FEATURE SEEING DOUBLE
Long Beach, a dead ringer for Miami
Taylor adds: “I would say it's easier to find Pittsburgh in Los Angeles than Los Angeles in Pittsburgh.” According to Charla Teeters, film commissioner for Imperial County in southeastern Southern California, the region features some places that are hugely popular for out-of-this-world scenes. “The Salton Sea is popular for pretty much every kind of production,” she says. “We’ve had music videos, films, TV series and even catalogue shoots around there because it’s run down, salt-encrusted, other-worldly and post-apocalyptic — plus there are algae in the salt crust that create unusual colors, such as bright red. And then we have the Glamis Dunes — also known as the Algodones Dunes — which are around 40 miles long, and have been used to double for the Sahara desert. They were also used in Return of the Jedi when, among other scenes, Jabba’s barge was constructed there.” American Sniper used an abandoned milk distribution center in the town of El Centro. “The place used to be an ice house, so it’s huge and has really thick walls,” Teeters says. “The scene in American Sniper was the one where he’s on a roof in Afghanistan in the middle of a sandstorm with a helicopter flying over. We also have the Superstition Mountains area, which has been used to double for Mars in Pixar/Disney’s Moms are from Mars — and with its rocks, sand and dunes, it has also been used as the Middle East.” One of the state’s best-kept secrets is how often it doubles for Miami — especially Orange County and Long Beach. “CSI: Miami was filmed here and, more recently, the hit series Rosewood has been a regular visitor,” says Orange County film commissioner Jan-
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RIS Bunting, one of two location managers working on the police procedural Rosewood, which is set in Miami, has been on the series since it started shooting. “When they showed me the pilot, it was all Long Beach and Huntington Beach,” he says. “And Rosewood still uses those two cities a lot — they have the Miami look already and really all we had to do to finish it off was to bring in plants, because it’s very dry there.” Bunting says California’s film offices and authorities have been “accommodating to quite extraordinary degrees”. He adds: “For example, in one episode we had a hostage situation, and we were using Huntington Beach’s City Hall, which is a working building, to double as the police headquarters. But they let us get on with it because they trust us.” Bunting is also impressed with the Port of Los Angeles: “It has some really fantastic properties. Last year, we filmed some Rosewood scenes on the roof of a huge building called Warehouse 1. We also found a couple of locations in Anaheim that were very Miami-like.”
LOCATION CALIFORNIA 2017
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