous Pancho Villa] is filming his next feature here because he loves the California light.” NBC’s critically acclaimed family drama This is Us is set in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania — but shot in Los Angeles. Showrunner Dan Fogelman, who produced the filmed-in-Pittsburgh movie Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, grew up in Pittsburgh, but says he never gave a thought to filming This is Us in that city because the actors wanted to stay in Los Angeles. So it was down to location manager Duffy Taylor to match Los Angeles with Fogelman’s home town. “When I scout for different city looks here in Los Angeles I look for angles and views that we can build on to create a world that has a feeling of the city we are trying to represent,” Taylor says. “The areas we have filmed that have doubled for Pittsburgh are San Pedro, South Pasadena, Long Beach and some areas of Downtown Los Angeles. I remember in Episode 104, The Pool, the swimming pool was a difficult location. We were shooting around the end of summer and most of the public pools just couldn't let us in because they were so busy and we needed it for a full week. In the end we found a great location in Long Beach.”
AFRICA, TUSCANY, MEXICO... AND OF COURSE WE’VE BEEN SHOT FOR
SANTA BARBARA!
FILMSANTABARBARA.COM
LOCATION CALIFORNIA 2017
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