Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/765720
Another important set was the hospital(s). After searching all over for a location that could work, the one that was found backed out at the last moment. We needed an emergency room and admitting area, several patient rooms, a triage area and two operating rooms (ORs). None of the possible locations had available ORs, so I picked one location, a recovery hospital, with the best hallways and built two operating rooms inside a large video education classroom. The existing floor in that room was usable, and the rest was built at the location in just three days. Ron's set dressing brought the realism that was necessary to make it all work. The hallways were jammed with hundreds of gurneys and beds to re-create the post-bombing chaos. A dermatology waiting area was turned into a triage space that also worked very well. For the patient rooms at different hospitals, a couple of available patient rooms were redressed, and a couple of dialysis rooms were redressed for the ICU. Next up was the house and yard where the younger bomber was captured hiding in a boat. The actual house owner where this occurred asked that we not use his house, so a very similar one had to be found so the existing FLIR thermal imaging video shot from a helicopter on the night of the actual event could be used. The real house had an unusually deep backyard that was very difficult to find. Location manager Mark Fitzgerald suggested we look at his hometown of Framingham, a bit west of Boston. It was there I found a candidate, a Queen Anne, with left side driveway and a reasonably deep backyard. We had to build a garage to match the real one, a new fence around the yard and even take down a large elm tree that the owner wanted removed anyway. The Boston chief of police came to see it and verified its authenticity. I have never seen more police on a set in my life. The last big lump was the shootout street where the two bombers took on the Watertown Police. We had originally planned to shoot it on the actual Watertown street where the events went down. After surveying the neighborhood, the residents overwhelming wanted the production there, but a city council member had objections