The Location Managers Guild International (LMGI) is the largest organization of Location Managers and Location Scouts in the motion picture, television, commercial and print production industries. Their membership plays a vital role in the creativ
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A lthough Stranger Things has a considerable number of young actors, the impact on the location team is minimal. "Mainly, we need to find places to school them or place the school trailer," Holley says. "Kids can only work 9½ or 10½ hours, de- pending on their age, but there are enough adults in the show so we can split our days between kids and adults. "When we shot our library in Season 1, the building we ended up choosing was in East Point, the town I was born in. It's just south of Atlanta, about a three-mile drive to the city limits. The library was on the state's Places in Peril list. It had been unused and fell into disrepair. We were in jeopardy of losing it because it was so far gone. It had a lot of mold, lead paint and asbestos. As a result, no one had ever shot there. People would get quotes on how to fix it, but the city was of the opinion, 'That's on you. Thank you if you want to fix it, but if you want to shoot there, those costs are yours.' I came up with this idea and pitched them a deal. 'We'll do the renovation and abatement to clean it up and give the building back to the city. The city would then have a workable shooting stage, but they would have to set up a fund used exclusively to rehabilitate other buildings and make them available for filming.' "It goes back to my love of architecture. Old East Point Library is not much to look at on the outside but is beautiful on the inside. All the old fixtures are still there, as is the beautiful inlay for the bookshelves. It's just a gorgeous space, and now it's available to everyone. The city loves it, and it has become a hub for Atlanta filming. I don't want to toot my own horn but I definitely think I had a positive impact on that." As for finding the cabin in the woods, he didn't. "I didn't think most traditional cabins in the woods would be all that accessible or shootable," he says. "We found some woods on the property where the pumpkin patch was, and we built a cabin. We left it on the property (Sleepy Hollow farm in Powder Springs) and have a standing agreement with the owner to come back." The Upside Down provided its own challenges. "The Upside Down is everywhere ultimately," Holley says. "Every location can be part of it because that world is a mirror of our world." Talking about some of the other filming spots, KALM Carey says, "One fun location from the first season was the abandoned junk- yard. I'd actually found it a few years earlier for another film proj- ect (HBO's Lewis and Clark) that got shut down. When I first came onto Stranger Things and discovered they were looking for a junk- yard, I pulled it up on my computer. I told Tony there could be some cool techno-crane shots. It was owned by this guy who has a hobby of collecting these old cars." "All the junkyard scenes feature an abandoned bus," Paterson adds. "In Season 1, the kids first stumble across the junkyard while searching for the Gate and later hide out there following the Hawkins Power and Light van chase. In Season 2, it's prominently featured in the scene where Dustin and Steve go chumming for Dart and the demodog fight sequence that ensues." Adds Holley, "It's surrounded by granite outcroppings and looks fantastic on camera. The owner had 40 acres, and he was just a collector. He sold it in the off season but never fear. The new owner was aware of the history behind it and reached out and said, 'If you guys want to come back, I'm open.' Since the show is such a success, when you tell people who you are, a show like this never gets a negative reaction." B ut there is a downside to popularity. "It's certainly led to heightened security measures, especially while on loca- tion," producer Paterson adds. "Social media has been problematic in instances of locations being shared with the gen- eral public online. Our goal is to preserve the content of upcom- ing seasons for our viewers, and we go to great lengths in our efforts. While it's great to have such a large and devoted follow- ing, it does present new challenges at every turn." "Essentially, everyone I talk to goes on an NDA (non-disclosure agreement) immediately," Holley says. "This started in Season 2." Carey, who spent his Stranger Things downtime working on Spider- Man: Homecoming and Ant-Man and the Wasp, points out, "There really are no easy locations." His biggest test came in Season 1. "I had a really hard time finding a location for a bar scene. Two ac- tors are sitting in a bar, and they have a fistfight in an alley. Most bars don't want to stick with the period look. They want the TVs. And even if something is shot outside, the surroundings have to have the right period look." He finally found his location for the "Hideaway" bar in Stockbridge. "It was a local pool hall that had been in opera- tion as a family business for decades," he says. "It first appeared in episode 4 of Season 1 and reappeared briefly in episode 9 of Season 2." Carey, who studied journalism at the Univer- sity of Alabama before taking a production management class in his last semester, got his first job from his current boss. "My pro- fessor told me to read up on location work, and I decided that's what I wanted to do. I called home and told my mom I wanted to have a career in film, and she freaked out and called my aunt and told her I was making this crazy deci- sion. Not long afterward, a key assistant knocked on my aunt's door and told her there was going Scientists search for malevolent forces at Hawkins Lab