John Rakich

Location Manager John Rakich joins Kat and Dom to talk about what it was like bringing the Shadow World to reality - and how he was able to navigate some real-world issues on set. An incessant fire alarm? A city park fountain that doesn’t work? Not a problem for John! The trio discuss everything from where the glass in The Institute came from to how the Shadowhunters navigated morning rush hour traffic.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:35):
John, How are you buddy? Hello, I'm good. How are
you go ahead? I'm doing well. Have you got a
Captain America sheld in the back? I do? Look a
look for the sword. Yes it is. I don't even
have one of those. That's amazing. And what's the one
that's all chipped up on the side. No way, it
was an actual fighting one, huh. I bought it. I

(00:55):
got a bunch of stuff from the auction sports which
I gave one away to charity for charity auction. That
a couple of Stellars that I gave to the writing
staff that I know Taylor actually has yours cat. No way, Wow,
that's so took mine away from me. We've talked about
this on the podcast quite a bit because I wrote
so many in season one, I just mystically didn't have

(01:17):
one every season in season one was just a little fragile. Yeah,
it turns out, John, it's such a pleasure to have
you one. Thank you for taking the time to when
Chats was happy to be a part of this all.
Absolutely well. Welcome back, folks, to return to the Shadows. Today,
we have a very special guest, one of the magical
people behind the scenes of our show who We truly

(01:38):
could not have done this without John Rackett, our location manager. Welcome,
thank you. I'm glad to be a part of the show.
Come on the podcast and be part of the show.
Hopefully I have to correct something technically. I think I'm
one of the three long people that have been on
the show longer than anyone else. Yeah. So the show
started filming in August. I started in March of that year.

(02:00):
There you go. You were hired before us. Yeah, actually
we were. I remember when they were trying to cast it.
Can I make it even weirder? I was a location
scout on the movie WHOA. Well I did know that. Yeah,
I knew that you were the location scout on the
movie because I feel like we've spoken about that at
some point, because we doubled some of the locations, right,
like we changed them, but we Yeah, there was a

(02:21):
couple that we used in too many thankfully. Yeah. No, yeah,
it's wow. There was a few things in season one.
I remember that We're that we used in both that
were very quickly in season two. Not locations, but like
the swords. The swords were swords from the movie the swords,
the props, the glass and the institute actually was recycled

(02:41):
from another movie. No way, do you know what the
movie was? Resident five? That makes sense because constantly, Yeah,
all the there was a huge set we had where
um Neiler runs through a tunnel of glass and they
spent a lot of money on all this glass, so
they put in storage and someone it came tyme to
build this set. They went, we have this glass, and

(03:02):
nobody thought that it wasn't the right glass. It wasn't gimbaled,
which is why we had all those reflection problems and
the heat, and just let and put everyone inside it.
Who knew? Who knew? This is just the things you
figure out when you're on set. But it was the
It was the hardest thing is when we saw these

(03:22):
trailers come in that said are on them, like what
it's And then the stuff from the mortal instruments they
basically just recycled as much as they could because they
kept it all as well, you know, it's already got
all the rings on it. And then season until we've
got rid of it all and fixed it. Yeah, before
before we dive headlong into a reunion that we've all
been longing to have. John, why don't you tell everyone

(03:44):
at home, what your position was on on Shadow Hunters,
what you did, what your day to day was. So
I was hired as the location manager for pretty much
almost all the show, which I can cover later. Um So,
my the job location edge is we basically take this
script and the concept and the ideas that the writers
the producers have in the production designer and find practical

(04:06):
real world locations to film this and to make it
part of the story, part of the character. Um So
that literally was my job was to get the script,
to break it down and pitch ideas that we then
see whether they work or not. And then being television,
we then since we had most of the scripts, we
could see what we would go to enough times to
necessary to build what was going to be on location,
and then literally with the creatives try to find things

(04:29):
that work for the story, the look. And then once
we secure all that, the location department job changes very
much from creative to logistics. Were then responsible for permits,
permissions where the unit goes, where that everyone eats, where
the bathrooms go, all the unsexy parts of the actual
making of a production. But so it's interesting we've had

(04:49):
a few a few different crew members on over the
course of and very often that same phrase kind of
gets recycled with crew right. Very often it's that you know,
this is the unsexy behind this means part. But what
people need to realize is that TV shows aren't made
without these unsexy parts, like they just don't function on
a TV show. That will remain nameless and how long

(05:10):
ago will remain nameless because otherwise you can backtrack and
be like, oh, he did this six years ago. It
is exactly what it was. It wasn't six years ago.
That's not what I'm talking about. But they didn't put
they didn't have crew bathrooms. We were shooting on on
a New York street and we were we were filming
somewhere quite far away from that, and it it brought
everything kind of to a halt when we figured it
out like this or you know, this needs to change,

(05:32):
and a couple of their actors were very very stringent,
like this is something that needs to change, but it
doesn't grinds everything to a hold all of a sudden.
So without all of these, you know, I can't say
it enough. Said again, I've said it before. I sound
like a broken record. But without people like John, these
shows don't get made. There's you know, the actors and
the directors and the producers get so much credit for

(05:52):
being on a TV show. But like John says, our
job started months after his job started, you know what
I mean? Like and he and you could say, because
you recycled so much stuff, you're in a way still
on that job, like it's still thinking about shadow Hunter
is like, oh, I wonder if we have some stuff
there that we could use on this next thing. Take
this next Yeah, you're absolutely right. Again. The location manager

(06:13):
in the department usually is one of the first ones hired,
and usually then the last one is there. So I
you know, from Cradle Degrave, we're involved in every aspect
my department. The bathroom thing that that grinds to a halt,
A hundred and fifty people need to go somewhere. And
the funny thing is here where we're based out of
there's actually law we have to follow. How many there's
there's actually I have a mathematical table that I have

(06:34):
to keep of how many people we have, how many
actual holes as the referred to, we have to have
how many holes? And I've been on some shows where
that number got huge and you know, the last thing
you need is all of a sudden, the line up
of thirty people trying to get into a porta job,
because then where's the you know, we're trying to shoot.
Where is the director? Well he's waiting in line. That

(06:55):
doesn't fly. Well, I mean the you know, the biggest
detriment to production is the loss of time. Time. Yeah, well,
and that's I mean, truly, it's so many aspects of production,
from the creative to the logistic, is all problem solving,
and it takes creativity, and it takes you know, a
knowledge base and experience and everything that you know, you
clearly have become so well versed in to to figure

(07:15):
it out. So, whether it's you know, as dumb said,
the you know, the the unsexy parts of filmmaking or not,
it's all so necessary and so instrumental to you know,
doing the flips and things that we all love. Just
you know, our biggest challenge sometimes is where they want
to put lights. Yeah, you know, a DP points because
I want to let on that roof. Well, we don't

(07:36):
know if we can get up there. That's not our roof.
We just can't just walk I just can't walk up there.
With a cord. It takes time. And you know, yeah,
as you said, it's it's a lot of little Yeah,
it's a lot of little moving pieces for what everyone
ends up watching on screen that they don't see behind stage.
And my department is one of the ones that actually
interacts with everyone's. Yeah, there's not an aspect of production
that somehow doesn't cross like even where the hair and

