Where the **** is this supposed to be set?

[The Late Satoru Iwata]

The point about the quality of the light is spot on. It's tipped me off more than once that location fuckery is abound.

[kalowski]

Haven't seen the shows, but I instantly thought of the thread on here about one of those Netflix Harlan Coven adaptations (Safe, with the bloke from Six Feet Under, I think) which are apparently adapted from US books but shot in the UK, so everyone has big houses and many cars and sometimes guns, but they all live in Stockport.

Ha, yes, I saw one that had a scene at Stockport market and another that was filmed at Hale Train station.

[El Unicornio, mang]

The point about the quality of the light is spot on. It's tipped me off more than once that location fuckery is abound.

I remember someone from Vietnam saying that they could instantly tell some film wasn't filmed there (might have been Platoon or FMJ) because of the sky, something about the specific way clouds look in that part of the world

[George White]

The irony about the Fly is the original film IS set in Montreal, but shot in Fox's studios in Hollywood.

[steveh]

Any Italian horror film from the 70s set in 'New York', obviously.

Also seventies Italian detective films set in England (and mostly London or the Home Counties), many of which did have location shots here while interiors were in an Italian studio but were also sometimes rather more mixed up.

Recently watched not-very-good UFO / detective mish-mash Eyes Behind The Stars, where they've tried to choose countryside and houses that look a little more English but the vehicles are left-hand drive and some have Italian number plates, there are interior settings which are obviously European-style apartment blocks and on other interiors the doors, fittings and telephones are all wrong for the UK.

[13 schoolyards]

The point about the quality of the light is spot on. It's tipped me off more than once that location fuckery is abound.

I worked at a photo processing place back when they had such things, and I once had an very annoyed customer return their holiday snaps (taken on a trip to the UK) to me (we were in Australia) to be redone. I'd unthinkingly printed them using the colour settings on the big chemical machines for the Australian countryside, which is a very different and much brighter green than the rolling hills of the UK.

We all had a look at the returned photos and once we knew what the problem was it was very strange to see a lot of UK farmland rendered in the kind of vivid blue-greens you get here.

[George White]

Also seventies Italian detective films set in England (and mostly London or the Home Counties), many of which did have location shots here while interiors were in an Italian studio but were also sometimes rather more mixed up.

Recently watched not-very-good UFO / detective mish-mash Eyes Behind The Stars, where they've tried to choose countryside and houses that look a little more English but the vehicles are left-hand drive and some have Italian number plates, there are interior settings which are obviously European-style apartment blocks and on other interiors the doors, fittings and telephones are all wrong for the UK.

There is also a lot of Italian movies like The Forbidden Photos of a Lady Above Suspicion which have European locations but British accents and people using dollars.


RE:Columbo - Dagger of the Mind, most of the exteriors (plus the gents' club interior with Richard Pearson and some Crawfords' Biscuits for Cheese) were done in England, but most of the interiors (and the mansion) were done in LA, cos John Williams and Wilfrid Hyde White were tax exiles.
 This was done at Universal - .
Note the in-construction LWT/London Studios on the right.


Murder She Wrote would mix second unit of Wicklow and Cork with backlot/studio interiors.

The Avondale is now a chipper called Pineto, and the pub across the road briefly seen is now a massive Centra.




Watching Night Gallery - House with Ghost -is there a particular form of hauntological dissonance between mangy weatherbeaten stock footage of actual Mayfair and the Ukrainian Church- actual passers by caught in amber and cut to an obvious Hollywood set...




That picture of the Queen turns up everywhere at Universal, usually in tandem with a photo of Phil the Greek.

[Mr Trumpet]

A highlight of this is Green Street 2, which is definitely meant to be set in a UK prison.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUJPBpxGmAQ

[George White]

Montreal.
Montreal has doubled for Britain a lot, mostly with more convincing results. There is a very od CBS TVM from the 80s called Illusions, with a cameo from a voice actor from Mysterious Cities of Gold doing SHAKIN' INMAN.

