Uncover the Mysterious Power of the Ladybug Effect with Greg Porper – SYS Podcast Episode 535 Exclusive!
Ashley
Why did you guys shoot in Texas? Just out of curiosity.
Greg Porper
So, we wanted to film in Los Angeles because that’s where we live. We needed to take over a full office. We need to take over multiple suites in an office building, not just because our main set took place in an office, but also because we needed, you know, individual areas for cast. You know, we have to follow strict COVID protocols. We needed a designated area to test people. We needed an area with a lot of parking for all the cars. We needed a big enough space where people can eat and remain six feet apart from each other. And in LA, the places that had these things, the price for those locations were astronomical. And it got to the point where we had, we, there was a place in Calabasas where we did have access to filming, but we had to film it within a certain window. Like it kind of checked off the boxes. It did not have the idea, look, this movie does not take place in Southern California and out the main window, there’s all these cacti. So, that would have been like something we would have had to adjust or avoided, but we didn’t really want to have to shoot around our location. And ultimately, the script got sent to a producer based in text in the Dallas area, a production fixer who really liked the script and made the pitch to me and John to say, Hey, have you guys thought about filming elsewhere? And at this point in time, we were open to going elsewhere just because we were seeing that logistically was really hard in Los Angeles. There was an office suite in Los Angeles that was absolutely perfect that we loved, but the tenant was like, you can’t tell the building owner that you’re here. You can’t be in, you know, beyond five o’clock. There was just all these restrictions that were like, this just isn’t going to work. And he’s like, oh, by the way, I don’t have parking, but I don’t think it’s a big deal. You could probably just park down the street. I don’t think it’s an issue. Like there was never like that ultimate place that worked. So, I went to Dallas and I feel like I lived in Dallas for probably eight months between like 2021 and 2022 because through pre-production, um, I was like the office, the look of the office was so important. I went around to again, no joke, probably 150 to 200 offices in the Dallas Fort Worth area over the course of, you know, three months trying to find that place that not only had a great looking office or an office with enough bare bones that we could dress up, but then that also had all those other spaces. And then we did find the building that essentially gave us eight suites for the price of, you know, what one suite would cost here in LA. And it’s like, okay, we can actually like function here. We have an entire parking lot. The building manager is like excited that we’re there. In fact, he ended up becoming one of the characters in the movie because he’s also an actor. So that like worked out really nicely. And there was just like an excitement that there was a movie coming to town and I wish LA were more like it, but I understand why it’s not because that’s, it’s what people are used to here. Paramount or a big studio can come to a location and offer a lot of money to shoot in the restaurant for the day. So now that’s the expectation that that’s what all productions are going to cost and then smaller budget movies come in and, you know, they don’t have those same budgets. So, the restaurant or the location is going to say no. So, you know, never thought I was going to film this movie in Dallas, but Dallas also had to like anywhere USA luck that we were going for. And also it was very easy to shoot with a process trailer there, very easy to get police and shut down streets, much harder to do that here in LA. So those are factors that kind of contributed to it and finding that office location ultimately was what allowed me to say, like, okay, we can officially move forward now. Cause I did not, we production kind of getting pushed back because we didn’t have that office.