(07:56):
makeup decides to sit put their chair down. It has
to be location that can end up being you know,
something to do well. So that sort of leads into
my first question. We we get these cheat sheets, we
get these brilliant cheat sheets and it's called all this
information and like, um, you know, stuff that we should
ask and whatever. And I listen, I look at that
zero and I just I think of questions and that's
what I do. It's very similar to how I work
on set. John, Um, but so question nuber one. So

(08:20):
the and this is always fascinated me. And I've never
really found the time to ask the question because when
we're shooting on like a busy street, like you know
in Toronto, Young, I think we had shut down for
a second there. What what's what does that entail? Because
that's you know, we're shutting down a huge section of
the metropolitan area of Toronto, And for anyone who's been

(08:40):
to or lives in Toronto, they have sort of a
semi one way system, so every other street kind of
goes one way throughout the metropolitan So shutting down one
of those really does make a huge fucking issue. It's
a real problem in Toronto. So tell me tell me
a little about that, sure. I mean, the greatest thing
is that we're based is a city where the actual

(09:01):
city is a good partner with us in production. We
we tell them what we want to do and they
kind of help us figure out the best way to
do it. So when we did shut down the section
of Young Street, which is a main artill year road,
we always knew from the beginning that's going to have
to be on a weekend. We the only the only
way they let us do it is on a Saturday
or a Sunday when there's less traffic or you're less
impediment to business. So it then just literally becomes us

(09:24):
working with the city, the fire department, transit everyone to
make sure that we're not impacting our schedule works for their's.
The neighbors and residents all known got on board and
let us do what we did, which is basically shut
down a block and a half of a major street
and rewrote traffic. The funny thing was, that's actually one
of the few locations where that was Matt Hastings episode.

(09:44):
He and I got into a disagreement over that one,
and I'm glad I want Early on in that season,
he walked into my office and said finale Avengers Battle
on the streets and he walked away. But you would
do routinely, would just throw things to give us ahead.
So we started pitching stuff, and we took them downtown
and went where there's this corner, there's this block, there's
this block. And they didn't want to work on a
Saturday because it required shifting schedule. And then the idea

(10:08):
was would just build it in the parking lot with
green screen, just green screen, which to me is like
a knife in the heart because it's never gonna look right.
You're never gonna have these effects. Can do the world,
but you can't get that sense of scale um as
much as you want to try. And what happened was
this cat you had to you had a conflict that
meant you had to work with you had a Saturday
available because we had to get you off something faster.

(10:29):
At that point, Oh, that's what I was going to
a maze runner. Yeah, and that's literally why all of
a sudden, no one was fighting about being on a Saturday.
And that was like the back of parking lot. And
I literally politely argued and said, it was the dumbest
idea you're gonna have. We can do it now, we
should just do so we did, and it was really
it looked phenomenal, and we staged the traffic. We staged

(10:50):
the traffic jam, which was even smarter because parking lots
are expensive downtown, so that traffic jam was pretty much
most of the cruise cars parked down the middle of
the street. That's right. I didn't know the buses, most
of the cars there because although if you think about it,
that scene, it's just two minutes long traffic jam New
York City, although a lot happens in it, so the

(11:11):
cars never have to move. So we just basically stacked
crew cars, put in picture cars, because if you watch
the scene, no vehicles ever moved through it. No, that's true,
that was right, you know, it was free the day,
the scene looked brilliant. It did. Oh yeah, it's one
of it's one of the best scenes and it gets
you know, replayed and re edited over and over again.
That's in my personal reel. I got footage from from

(11:33):
them for it. Yeah, that's amazing. Well because it has
that scale and because you feel the city and you
feel that kind of open expanse of space, and then
we got the drone to go around the buildings that
just look brilliant. So again in that case, much like
any world closure, the city really was helpful with us
when we explained what we wanted to do and they
gave us the permission and the storefronts all you know

(11:55):
that we covered up. We're all happy that was really
put out. Canadians are nice as well. That it's a
big part of experience, you know what I mean. Like
we we we did. We filmed the most recent show
I just finished was we filmed in New York and
we did a lot of stuff on the streets and
there was there's a lot of like so we we
do things and John obviously Cat you guys all know
about this, but for the listeners at home who may

(12:17):
not know about this, It's called a lock off, which
John mentioned briefly, and you literally lock off for both
traffic cars and traffic walking walking traffic. You lock off
two sections of the street, the top and the end,
and people can't travel through those. But correctly, if I'm wrong, legally,
we're not allowed to stop pedestrians from walking right correct
A police officer can or a barricade, but you can

(12:39):
ask someone to start, but they get to you. I
know New York like the back of my hand. No
New Yorker is gonna starting to go right through. Yeah.
It was very colorful morning scenes. Yeah, no kidding. We
had a couple like we had a great steady cam
operator Patrick, and there are a couple of moments where
someone said something a little colorful to me on the
way and camera just go straight up to the sky
like we're not seeing any of that. This is a

(13:00):
Netflix show. We got now would bring it back down
when when we're ready to go. But yeah, New York
is a less now with the opposite though, with you
Cat when we did the when Matt wanted to get
a scene of you walking through a crowded streets literally,
remember that I was there that day. There was three
of It was a camera operator, a grip Matt, myself
and a costume person and we just threw you in

(13:22):
morning traffic, morning rush hour, pedestrian traffic, but mostly them
all going the other way so that they were looking
at the camera and it worked. It was like the
opposite work and nobody cared because they were just going
to rush to get to work. Yeah, because there's you know,
you put up a little sandwich placard on the street.
That didn't do that? You didn't, I thought. I thought.
We literally, we literally created a wedge behind the camera
of our body so people would have to go around it.

(13:42):
Oh my god. So for the listeners at home, this
was the scene where and I think it's season two,
episode one, when Clary has decided to run away from
the Shadow World because she feels like she doesn't belong
anywhere and run them back to the Bigland Academy of Art.
I know she loves to run away various times. Um.
But it was by Union station in Toronto downtown, which,

(14:05):
as you know, if anyone has ever been to Toronto
or has ever been near a Union station in any
city in the morning, it's so the streets are packed
and you know, you can't you can't get between people's shoulders,
and it made for such an amazing scene because you
just had this sea of coats and people and faces
and yeah, I remember it was such kind of guerrilla filmmaking,

(14:26):
but in the best west that was it. We love that.
Though we've again we've said on this podcast we're sort
of approaching the end of this season now, so we've
we've talked extensively about the show. So if I'm repeating
myself listeners, I apologize, But we've spoken quite extensively about
the difference between shooting, for example, on a green screen,
especially the three sixty green screen, which is quite hard

(14:48):
work because on a show like ours is very hard
work because we're imagining these things that we haven't even seen.
It's not like a dragon, it's like a mythical beast,
and we don't know what the fun that thing is
gonna look So you're imagining this thing or this world
or whatever you know, eden whatever it is. We have
no concept of what that's going to look like, which
is really hard work. And at least for me, the

(15:10):
most exciting days are out on the street there because
I can see everything, I can visualize everything, and it
takes that this little element of difficulty out of my
work day. Um, it adds difficulty to your work day.
It takes a little out of it keeps you employed. Yeah,
but the true the location becomes a character in the store.
It does. If you think of like iconic movies, of

(15:30):
iconic scenes where they take place, even if it's fictitiously,
you know, created like Toronto became New York, It's still
a character and everything. Absolutely. And you know, if for
anyone who's read the books, and for anyone who you
know has watched the show, the city of New York
in in any piece of media becomes such a huge
character in it and and takes on kind of a
life of its own and is a you know, mythical

(15:52):
being in and of itself. But it felt as though,
and I'm sure this is largely due to you, we
found such a great rhythm on the show of having
most of the time in studio and on stages when
we had our own space and our own stuff, and
then having being able to use the rest of our
resources to go out and do some really major, huge locations.