Watching the 1983 US TV thriller Illusions, which manages to feel haunto - set partly in London, but mainly shot in Montreal but maybe because Canada is quite a haunto place, that it kind of works. It feels certainly more haunto than LA.
But part of why it feels off is the fact the locations feel real, they feel authentic, they almost look right, the 'London Hampton' looks sort of like the Savoy. And it doesn't overdo on the stock footage.






This prop sign feels particularly haunto.

But the weirdest, most Uncanny Valley haunto thing is part of the story is set at a gentlemen's outfitter's. The actor playing the role of the bitchy head of menswear, Terence Labrosse (who did voices for Mysterious Cities of Gold)has been styled to look like John Inman as Mr. Humphries.
 

[dead-ced-dead]

A big one for me is the Matt Le Blanc show, Episodes. Supposed to be LA, but quite obviously London (other than the odd scene shot on a specific LA street or canyon). Two big giveaways are the light and how ugly everyone is.

The light's been mentioned before. It's just somehow brighter over there, so they crank up the exposure to get it right, which doesn't make it any less London, it just gives everything a strange washed out quality.

Then there's the fact that in LA, everyone's got a beach body, pearly white teeth etc. and we just... don't. So every supporting role is played by these balding, hunched, yellow-snaggle toothed English trolls who sometimes pull off pretty decent American accents, but are just obviously not from LA. Boston or New York? Maybe. People are allowed to be ugly there. But not LA.

[Terry Torpid]

I think that Green Street clip is the worst yet.

[George White]

Documented a whole sea of American versions of the Blitz here.
https://twitter.com/Sperocaof/status/1692119436507980118

Another thread I did on US TV's idea of English pubs -https://twitter.com/Sperocaof/status/1736103779362041966

[George White]

I think that Green Street clip is the worst yet.

Marilyn Chambers' smut epic Insatiable (1980), though partly shot in Eighventies London and featuring veteran variety comedienne Joan Turner has scenes set in the English countryside that are so obviously shot in arid rural California, that they don't even change the numberplates. Also has a theme that sounds like a Jigsaw B-side.

It also may be the only American porno film to feature a National Express coach.

[Mr Banlon]

Rumble in the Bronx



The western Bronx is quite hilly, but doesn't have any mountains or Canada in it.

[notjosh]

Not sure if this fits with the thread, but I really enjoyed the scene in Last Christmas where they nip down an alley in Covent Garden, up a fire escape and through an abandoned building, and pop up at the skate rink in Ally Pally! Still trying to find that shortcut...

[Minami Minegishi]

Glad I'm not the only person who constantly pauses films and TV shows to google shop names and street signs to figure out filming locations.

I was re-watching all of Tales of the Unexpected a few years ago and I became obsessed with filming locations. One episode could take me a couple of hours to watch!

[George White]

I recently did it with the Beverly Hillbillies to see if the Hounslow chemist they shot outside for one of the London episodes was still there.
(I think it was).

[13 schoolyards]

Not sure if this fits with the thread, but I really enjoyed the scene in Last Christmas where they nip down an alley in Covent Garden, up a fire escape and through an abandoned building, and pop up at the skate rink in Ally Pally! Still trying to find that shortcut...

There's a US thriller filmed in Melbourne (back in the mid 90s, when such things were extremely rare) where the characters walk through the centre of town teleporting a couple of city blocks with each cut, going down a flight of stairs near Parliament House and coming out near the Arts Center across the river a few kilometres away.

[notjosh]

There's a US thriller filmed in Melbourne (back in the mid 90s, when such things were extremely rare) where the characters walk through the centre of town teleporting a couple of city blocks with each cut, going down a flight of stairs near Parliament House and coming out near the Arts Center across the river a few kilometres away.

Tom Hanks tells the story that he first got to know Nora Ephron after seeing her film This is My Life and noticing that a house moving sequence in New York was perfectly geographically consistent. He later ended up living in the same apartment complex as her and they worked together on New York classic You've Got Mail, which is itself geographically consistent, meaning you can visit all their homes and workplaces etc and walk the same commutes you see them do in the film. And I have!

[Norton Canes]

I was re-watching all of Tales of the Unexpected a few years ago and I became obsessed with filming locations. One episode could take me a couple of hours to watch!

