Monday 27 June 2011

Locations - The Patriot City Police Department Lobby

With numerous scenes featuring unique interiors, a major part of pre-production involved finding locations which would suit them.

The hunt was on and the search was tough, but the production lucked out when they were very kindly offered the use of a 70s building called Kay House, an unused part of the local university campus which was due for re-modelling.
The building was formerly a catering and entertainment block and as such contained a great variety of interesting spaces - including a ballroom, which would come in very useful later on.

After the initial tour of the building it became clear to Tom and Ben that its usage would answer many of their prayers and so, Kay House was used for the majority of the main locations in the film. Most important of which was the Patriot City Police Department itself.

The ground floor of the Kay, which would later become the lobby of the PCPD

The ground floor of Kay House held an entrance hall and a vast hallway which would quickly become the basis for the PCPD lobby.

As an added bonus, much of the furniture that remained inside the building could be used to dress the sets - Tom, Jonts, Claire and Ben, quickly rearranged the aesthetics; moving out several heavy duty catering tables and replacing them with an assortment of chairs.
This formed the public waiting area, where citizens of Patriot City and Police officers could mingle and chat.

A tidy lobby, with chairs arranged and equipment being brought in for the first day of shooting

Once the main lobby had been tidied and laid out, it needed to be dressed appropriately.

What was formerly a small shop, became the reception office; intended for public enquiries and where Patriot City criminals would be booked in.

Officer Grant Patent resting in the Reception Office

Hours were spent creating original documents and posters to litter the desk and walls of the main lobby.
Although never legible in the film itself, Tom and Ben tailored each poster specifically to try and make each other laugh.  Almost all of them contain jokes and obscure references that would never be noticed by anyone outside the project.

This attention to detail was important in many ways, as it was the belief of the production team that each little thing would improve the whole and time spent scrutinizing even the smallest of props, would in turn bolster the overall quality of the production.

I also gave people new to the set something interesting to look at and much time was spent reading the scraps of paper stuck to walls.

As an interesting side note, whenever a large amount of generic text was required for files and documents, a mixture of lyrics from the theme songs of popular 70s television shows was used.

Here are a selection of posters from the lobby:




With the main lobby completed, the production team moved on to the rest of the locations - and shooting could soon commence.

Here are some pictures from the production, featuring many of the talented crew and actors that so kindly graced our sets.

Chief Rappappaport looks out on the lobby

Two diligent PCPD officers

Patriot City's finest

Extras on set

Marty McFeathers takes a beating

Tom with some of the cast

An improvised Dolly, made from a tea cart (note: wood gaffa taped to wheels, to stop them swivelling)

Cop Killa being released from custody

The Lobby, as seen from inside Chief Rappappaport's office.


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