(16:12):
And you know, I didn't know this when I moved
to Toronto, but even some of the locations we used
in the pilot, like the Distillery District and that nightclub
and all those things. Those are pretty prominent and usually
very busy Toronto locations. And say when when the the
when the Distillery District was pitched by McGee, a lot

(16:34):
of us just kind of hung our heads, going, Okay,
it's a real pain to go there, but fine, because
the those who don't know what it was an old
distillery that got gentrified and surrounded by condeminiums and shops
and restaurants. It's the residents that's always an issue. But
we we did. We made it work. It was just
it wasn't our favorite place to pitch. Truthfully. The hardest day,

(16:54):
and on the first episode is the pre shoot day.
The park we are in was just I don't even
and I even I don't even know remeter, I haven't
even made it. But that was like we had a
pre shoot day of a Clary flashback with a demon
coming out of water. That was the fountain didn't work.
We had to we had to bring in We had
to literally crack a fire hydrant to put water in
this thing. Yeah. Yeah, the the actual mechanics of the

(17:16):
Parks fountain didn't work. They couldn't get water to it,
so we actually got to crack a hydrant with permission
and run this thing up. Um. But the nightclub, you
mean the nightclub with the incessant fire alarm. They kept
going off. Forgotten about that right three times that one
night because every time they opened the doors, the smoke
would uh below the atmosphereic smoke that we used to

(17:38):
make everything look pretty and sexy. When you go, you
fill the room so it's like a pressure room. And
we opened the doors, that smoke would fly out and
go two floors up, and then in the same building,
go into the intake and set off the fire alarm
because the owner of the building didn't want to disable
the system until the third call from the fire department
and then he flicked the switch. But that was you know,

(18:00):
Finding the club was interesting because we tried to avoid
certain things from the from the movie, so it's a
different we found about the club. We don't have had
the little alley way and stuff. And I'm going to
jump ahead to the last episode. I really fought I
wasn't on the last two. I was kind of there
for you. I was doing another show waiting for season
four to get Greenland, and it didn't. I was in
the same building doing this horrible Christmas movie for free Form.

(18:22):
I couldn't leave, so I was still kind of involved.
And when I saw the last two scripts, I kept
arguing that the very very last scene of the show
should have been in the same alley from the first
episode of the Nightclub, saying it's this, It's that, the end,
is the beginning, is the end. It just never ended
up happening because of their schedule, and I kept arguing,
what I'm going it makes more. Even Todd agreed, but

(18:43):
it just wouldn't work. Just couldn't figure it out. Yeah,
that happens a lot. There's stuff that we really think
might work and pitch and it gets being creative and
it's other people's inputs. Other things end up being decided voices.
It's nuts, Like it's you know, auditioning for us is
is it's sort of a similar process, Like you impress
one person who's normally the first person who meets, like

(19:03):
a casting director or a casting associate. Great, you've impressed
that person. Then maybe you impressed a series of producers
or the director. But then there's the money people. Then
there's like the heads of the studio, the heads of
the network. Like this is group tests. You remember what
tests used to be, like our tests for Shadow Hunters.
You sit in a theater, you sit in like an auditorium,
and you have forty people who work for Disney and

(19:25):
free Form and then people who work for Constantine, all
of the people who have these sort of career defining
moments in their hands, and if one of them says no,
that is then thrown into question. It's a real big
like we don't know, and it's it's not prefer that. Yeah,
I prefer that to the zoom screen tests. I preferred
to zooms. But now I'm sort of getting into a

(19:45):
bit of a rhythm with zoom. I think I'm like, anyway,
that's boring, that's this isn't about John. We need to
another time. We always during COVID, I was on a show.
We decided to do an in person production meeting with
COVID protocols, which basically involved seventy I have of us
standing in a studio around the perimeter yelling at one
or another. That is very quickly. Yeah, I want to

(20:25):
know how one gets to be a location manager. How
did you find this career path and what what led
you to this job? Okay, so I'm gonna have to
go back in time. I was living the dream, living
at my parents, my parents based, but working at a
record store if you remember where those oh yeah, highlight.

(20:46):
My sister actually was in the film industry for a
while as an assistant director and she was on a
TV show where they had fired their fifth office pit
and said, well, my brother can do it if these
people can. So that's how I got into the business.
And I didn't know what I wanted to be and
and my office was next to the locations office, and
they all sounded like there, you know, bat shit crazy
and having a lot of fun. And I started talking

(21:07):
to them. And the first job I got, you start
at the bottom, like a location p a setting up tables, chairs,
garbage cancer. The first job I was given was given
by a location manager named Richard Hughes, who was the
other location manager on Shadow Hunters, because I made them
hire him. So that was it. I just started. I
fell into it. Um I did a good job, people
started hiring me more. Someone on the show and said, hey,

(21:28):
do you know how the locations got And I went no,
and they went, while you grab a camera and take
some photos. So I scouted for a long time, worked
my way up to an assistant location manager, and then,
funny enough, while I was waiting to start officially because
I scouted for the movie in pre production, took the
directors around and then there was a lull until they
we're going to get green light. That was where I

(21:49):
actually got an offer to location manage my first show ever,
which was a show for Netflix called Hemlock Grove. It
kind of just fell into it and and you know,
I have an aptitude for it, I guess, and it's
something I enjoy doing. And you know, what was going
to be a part time job just to make some money,
has not been a twenty five year career. Wow, that's amazing, awesome. Yeah,

(22:10):
I like the puzzle. I like the creative puzzle and
then the logistical puzzle. Cool. So, like you said, it's
it's it's a lot of problems solving on both ends.
And it's a lot of juggling because people have to
realized while we're doing one day and we're also setting
up three more and then you know, wrapping out yesterday.
So it's a constant movement, especially on television. Yeah, I

(22:31):
don't have a funk man. We moved so quickly on
that show, like for the for the amount that we
did with like you know, flat packing sets, so like
indoors for people listening at home indoors. When these sets
are also inside, they look spectacular, they look like the
room like it's actually amazing. The second you leave them,
they are like plywood like like they are sticking out,

(22:53):
and they're all designed to go completely flat very quickly,
go in the back of a truck, and then go
to somewhere else. That's they're designed to do. And so
we had that with sets coming up and down. We
have the stunts, we had c g I everywhere, and
I think the longest episode were the longest episode other
than the pilot, which took a month. But we never
spent more than two weeks on an episode, which is

(23:14):
insane when you think absolutely episodes. Yes, sixteen days per episode,
sixty eight to get it ready, eight to get it done.
And people realize, although you have eight days to get
it ready, you really only have six because if by
day seven and eight you're not ready to lock everything
in your Yeah, because six and seven it was five
and six would be like your tech scouts right, like

