Location Managers Guild International

48 • LMGI COMPASS | Winter 2021 Downtown Los Angeles. Photo by Alex Georges/LMGI buildings. Who owns it? Could they be friendly? What approvals do we need to get? I had fun filming the exterior steps of the West Plaza at Los Angeles City Hall. The parking was a dirt space by the building. If you're filming there, it's a great help. "With City Hall [We filmed the exterior steps of the South Plaza, the rotunda, hallways and bathrooms], though, you've got to write everything down with quadruple copies. It's not just a matter of speaking with the site representative, who's a very experienced person with filming. He told us, 'Let me run it through the process.' He knew he was taking care of us. Everyone was coordinated, but there were all these emails and questions. We'd be on pins and needles wondering, 'Can we remove the soap dispenser?' In one bathroom, all the fixtures had to be replaced. I loved it. It was fun." "There are bits and pieces of old L.A. in DTLA," LM Alexander Georges says. "Mostly, they're east of Broadway. We had a lot of the modern stuff removed, including more than 100 parking meters, not to mention streetlights and traffic lights. Other things we left for the VFX crew to remove. Then we put everything back to the way it was, although we left some billboards up for a while. We worked with two teams of VFX people. We'd all go to every location and talk about what they would add and what we would brush away." Finding Los Angeles 1930s was one of the biggest challenges of bringing Perry Mason to life. "The city is not that big, and a lot of it has been modernized," Jansen says. "I was scouting, and I had my scouts out there. We did as much research as we could. We tried to lock in to streets and buildings and go after them. "Tim Van Patten/director, John Goldsmith/production designer, David Franco/DP, Justin Ball/VFX, Aida Rodgers/Co-EP and myself would walk the streets in Downtown Los Angeles and San Pedro and look for camera angles, backdrops where we could create a world around our characters. If you look at the buildings from the second floor up, the city looks amazing. It's down at ground level you see security gates, parking lots, aluminum windows, modern glass storefronts and other modern elements. We had to peel all that away." Jansen credits DTLA with helping make the show successful. "City agencies worked with us on removing streetlights, traffic signals, meters and traffic signage" he says. "We also had a team of vendors who removed security cameras, gates, business signage and light fixtures off buildings. They stripped out as much of modern Los Angeles as they could. "We had a small army of people—artisans and vendors—we were constantly coordinating. For the most part, the places we were going into and doing all this stuff to were open to us and receptive. Eventually, the art department would come in and put period-correct elements back." Jansen worked closely with FilmLA. "They were very supportive of the project," he says. "They have some stars over there that really helped—Amy Kradolfer, Yulizza Ramierez, Arturo Pena, Katy Mongan and Sara Nuebauer." LM Alexander Georges adds, "Permitting was sometimes difficult, but FilmLA was very helpful. So was Joan Aguado in South Pasadena. Perry Mason was a large, ambitious production, and we needed to spend a lot of time with these agencies. Sometimes you get filming fatigue trying to turn a 'No' into a 'Yes.' You want quality vendors who are prepared to make things happen. You throw something against the wall to see what sticks. There was a lot of extra outreach on the show to make sure we had enough advocates to do what we came to do." Downtown Parade: In the original draft of episode 107, Strickland (Shea Whigham) falls asleep in his car outside of Elder Seidel's house, allowing Seidel (Aaron Stanford) to get away," Jansen says. "Tim wanted something more compelling and dynamic so he came up with the cat-and-mouse chase downtown with Strickland chasing Seidel through the city streets and ultimately losing him in the parade. In a few lines on a page, we went from two actors at one location in a quiet neighborhood to clearing multiple city blocks in DTLA with hundreds of background actors, picture cars and hundreds of crew members. "The parade through DTLA was a lot of work but very fun to put together. We had so many city streets we'd worked on to get these scenes. You add in the background actors in their wardrobe,

• Cover
• 20-27 In My City Chicago
• 40-51 Cover-Story_Perry Mason
• 62-63 Martini shot