Tales of the Unexpected marks one of my two fleeting TV appearances - we used to live in Norfolk, and Anglia filmed many of the episodes in little villages nearby. They came to ours to film 'A Picture of a Place' with Bill 'Selwyn Froggit' Maynard and I'm in the background of one scene, walking across the village square. Anyway, at point point a couple of the characters enter the village pub there, whereupon the action cuts to them walking into the interior of a completely different pub, that I suspect wasn't even in our village.

[Norton Canes]

Tales of the Unexpected marks one of my two fleeting TV appearances

The other one was on

Spoiler alert

Crimewatch

Ha ha just joking! It was in Llandudno, on 1988 BBC sitcom No Frills

[close]

[buzby]

The point about the quality of the light is spot on. It's tipped me off more than once that location fuckery is abound.

From the 'James Cameron's Titanic' thread in 2016:

I've always thought the colour of the sunlight was a bit off in it - it's a bit too warm and golden like you would expect in a Mexican autumn rather than the paler light you would get in a North Atlantic spring.

To me, that single issue has  always negated all the lavish SFX and building of the large scale replica ship and sinking set.

[George White]

From the 'James Cameron's Titanic' thread in 2016:To me, that single issue has  always negated all the lavish SFX and building of the large scale replica ship and sinking set.

See also Portsmouth/Acapulco in Yellowbeard.

The funny thing is that SOS Titanic mostly used British locations and Shepperton to recreate the Titanic. So, the Waldorf in London, the Liverpool Adelphi, the Isle of Man ferry, and a pumping station, BUT they went to the Queen Mary at Long Beach with a few of the actors (including David Warner) and then LA RENTABRIT types like Arthur Malet and Ian Abercrombie, to shoot some bits there, meaning it was the only authentically Brit thing they ever did, and looks and feels authentically British.

This also meant an imdb error, where there were two child actors in the Eighventies called Nicholas Davies, one working in Britain, one in LA, but the one in LA is in SOS Titanic, in the Queen Mary scenes, and since the other Nicholas Davies was in the 1982 Oliver Twist, another transatlantic Eighventies TV movie with several of the same cast as SOS Titanic (including a young lad named Tim Spall), you'd think not having known who they were, that they were the same lad.

[George White]

Watching a Murder She Wrote set in London wwith Jean Marsh and the dissonance between contemporary stock shots of Wimpy and ads for Chicken Tonight and the mannered, Americanised world it portrays (Jim Piddock as an Empire journalist!) and vintage shots of 60s London

[beanheadmcginty]

The latest Statham throatpuncher "The Beekeeper" has a scene that is supposed to be a bridge in rural America but it's quite clearly the Isle of Sheppey. In fact, I got the suspicion the whole film was made in the UK pretending to be the States because it's absolutely chock full of British actors doing fucking appalling American accents.

[gabrielconroy]

Full Metal Jacket

This Is England

[Mister Six]

Not sure if this fits with the thread, but I really enjoyed the scene in Last Christmas where they nip down an alley in Covent Garden, up a fire escape and through an abandoned building, and pop up at the skate rink in Ally Pally! Still trying to find that shortcut...

I never really got to enjoy this weird "Hang on..." experience until I saw that Mission: Impossible film where Tom Cruise goes to Dubai and basically teleports up and down Sheikh Zayed Road, from the Burj Khalifa to the World Trade Centre and then to a bridge that's further up the road. The sandstorm is bollocks too - it doesn't hit like a volcanic explosion, it's more like crunchy yellow mist.

This really is a different topic though.

[Mr Banlon]

I used to go to Black Park country park near Slough quite a bit when I was a kid. It's in countless Hammer films doubling for eastern and central European forest-y bits.

General Midwinter's 'Texas mansion' in Billion Dollar Brain is Osterley Park House in Hounslow.

[Mr Banlon]

There's a bit in one of the Mesrine films that is supposed to be 60s London, and it's got a red post box, mini cooper, double-decker bus, black cab, british bobby and people walking about dressed like the dancers at the beginning of Austin Powers.

[George White]

'Boston'/Bromley in the Haunting (1999).
And a film otherwise mainly shot in LA.
https://www.reelstreets.com/wp-content/uploads/Films/haunting,_the/haunt101.jpg