(23:34):
you're actually physically going to easily. And so you know
you're lucky on season when it was you know, you
get the earlier we get scripts that everyone gets them,
the better it is for us, the more we can
get ahead of things. But then you know, we don't
see the director of that episode until the first day
of prep, and he might have different ideas for everything
that we've already agreed on. We were lucky on Shadow

(23:55):
Hunters that we didn't have that much. But I've been
on some shows that the director Watson and everything gets
wiped out that you spent the last two weeks pre
planning because he's got a different idea. Can you imagine,
Oh what a nightmare thought that I will not I
will not name. But this director, that was what he
was known for and he enjoyed doing and he enjoyed
coming in and causing chaos and he would just sit

(24:16):
there and giggle. We have no room for chaos, goblins
and television. No, we were we were lucky. I mean,
we had scripts as early as we could. Um, Susan
three was even better because I was at that point,
you know, we knew Todd Darren. I met the writers
of Comic Con. They actually gave me access to their notes,
so I was one of the few people that had
I knew more about what you guys are going to

(24:37):
go through than anybody else because I actually had access
to hit their handwritten notes and their meetings. Just because
work it's more collaborative. Is nothing worse than we get
a script and it's like, well we really don't have that.
If we can pitch, like tell me what you're looking for,
we could pitch something else. Because there was an episode
they wanted to shoot it on the Staten Island Ferry,
you know, like we don't have the Staten Island Ferry.

(24:57):
That remember getting mixed and I remember being like, fun
would be a cemetery. Yeah, it was the cemetery in
the end. Yeah. And then there were some scenes where
it's like it's you know, how many times can we
be in a park? Can we just think of something else? Right? Yeah?
The most example is that one season that we had
ended up shooting at the St. Lawrence Market. Oh yeah,
that was actually scripted to be in a park. Wait,

(25:18):
I remember that it was at a park and we're
driving with Matt we're driving on the locations go back
to look at some stuff. It was not Mike L.
Murray myself. It wasn't actually like I can't remember who's
doping that um, But Matt was in the van. We
drove by St. Lawrence Market. He went, what's that St.
Lawrence Market? You want to go take a look? Sure?
And he looked at me in can we film here?
I went, yeah, they're closed on Mondays. Can then can
we shoot? And we did. Ended up changing that whole

(25:40):
scene to be in that market with you know, flying
demons and stalls being broken open well, and then ended
up being so much cooler. I don't know if you remember,
Don that was the scene that there was a big
race demon that I was changing. Get me right, the
big big trailer line, Yeah, I remember, But even even
the werewolf being tossed into the cabin, the windows being smashed,
there were so much that came out of just one

(26:01):
spot that we drove by and thought this would work
better than and see. I love what you mentioned about
the writer's notes, because this is something that we talked
about a lot on the podcast. But that's just another
example of you know, often on TV shows, people don't
end up sharing or in anything in entertainment or most workplaces,
people don't often share resources or information as much as

(26:21):
they could. But simply by telling you what's going on
and keeping you in the loop and giving you information
and having that sort of round table, open door policy
that we had on Shadow Hunters with all the departments,
it added so much to the show and it allowed
everyone to do work that was so much more elevated
because we were just informed. And that's you know, that's

(26:43):
something that that I wish was more common of, you know,
just having anyone being able to get information. Honestly, Yeah,
it just shows how it can be when it's fully collaborative.
It just becomes more enjoyable, more of an art form,
more of everyone putting the best they came out there,
Even like the Garden season three, that was two months

(27:04):
of us trying to figure out what that was going
to be here between this sets a dad, we build it,
what do we need and then settled on the ruins
that we ended up being there. That's so cool, amazing
that actually, So that collaboration leads me to my next question.
So talking so again people at home, there are many
many instances where we've built a set, and the set

(27:26):
has a front door, so as soon as you leave
that front door, you're outside somewhere, and that has to
be unless we build an outside set that has to be,
which the Hunter's Moon had. You know, we built that
entire street, which is incredible, like the whole street of Chinatown,
like like two blocks each way or a block each way,
which is just fucking wild. Um. But like the Jade

(27:47):
Wolf is a good example. When you leave the set
of The Jade Wolf, you're on the docks, which is outside,
which obviously for us was relatively easy. But what is that? Like?
What does that dance with you? Between I set there? Right?
Like I imagine those guy or not set back? Who
who builds sets? I mean construction based on the art consartment,

(28:07):
But usually that the question is when they go outside,
what is outside? So you know, and usually you try
to go to the script to pull it as much information.
What city is it in? Where does it take place?
What's around there? And if you can't, then that's when
you have conversations with the showrunners, you know, other producers,
the designer, you know, where in because it was New York?
Where in New York? Is this okay? So what does

(28:28):
it want to look like? Like which part of the
city are we thinking of? Because that even drives things
like the subway set, what subway sign will beyond there?
So you walk out a door, you know, let's take
Season one the locked in the Antique Shop, which is
a place that we all hated. Um, we needed a
two story building that looked interesting, and we actually found
this wretched place that the owner was a hoarder on

(28:50):
the third floor. But thankfully we never went back through again.
It was right that you up and it was a nightmare. Right, Yeah,
you no longer lives there and it's now being turned
into some swanky condominium with still maintaining the base of it.
But yeah, that's what is outside is. This is an
important lookwise because it also drives what set decal dressed
at what you know picture cars will be there, because

(29:12):
I mean, I spent a lot of time in New
York and I was always arguing all from Brooklyn, the
caps can't be yell that they're supposed to be great
because you get the stock cars that are you know,
they're not crowndexed or this. So if you wanted to
make it real, you really kind of get a sense
of where, like you know, where was the institute? Which
churches it really is supposed to be. Are we going
by what's in the books? Are we going by what
we decided by the stock shots that we bought, because
that drives everything. So yeah, even just opening the door

(29:33):
becomes a big, huge thing, right. I did a movie
um where It's not Out Actually was all done on location.
We weren't in the studio a tool. We had two
different sets for breaching and clearing a room and played
at U S. Marshals for breaching and clearing a room,
and then we go down into the basement. So the
upstairs room was one set and the basement was a
completely different place. And when we got there we realized

(29:54):
that the door opened the other way. Like, this is
a real fucking problem because we can't change it. There's
nothing we can do. Go and rewatch the movie. The
door is They took it completely off the hinges and
it's just rested already opened on the other side. That's
happened to me in the past. We've shot the stage
component first, and we go on the location the doors
in the wrong side, so we have to move the door.

