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One of my pet peeves when watchign a movie is when it takes place someplace but its so obvious watching that it was filmed somewhere else. Some cities are also harder to duplicate on screen than others.
I think the worst is Washington, D.C. Its the one city that is especially hard to duplicate yet filmmakers do it all the time. New York, Las Vegas, Miami, and New Orleans are also hard to recreate but filmmakers usually go on location to do these places or at least use a green screen with accurate scenery in the background.
But with DC there are SO many ways that filmmakers always get it wrong. First is that it is the only major US city without any skyscrapers due to the height restrictions saying you can't have anything taller than the Washington Monument. Many films like Transformers 3 or the Jackal and the "24" serie show massive, towering skyscrapers, in particular Transformers which was made mostly in Chicago. Transformers actually is one of the most geographically inaccurate films ever made. They also have a chase scene that is supposed to happen in DC and was made in Chicago and had LARGE very visible highway signs showing freeways and suburbs in Illinois. There is also a part that is supposed t obe at Dulles airport in neighboring Virginia but was filmed in the DESERT in California. Another thing is that nobody EVER gets the DC Metro right. In the Jackal they made it in Montreal, in 24 they used th Los Angeles subway and there is another movie forgot the name of it where they made it in Prague, Czech Republic and put up English signs. In "24" there was a part that was really filmed in LA and you can see desert mountains in the background along with the high rise buildings. Its amazing how inaccurate filmmakers show DC since it is such a visited city that most people have been to.
Another very prominent mistake in a movie with when they substituted Dallas for Detroit in the first Robocop movie. They show Reunion Tower, one of the main Dallas landmarks, all over the film. One movie where I think they duplicate New York quite well is Rumble in the Bronx with Jackie Chan which was actually made in Vancouver, Canada.
One of my pet peeves when watchign a movie is when it takes place someplace but its so obvious watching that it was filmed somewhere else. Some cities are also harder to duplicate on screen than others.
I think the worst is Washington, D.C. Its the one city that is especially hard to duplicate yet filmmakers do it all the time. New York, Las Vegas, Miami, and New Orleans are also hard to recreate but filmmakers usually go on location to do these places or at least use a green screen with accurate scenery in the background.
But with DC there are SO many ways that filmmakers always get it wrong. First is that it is the only major US city without any skyscrapers due to the height restrictions saying you can't have anything taller than the Washington Monument. Many films like Transformers 3 or the Jackal and the "24" serie show massive, towering skyscrapers, in particular Transformers which was made mostly in Chicago. Transformers actually is one of the most geographically inaccurate films ever made. They also have a chase scene that is supposed to happen in DC and was made in Chicago and had LARGE very visible highway signs showing freeways and suburbs in Illinois. There is also a part that is supposed t obe at Dulles airport in neighboring Virginia but was filmed in the DESERT in California. Another thing is that nobody EVER gets the DC Metro right. In the Jackal they made it in Montreal, in 24 they used th Los Angeles subway and there is another movie forgot the name of it where they made it in Prague, Czech Republic and put up English signs. In "24" there was a part that was really filmed in LA and you can see desert mountains in the background along with the high rise buildings. Its amazing how inaccurate filmmakers show DC since it is such a visited city that most people have been to.
Another very prominent mistake in a movie with when they substituted Dallas for Detroit in the first Robocop movie. They show Reunion Tower, one of the main Dallas landmarks, all over the film. One movie where I think they duplicate New York quite well is Rumble in the Bronx with Jackie Chan which was actually made in Vancouver, Canada.
I won't be as critical as the second poster, so here's my contribution:
I watched "The Chicago Code" on Hulu and while there were plenty (if not all?) outdoor scenes that were filmed in Chicago, there were some scenes that were "someplace" but were obviously (if you know the city) "not that someplace".
One murder in the show was in Lincoln Park (the neighborhood) and it featured CTA train tracks over the street... which there is not a single inch of train track that runs parallel and on top of a street in Lincoln Park. They just shot something in the Loop (downtown) and said it was Lincoln Park. It was *minor* in the grand scheme of things, but still inaccurate.
Also my spouse at one point in time watched "Samantha Who?" on Hulu and they gave an address for something like "1200 E. Madison". That's fine and dandy... but that would be in the middle of Lake Michigan. So unless every employee/resident of that building was SCUBA certified, that was a complete oversight, once again *minor* in the grand scheme of things, but something that people who know the city scoff at and say, "Hollywood... HA!"
One movie where I think they duplicate New York quite well is Rumble in the Bronx with Jackie Chan which was actually made in Vancouver, Canada.
Really? Are you kidding? That one is one of the worst films at duplicating a borough of New York ever made.
Except for a few actual shots of New York cut in at the beginning of the film the external shots from Vancouver are so laughably and obviously not New York, that even at 14 years of age when I watched that film I realized it looked nothing like the Bronx--and that was before I had even been to New York.
For one--in about a third of the shots, there are huge mountains and hills in the distance across the water. Hmm...that must be the Catskills right? There's also scenes set in coniferous forests or in parks that looks surprisingly similar to the flora of the Pacific Northwest. There's also apparently a golf course with hills in the background in the middle of the Bronx. Also, the Bronx in 1993 didn't have gleaming modern condo towers and office buildings making up the majority of the skyline. As well as the fact that they don't even bother to edit out recognizable landmarks like the Canada Place building on the waterfront.
It's just a corny and harmless Jackie Chan action film, but it's basically a hilarious joke for anyone who's ever been to either Vancouver and/or the Bronx. I'm not sure why they just didn't make "Rumble in Vancouver" though... But as far as trying to pass off Vancouver as New York--they really didn't even try. They did throw up a bunch of graffiti on otherwise typically clean Vancouver streets to try pass it off as the Bronx though.
quit your complaining and watch the movies. they werent made for C-D posters who obess over any slight geographical mistake
In one sense, you are right that we should just sit back and enjoy the show. But keep in mind that this is C-D and so many of us do notice basic and easy geography mistakes.
One of the more common ones I see is when Hollywood tries to use the drier wood and scrublands around Los Angeles as a stand-in for the more greener woods of the Eastern half of the country. Sometimes this is very noticeable to me and I am sure I am not the only one who saw the dry landscape and big rocky hills on a recent Trueblood episode and said "this is supposed to be Louisiana"?!?
Having said that, it is probably cheaper to film outside LA then to send film crews all over the country. So to answer the OP, there must be some decision over how much money to spend over realism versus trying to contain costs.
The Man (with Samuel Jackson). Filmed in Toronto, set in Detroit, no attempt was even made to make it resemble Detroit. They even use blatant views of Toronto's skyline without any sort of change other than not showing the CN Tower. Though at least they mentioned some of Detroit's downtown street names.
Luckily, the movie was a big flop so I don't think anyone cared either way.
Most of the time they could care less about "getting it right". A majority of people don't even know what the setting is most of the time unless it happens to be set in your city and you're paying attention.
My friend was watching My Best Friend's Wedding yesterday. I watched a few minutes and it was where they raced away from a large rural estate and minutes later were driving down "Michigan Ave" downtown - except it wasn't even Michigan Ave. It was some one-way street nearby. I was like - what!?.....but most people wouldn't have even bothered thinking about any of the logistics.
Well, now most Movies that take place in Boston or surronding cities (eg: Grown ups, The Fighter) are actually filmed in Boston or where ever it was set.
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