Suburban Location Scouting

[David T. Cole]

Even wonder how they do this?

I don't know how much time has past since the outbreak except that it has been a while now.

Whenever they go into a neighbor the grass and whatnot needs to be overgrown. In S04.E09 where Rick and Carl hold up it's pretty tall (though not as crazy and weedy as it probably should be). So when they scout and book these locations do they tell the owners not to cut their grass or scrubs for a month or whatever?

[Kierstyn]

I have to imagine that the nation's financial climate is helping out the production team.  There are a lot of foreclosed-upon houses.  And worse than that, there are houses that are in limbo - where homeowners have up and left, but the banks haven't taken possession of them yet... primarily so they aren't on the hook for upkeep.  Limbo houses quickly deteriorate into looking post-apocalyptic.  My understanding is that Georgia has a higher than average number of such properties.  Some neighborhoods only have one or two such homes, and neighbors try to keep up with the landscaping to keep the whole area from looking like crap.  But in places where there are several such houses...?  I imagine getting some exterior shots can't be that hard with little prep work.

This is just a theory, of course.

[mandolin]

i don't know if this is the right place to post this, but it's a bit related. I did a self-guided tour of many of the filming locations last summer, and it was so much fun. Highly recommend it if you're into that kind of thing.

I would say, living in SW Georgia, and then visiting the Senoia area, many areas just look ripe for filming this type of show, with minimal work. And the plethora of woods never hurts.

[kikismom]

For anyone thinking of visiting memorable sites, here's something helpful:  https://i.chzbgr.com/maxW500/7887425280/hE37DD682/ 

[mandolin]

Perfect timing, kikismom. I'm headed out to sightsee again next Friday and Saturday and that map will simplify my planning. ;)

[AwesomO4000]

Brought over from "Love in the Time of Walkers" thread. I decided this seemed like the best place to address this:

On 3/14/2017 at 2:57 PM, nodorothyparker said:

The non-terrible CGI parts of it did seem to have more clean laundry laying around in it than my actual laundry room.

Heh, that's because the area is not really a trash dump per se. It's actually sorted piles from an industrial warehouse clearing. I know this, because the "trash" piles are downtown in the town I live in, and I know the guy who is in charge of clearing the warehouse (He's our acquaintance/yard guy). In our area of Georgia, this is a somewhat common thing. Oftentimes when an old warehouse is cleared, any usable items are sorted into piles for reuse or recycling. Wood for potentially being ground into mulch or wood pulp for fuel, metal for scrap recycling, railroad crossties (if there) for use in landscaping, and most profitable - bricks. Old bricks here are sorted into size and type and condition and even packaged up. They are then reused for... something. I don't know if it's for building or outside wall decoration or finishing in buildings or not, but they pay special attention to packing up the usable bricks, even wrapping each pallet full with shrinkwrap plastic and other reinforcements. So the "garbage dump" is actually a lot next to a warehouse being cleared where the usable stuff has been sorted into piles for later processing.* The lot isn't that big either - which explains the bad CGI.

* potential spoiler? So I spoiler tagged just in case.

Spoiler

and interestingly the piles were still there the in the lot the last time I looked, so I wonder if the show is having the landowner keep it around in case they want to use it again, because usually the industrial stuff is cleared away more quickly. When The Hunger Games movies were finished using the huge warehouse / plant across the street from my work that they were shooting at, it wasn't long after the buildings were taken down - maybe a month or two - before everything was sorted and taken away.