(30:16):
You move the door, Yeah, like, if you have the time,
you hang it the other way. Yeah, no choice, it's
it's I can't remember if it was Spielberg or Scorsese
who said recently it's being on being on a set,
being a director, when it would acted, you know, locations, whatever.
It is, like, it's problem solving. That's what you do
and you need. The better you get at it, the

(30:36):
quicker you get at it, the more you're going to
progress in your career, Like you get good at solving
whatever this issue is. What is this issue? It's a door. Great,
we take it off, We put it on the other side. Amazing, done,
that problem is taken care of. You know, is it
nighttime or daytime? We need to fix that problem. Okay, great,
we do it like this and it's fixed, you know.
And that's sort of other shows. You show up on
a set and the director goes, oh, I don't want

(30:57):
to look that one anymore. I want to look that way,
and it's just we're not, okay, great, how do we
do that quickly? Are An actor comes on set and
because I just feel like I need to walk over
here on this line, and everyone the face of knowing
for yeah every time, but I mean I did a
show where I did a show where our director of photography,

(31:18):
which it wasn't able to ever come scouting with us.
And here we show up each day going why are
we here? Well, no, I don't like that. I want
to be over then I want to be down the street.
Oh no, no, no, yeah, well, y's not we show up.
That decision has been gone through several people, and several
money has spune, equip people getting things ready. Yeah, well,
and then the simple things as well, like this, This
question then needs to go back to the writers, and

(31:41):
we were in Toronto, the writers were in l A.
So if we show up at eight in the morning,
it's five in the morning in l As, they're not
up yet. So how do we answer that question? Do
we wait for five hours and lose a hundred thousand
dollars an hour while we're renting this set? Like no, Yeah.
That was the funny thing in season one is that
the people that were behind behind the scenes hadn't really
on episodic television a lot, so they didn't see the

(32:01):
benefit of having a showrunner or directing producer. And that's
what the explanation was. At six in the morning, when
we have to figure out whether this is blow or green?
Who were calling right? And they went on like, well,
you have to have someone here who can creatively have
the power to make that Half those writers are here
with us. Um you know which one I've been on.
I did a series called The Expanse where half the

(32:22):
producing team was always in towns. We always had right away.
Very different of mine is on the Expense Dominique Tippa Yah.
One of my first big movies with Dominique, and the
funny thing was for Science. One of the producers was
actually an astrophysicist. Actually he decided you don't want to
do that and wanted to be a movie producer and
that he could always answer like all the techy questions

(32:43):
right off the bat. We never questioned if he was
making it up because we just assumed you was right. Yeah,
I mean, you need to have someone there that can
make that call. And if you know, that's why the
directing producer on television shows is such a valuable and
an important position to a absolutely like Matt on Season
two and three just steered the ship from the box
all the time. He was just so good at being
able to just make executive decisions and at any at

(33:06):
any juncture. But on that note, I have to ask
what is and it can be maybe on shadow Hunters.
Maybe this is a two part question on shadow Hunters.
And then just in general, what is the wildest problem
that you've encountered or thing, most unique thing you've had
to find and how did you solve the problem? Okay, wildest,

(33:27):
there's two, U, there's two. One was what show it was?
We were going to film at this really ratty divy
house at the end of the day and we found
out that was bed bugs in one of the rooms.
We had to get. We had to get the bed
bugs and it turned out it was in the son's room,
who was a bit of a slob in the mattress.
But we had to get an exterminator to come in quickly,
which is hard to do, and they found no no,

(33:50):
no wordable lie. They found a father and son Christian
exterminating team. Wow, never heard of that before. And I
mean they got the job done in the crew and
the crew was informed and said, look, if you really
don't feel safe and don't go in. But we did
did the job. The most bizarre one Resident Evil three.
We needed to do a scene on a beach with
a helicopter with the right at the beginning, right, Yeah,

(34:11):
I've done. I'm a flashback to a scene from another one.
Yet she walks through an airplane, gray garden. There's a
helicopter and a bunch of flashbacks. The helicopter never flies.
The director fell in love with this tree in this
beach three and a half hours away from Toronto, in
the sam Bank Provincial Park. The producers thought for us
to find another spot that was closer. No, he had

(34:33):
to have this tree, this beach, and we had been
in discussions with the park to provincial park like a
state run park, with a park superintendent about The plan
was we're gonna fly this helicopter and landed just because
it's easier for us to fly it there than put
it on a trailer and crane. Everything was fine, but
four weeks before we're supposed to film, the park superintendent says, oh,
you know, you can't land a helicopter there. We've been
talking about this for five weeks, so I didn't realize that.

(34:56):
So we go back to the producer whose answer was
fix it. So we ended up we I was the
assistant on the show, ended up going through the part
like park law, literally going through like what's called the
Parks Act of Ontario to find out why I can
land one here and not here, and it was because
it was by the water and had a row. It
was bizarre stuff, but we found a loophole thing at
the Minister for Parks and Recreation could amend that law.

(35:20):
So then we did. We literally found a way to
get someone. It's not easy to get in front of
politicians to get it. Turned out someone from Toronto City
Council was going to be an event a car with
them to some conference and we kind of gave her
our notes and they pitched it and explained like this
is we need to just this is why we're doing this.
And all I remember getting is a phone call from
the park superintendent three weeks later going I don't know

(35:40):
what you did, but you got your permission. And there
is literally a line in the Act that at that
time there was a three day window of change. The
law was amended for three days only to land a
helicopter on this beach. Now did anyone from the crew
know that when they show up, No, that the producers care. No.
But at the end of the day, by Boss and
I are like, we changed law and it's still in there.

(36:00):
It's still a little byline because obviously with all law
of things, every all changes are in there. But we
literally have to change provincial law to put a helicopter
in the scene. You change the law of Canada for
film that I'm waiting for a federal one that hasn't
happened yet. That's the next step, is it's problem solving.
It's no is an easy answer for people to give,

(36:21):
and at some point it might be no, but you
just try to find any way to work at it properly.
Like we didn't violent anything. We just found that there
was a way to change that well exactly. And that's
that's the fun of that sort of creativity is uh
fun at the end. Yeah, during and worried you're gonna
lose your job while it's happening. But yeah, sometimes you

(36:42):
do have to go back and say, look, the answer
is no. There was sometimes some places I'm around shadow
hunters they wanted to go to and it just didn't work.
We couldn't do what they wanted. You know, you kind
of go with it. But we're pretty lucky most times
that we either got what we wanted or we were
able to creatively find a way out. Well, none of
the locations that we were on ever felt as though
it was the second choice, or felt as though it
was makeshift in any way, shape or form. It know.

(37:06):
The stress at the beginning of season two was when
they said we want to go back to the boat.
You know, I was gonna ask, I was gonna asks.
The first boat was sold because there was a good
span of time between seasons. They had sold it for
scrap and it was being hauled, I believe, and I
think it sank somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic. Yeah,
oh my god. Yeah, they'd buy a lot of scrap

(37:30):
boats and shipped them overseas and they did out of it.
Sometimes they don't make it. How did they get And
there's just like down a massive river somewhere out So
Lake Ontario was the bottom of the Great Lakes. Eventually,
if you just kept going east, you get into the St.
Lawrence Canal through Montreal and straight out to the Atlanta

(37:50):
which wow, I didn't know that. I just assumed it
was like a reservoir. There's no cargo predominantly big ship
just go to Halifax. But Montreal they stopped there two
smaller ones like the ones we were on that go
to to Toronto, Hamilton's through the canals to Lake Erie.
They they go all the way to northern Ontario or

(38:11):
you know, Minnesota, basically drop off grain or whatever whatever.
We're lucky to find another ship and hope that no
one would notice on that by much that it was
a completely different I didn't notice. I was on both
of those ships. I didn't notice. I didn't notice. I
think there was like a crane missing there. There was
a crane on the second in the second boat. There

