Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/1072449
7 8 P E R S P E C T I V E | M A R C H / A P R I L 2 0 1 9 influential politicians on the planet. The story of how his politics contributed to changing how we live in the world today. And So It Goes Coincidently, preproduction began in Los Angeles on the week of Independence Day. I put down my bags as the production set up shop on the Sony lot in Culver City. Among the many challenges we were going to face, the biggest one would be the number of sets we needed to create to tell the story. Over one hundred and seventy-five different sets during five different administrations in the White House. Big or small, they all needed to be done in sixty shooting days. The other challenge was they needed to be all shot in the Los Angeles area. I met John Panzarella, the location manager, earlier in June. I had previously done some research and built a reference package on my own time during the spring in order to start the show. Each set was referenced and the ones that needed to be found on location were identified in a global approach to it all. So we hit the road over the sound of Tom Petty, who would end up being the soundtrack of these summer scouts in the valley and beyond. A task that became quite enjoyable in his company. The Greater Los Angeles area would supply the backgrounds for Jordan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Houston, Oklahoma City, D.C., London, Saudi Arabia, Casper, Wyoming, Vietnam, Cambodia and Milan, Italy. The film's subject and his politics had travelled quite a few miles during his time. With intensive searches from Thousand Oaks to Alhambra, Pasadena to Santa Clarita...John and his team nailed them all before Petty's voice sadly became silent at the end of September. The reality between the number of sets and number of shooting days also meant that the production had to move fast between setups. A good number of the sets ended up on stage for logistical reasons, but also because a lot of them could not be found or cheated on location due to the nature of what they were. Beyond the West Wing of the White House and areas of the living quarters, the production would need to recreate the Senate, the House of A B C