(38:32):
wasn't on the first. Yeah, that's the only thing I
noticed though, because I literally fought underneath it. I had
a fight scene under it, and I was like, I
don't think this was there before. But I drink a lot,
so who knows, maybe it was missing. I don't know. Well,
if any any shadow hundreds folks out there, if anyone
ever finds the boat, maybe we'll have to have like
a you know, dive to the most Yeah, scuba expedition

(38:53):
for the fun. But tell us, John, tell us more
about the boat debacle. So how do you have what's
the pro sets of finding not one, but two boats
that can be used to film very very much. It
was we were just fortunate at the time that there
were these There was that one both boats were basically
moored for maintenance, and you know, both ship lines were

(39:15):
open to us coming on there because I mean it's
it's money for them for literally doing nothing. Um both
and both have been filmed friendly in the past. It
just it was just extremely lucky that both boats were
just more there basically what I think the first one
didn't even have an engine. Yeah, it was just it
was basically just tied up. And the second one too,

(39:35):
it was it was down for repairs that we're going
to take you know, a couple of months. See, otherwise
we would have had to probably go to like you know,
the next next place over would have been Hamilton, that
might have had a boat, but just having one in
the exact same spot, well by a couple of feet, um,
was just completely you know, good luck for us to
start the season that way. And it just happened to

(39:56):
have a beautiful skyline of Toronto that you can delete
this the sand Tower and pop in the Empire State
Building and you're good to go. Yeah. My favorite is
when shows forget to do that. Yeah, across there's like,
there's so few of them in our show. But every
now and then you see like the t from the
Tim Horton's and I'm like, angle those in New York.
Oh No, it's so when we show stuff on screen,

(40:16):
we have to get clearance from the studio what names
we could show. But the problem is a lot of
the clearance that we use is from the States, so
they don't recognize Canadian brands. Like there's one scene where
you guys are I think you're walking in the second
cup sign you know, Tim Hortons, and we're just like
they wouldn't let it. They didn't have an issue with it,
but we're just interesting. I just found this out on

(40:39):
I was just working for Netflix. Um, I guess because
it's streaming or because Netflix has a deal in particular.
I can't remember what the reason was, but they said
Netflix doesn't have to do you don't have to do that.
You don't have to get clearance for anything. We were
using iPhones, we were all using Apple products. We didn't
have to pay Apple anything. Yeah, clearance clearance is a
weird thing that it's It's if you line up for
clearance people and ask them as in question you're gonna

(41:00):
get four different answers, right, So, fus I was to
tell you, are you allowed to use Major League Football's names,
the players, the teams in a movie, you'd say without
their permission? You'd say no. But there's an entire movie
called Concussion where they never once asked for permission, and
literally because because they didn't actually lie, it was all factual,
they were allowed to get away with it. Well, I
wonder if that's that must be very fluid now as well,

(41:23):
because I know my brother is a is a coach
for the Ingrad rugby team in the R and D department,
and I know they're bringing in versions of technology now
with different things where they talk about things like this,
if you do something like this, like if you move
forward with this technology, the information from this will belong
to the player, not to the club. It will belong
to the player directly. So when you start doing like

(41:45):
with the movement of things like n f T s
and whatever, if you n FT a touchdown from a
football team or whatever, then you can't reference that. Again,
you can't reference the guy's name without having to pay them,
because they have they have monetized their one thing and
made it you know there's which is really interesting. Um, yeah,
it did. That's you. I can't imagine that you're wrong
in any way because for different people different Yeah, no

(42:08):
clearances when they start involving our department, just that we
just kind of lose our minds because it's really it's
someone else to deal with it. I can get a
sign off from the owner of the building. You want
to change the sign great, Please don't ask me to
get clearance from a subway, right, yeah, just call it
something else. Just walking down the street eating a sandwich.
We had a scene like that. We had a scene

(42:30):
in the morning when Matt wanted to finish his coffee
and they were like just drink it in the scene
and like we're walking onto the scene, they're like wait, wait,
wait wait, and they ran off and they put a
like a heat sleeve on it cover up the logo.
Whatever the fine go. Do you think nobody wants to
game a throne Starbucks moment where they can only imagine
how to pay Starbucks of fortune to get that in

(42:51):
or to pay them off like they was an accident. Yeah,
but most times nothing ever happens, right, It's let's just
you're doing something disparagingly with the bread and most companies
really don't care rate branding for them. Yeah, like Starbucks
so good that it was in a mythical land years ago,

(43:11):
starks Bucks, starks Bucks. That's a very good cat, very
not just a hat rack. You know, you, John, are

(43:39):
one of the folks on the crew that have really
been active on Twitter and with the fandom and all
of that. So, as you know, the Shadow fam is
a magical being of its own and they are angels
on this earth. So let's talk a little bit about
your experience with the fandom and uh, you know, being

(44:00):
at the comic cons and and what's what's that been
like for you? Okay, So, first and foremost, I am
a fan of stuff, like I know currently I am
still you know, I consume the content. I attend, you know,
New York and San Diego comic con. I run a
panel at San Diego about location scouting. But it's I
would being immersed in within the people that you know,

(44:21):
pay my salary. But the Shadow Family just they've always
been you know, pleasant, if they're they've got great hearts.
I've been happy to meet a few of them, more
than a lot of that person not just you know,
they're not rude on social media, they're engaging. Because I've
been at all the appearances, like all three New York's,
the two San Diegos, and the amount of times I'll
get like the worst not the worst. The weirdest one

(44:44):
was the third time It's at New York when we
were at Madison Square Gardens. They had everyone show up
early in corrals like Penn's to keep the line to
the cue going. So I was in one of the
first ones and I start getting Twitter notices asking if
that's me there, and I'm like yes, and people were
there respectful and I'm not to start pointing out that
I'm in the crowd, not that I wouldn't mind, but

(45:05):
they've been great. I still communicate with quite a few
of them. Half my Instagram is shadow Hunters fans Um.
There was a time I turned out I was in
London for a conference when you guys had a convention
and end up meeting a few people that I've met before. Oh,
they they're they're great. You still stay in touch with
a few of them. I mean I still send them
Christmas some of them Christmas cards. Yeah, I mean they've

(45:28):
they've been good to me in It's been fun being
part of the community. I love the Shadow fan They're
they're great. I mean, I can never say, you know,
I know the definition of you know, fan comes from fanatic,
but yeah, but I don't think that's necessarily the the
apt definition anymore. I think they know. I mean, we
can't and I both have experienced a fair share of

(45:50):
the fanatic version of it, which is and with I
don't know if it's the same with you, Cap, but
with me, very often it's it's partners that get the
rough end of it, Like my my girlfriend gets the
rough end of it every now and then, and then
you sort of go through it and you go, this
is like three people of the millions that we've met
and the millions that watched the show over the course

(46:11):
of like, I'm not gonna and I'm sort of this
is my old age coming through, and so my gray
hairs are adding to my knowledge. I saw this thing recently,
is I'm not going to give you. I'm not giving
you the privilege to take away of my happiness. You
don't deserve that. There's so many people who strive for
our happiness, and we strive for theirs, and just makes
the world go around, the full year and yang of

(46:32):
the world. These this this minute percentage of people that
want to be negative in some way. I'm not giving
you permission to take my happiness away from you anymore.
That's not yours. You don't get that privilege. It's not
for you. And like you say, the vast majority of
people have been so supportive, without whom we wouldn't be here,
not only doing the podcast, wouldn't have done the show.

(46:53):
The show wouldn't have kept going about people who enjoyed it.
And that was always the fun of joining all those
conventions and seeing the fan base grow, moving from the
basement of the jabits to swear gardens, and that many
people just that that love the show, we're involved in it.
It's it's still great when I go into a convention
and still see people dressed up. Yeah, it's so wild. Well,

(47:15):
and it's incredible too, is that you know you get
to see over the years Domina I have met and
I'm sure you too have seen this. We've met so
many folks who you know, they were fourteen or fifteen
or twelve when we first met them, and now we
still every year we go to conventions or see on Twitter,
we get to hear about their you know, university, or
their jobs or the progress they've made in their life,

(47:37):
or get to watch these people grow into themselves in
so many amazing ways and see the fandom support them
and see these friendships grow and blossom and developing through people. Yeah,
like people who have connected through a mutual love of
the either these stories or you know, you guys did
the locations whatever. It is like seeing people develop these

(47:57):
relationships within that is really sweet. Like we've seen people
get into romantic relationships from like two people who are
separate at these conventions that we've gone to and then
all of a sudden they're holding hands and we're like
on a panel like, hey, those two, I think those
two hang up now. And then they asked us a question.
I'm like, Shah, I wasn't listening. I'm sorry paying attention whatever.
But it's it's it's a fandom that it's never like

(48:18):
on most of I've never had been on a show
that I had it that was such passion and became
its own community and published books and stuck together and
you know, just the whole campaign just trying to save
the show. Still We still have a bench in New
York in Central parkos and hated to as which is wild.
I haven't seen. I still haven't seen that. I used
to walk down there all the time. It's it's it's pumbling.

(48:40):
It isn't there isn't it really is, because I've walked
past it a few times and it's like, that's just odd,
but in a great way, like nothing I've worked on
has a bench that that that that the studio realized
how much fandom loved the show of product and decided
to put money towards something. Well, that's why we came
up with that idea, you know. It was we were
the show and I was talking to Harry about it,

(49:01):
and we're like, well what if we did you know,
what if we did this and and made you know,
not a monument but a spot that people could go
and remember the show in the place that it existed.
And the studio was kind enough to help out. So,
you know, I didn't realize the studio put towards it.
That's really nice. Yeah, free Form came in and helped
us with it because it you know, it's not it's

(49:22):
not a small expendi. It's also a place where fans
can always know where to meet when they if they want. Recently,
I was gone already from New York. But we we
did it at this commit We had a convention that
sort of fell apart. Yeah, I'm aware. I had my
plane ticket in hotel and I had already checked the
flight in and it was literally that morning when I'm watching,

(49:44):
I'm getting tweets from fans that know me, and I'm like,
what's going okay? And I reached out and like, I
have this ticket, I could go. I just feel guilty
because it's your money that I'm going to be spending,
So try to be supportive on what you guys did.
There was brilliance. I used, you know, making lemonade. That's
really all we did. But so the first day I
met fans in the hotel and then I left because

(50:06):
I had to go to a bachelor party. It was
only supposed to do that one day anyway. And then
the next day everyone met around the bench that's where
Anna and everyone went and go. When and saw everyone
was like, look we're going to meet around the bench.
That's go and hang out and you know, do what
we can um and it was nice. Yeah, I mean
it was mental. It was a mental mental thing to happen,
but it was nice to have, Like you say, this

(50:26):
is this is sort of our spot in in which
that could have been what that was horrible, at least
something good came out of it. Exactly. That's what the
Shadow Firm does. You know, anytime something happens, good or bad,
they always find a way to make something good out
of it. And I will forever be in awe of

(50:48):
this community. John, I gotta ask, what are your favorite locations? Like?
I don't want to say one because that seems like
an impossible that could be like trying to do stuff
on my my laptop whilst also speaking into microphone and
freaking idiot. Um, let's say top top two or top three?
Is that too much? Gonna hate the first one? No, no, no,

(51:09):
because anyone who knows me in town is gonna expect
the answer. Um. I am a very big fan of
the former hern generating when that funk the herd? How
have we not spoken about that? Beautiful? It looks amazing
it I've spent I've spent a massive amount of my
career in that building. Everyone has. It's so funny we
had zach Levi I do you remember when we saw

(51:30):
zach Levi. I come up and he was like, we're
filming in this place more it's it's like the heroine
or the herd, and I was like, you're filming in that?
He was like, dude, I'm in the super suit. I
was like, I don't know, let's tell you bright try
and stays We're going to show where We rented it
for a year. Show was that the second season of
c for Apple TV. The first couple of episodes we

(51:53):
literally built where those columns are, like where the tunnely
aspect of it is. We literally turned that into ten
blocks of a city four years in the future that
with like two story buildings and rope wires and future.
So the sea was the Jason momoister as an Apple
where there's a viral a plague that turns everybody blind

(52:14):
and then you now cut into the future where everyone's
basically blinded, being each other with swords and sticks, like
their technology doesn't at all. It sounds like, yeah, the
first season was shot in Vancouver. They season two and
three in Ontario. UM, but the idea was it was
an entire world where everyone is sightless, so you know
there's ropes where they can use their sticks to get
around in the designer it was it was actually another

(52:35):
show where we were all very open and collaborative and
creative because we were building a world, but they needed
this big space that worked. And the designer came in
and the producers they loved the space because we could
build a world. It is I mean it is. It
is gothically beautiful and can become anything. Really is it?
Is it the prettiest pills in the world. No, But
I take any director in the place, they all lose

(52:58):
their minds. Well, it's just the way the light bounce
is and there's so many lines and angles and shadows
and you know Ravens one we used the outside for Renlis.
It has multiple of looks. That's that's why I like it.
Um trying to think of what else. I mean, the
conservation area that we did lake Lynn and also the
garden Rockwood is another favorite of mine, just because topographically

(53:21):
it's very different. It always looks good on camera. Other
ruins were the whole lake Lynn thing. We were up there.
We were up there for like a week when we
and it was just like every day was gorgeous. We'd
get there in the mornings and like the ice had
covered everything. They were like ferrets running across the ice
and it was just like the most breathtakingly beautiful place.
And then the ice melted and we got to see

(53:43):
the lake and it was absolutely stunning. Yea. And they
got to go back and spend two nights with fake
snow and on the red gown. Well, and even the
there was that one scene we were chasing at gold
now or at sunset with that fight scene in the
woods and just the way that the sun was setting
to with the trees and how the drone got to
drive through and everything. It just limestone, fast row. Just

(54:07):
it looks great. Fly to fly, yes, that's the words
you're looking for. Drive on air or fly. I don't know.
I'm not a drone operator. I don't know the terminology.
If I had to pick two of those would be
the two. But we were lucky to be in a
lot of really visually great places that worked. Yeah, well
all thanks to you, clearly thanks to I'm one of

(54:28):
many many people that make it all happen. I mean
thanks to you and your team that works with me.
But even then it's just you know, it's on screen
it's it's the set dressing, it's the cinematography, it's the
special effects. We're all cogs in this machine that put
this town blow up. There, we're going to marry up. Yeah,
that's what the heart and soul of shadow Hunters was.
Everyone committed to that. You know, I'm you know, being

(54:49):
a cog in the machine, but also trying to help
the machine run better simultaneously. And I think that's why
you see so many incredible things happen in that show.
Kidding definitely, but I mean, like I said, even you
know the church that we did with the Church of Talta,
with that ballroom scene that we had to dress every
single time we went into that place. Yes, that was

(55:13):
I got to see so little of that because I
had the fucking head on the whole time. I could see,
like the eyes I could be, had the dress and
build that every time. Oh my god, that's right. But
oddly enough, that was a recycled location that was the
same one we used in the very first episode as
the Brooklyn Academy of Art. No, was it really Yea,

(55:33):
that was the same church, same building. I had no idea.
That's insane, wow, unbelievable, Like I said, I asked to
find something in Matt's eyes that was decrepit ballroom, and
we just couldn't find anything that worked perfectly. But this
we could make that space work. And I mean I
remember it took them like eight hours of just putting

(55:53):
the cobwebsite every time that every time it appeared in
the script. Again, it was just like it's more just
having to match what was seen before and tell John, Tell,
tell the people at home how you do cob webs,
because obviously we don't leave spider holes. That's like it's
like this nozzle. It's almost like a insulating foam sprayer

(56:17):
and they just sprays out like strands of I don't
know what the dries up. Yeah, it's like hot blue
being rejected. Yeah. Yeah, it's like a hot blue gun.
I didn't know that because the cob webs there were
like over everything from the air coming down it was
and it was like two guys in respirators just spraying
all this stuff. And then someone had to come in
with dust to age and all the dust it Oh,

(56:40):
I remember the dust we had. I don't know if
you remember them. In Lilith's apartment, everything was covered in
a layer of dust and had to be redusted constant
all the time, like when you take rafters. Yeah, I
guess that's right. Oh man, Yeah, no kidding, well, John,
thank you so much for joining us. Before we let
you go, I do I just want to ask, what's

(57:01):
what's next, what's coming up? What do you headed towards?
What do you want to do? What's it like? Uh?
My dream job went to New York this year. I
can't say it out loud. There was a Marvel show
that was going to be coming up here that because
the cast didn't want to relocate, end up going in
New York. Um, they don't know. Toronto. Toronto is amazing.

(57:25):
The studio was all for it. It was just the
one one of the key actors really is insisted on
not leaving New York City, got it. I guess I'm
happy to be I'm you know, content to be employed. Yeah,
you know, I've been lucky enough to be consistently working.
It's just a bit of a quiet time right now.
So I'm just waiting to see what's next. It's a
couple of projects I'm waiting to see whether they're ready

(57:46):
to go. And it's so funny trying to into people
like what a quiet period is, Like people not in
the industry who are like, odd, I just heard that
they're doing this. You should audition for this, And I'm like, yeah,
you just hearing that it's happening means it's like in
the beginning stay ages of pre production. I'm that's not
gonna hite my desk for a year, you know what
I mean, It's not going to stop filming for a
year and a half. Like there's all two years even

(58:07):
Like that's not it's just not how this works. January
by the time that they've already started exactly in the
can and just sitting there, it's done. Yeah. That's the
thing is it's pre pandemic. We had the artificial streaming boom,
which is why it was it was busy, and then
COVID hit and then afterwards it was just insanity. And
now we've gone back to what the rhythm used to be.
I mean, I've been doing this long enough to know

(58:28):
December January you don't really work February March. It's cyclical up.
Just getting back used to that. Yeah, but you know,
the pandemic changed, Yeah, it changed quite a lot. You
know why wasn't we were in the middle of a show.
The dropped tools. I was. They kept me employed part
time the whole time because we literally just walked away
from million dollar sets that we're all out like. C

(58:50):
was a very huge show with a lot of the
massive sets that were built. They just walked away, and
then we came back and hellishly took what was supposed
to be a television series and decided we wanted to
shoot it with one director and do it like a feature.
How many episodes do you do? Eight? So we also
then had season two. They decided, Okay, we're gonna block.

(59:13):
We're gonna block, shoot it like a like a feature.
So a hundred and seventy four days. By the way,
you have four weeks of prep. Holy well, Jason Momoa
schedule was so tight that we had to shoot too.
It was it was a slog. I mean, that was
that job. Those two seasons was twenty seven months of work. Unbelievable,
but hey, working, you know, working somehow you accomplish it though.

(59:36):
That's the thing. The film again, it was a huge
show with big explosions and big stuff, and you know,
we were outside a lot, which was nice, especially in
the winter. Yeah, no kidding, how quite describe it to people?
Like shooting in New York and they're bringing me my
jacket every time it gets close to zero celsius. I'm like,
don't want about you guys. Four years I did four

(59:57):
years and so on. I don't want. So it was
a conference in one location conference in London called Focus
I go to every year because I go on to
a trade association and it's in the first week. It's
usually it's the first Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday in December and
I show up there and everyone there is stick with
your coats and I'm like, it's the springtime. What are
you're talking about? Yeah exactly. Nice. Yeah, you're in your shorts,

(01:00:18):
like ready to go for the beach like Canada. I
don't even own one of those. Yeah exactly. I mean
I was in Santa Fe shooting you know, a Western
this year, and yes, it's cold, but you know, I'm
wearing so much Fabrica on that show. I'm like, guys,
come on, I have so many layers. This is this
is nothing, this is me I was. I was in
Atlanta right before Christmas and it was everyone there is

(01:00:40):
complaining how cold it is, and like it's one degree
celsius what you're talking about that We're good. I don't
worry about it anyway. John, thank you so much for
being a proud of us than sharing the stories. Um,
we really appreciate it. I mean for us it means
such a such a lot because people get this insight
about the geniuses who really put this show together. So

(01:01:01):
thank you for not only being on the podcast, but
for being such an integral part of our show. Absolutely
and my pleasure. It's got a highlight for me. It
means so much to share these dories because Dom and
I can talk about it all. We want to be like, oh,
John told us this, and John said that and he
did this thing. But to hear it from you and
to hear your perspective and your insight, and I learned
so much today. Thanks so much. I'm happy to talk

(01:01:23):
about the show anytime you have questions and complaints about
why we shot stuff in where I can always give
you the you know what, next time we do a
mail bag episode. Alright, angels, here's the deal. Next time
we do a mail bag episode, if you have any
questions for John drama that was decisions for what was
made and when and where and why certain people if
people understand I get start up early enough that we're there.

(01:01:45):
When they discussed why certain people get hired in season one,
there was a lot of drama season one that I
remember some of it. That's why certain people weren't asked
back and going to go. And we've got another episode
to film right after this. But again, John, thank you
so much, Thank you, John, Thank you. Hi Return to

(01:02:12):
the Shadows as hosted an executive produced by me Dominic,
Sherwood and Katherine McNamara. Our executive producer is Linggley. Our
senior producers are Liz Hayes and Diego Tapia. Our producer
is Hannah Harris and Kristin Familiar, and our intern is
Sam Kat's. Original music by Alex Kinzy performed by Alex
Kinzy and Kathryn McNamara, and the episode was mixed by
Seth A landscape