[LouisVanDerWright]

Originally Posted by ardecila

Shameless does a good job of filming Chicago neighborhoods, although (I guess for budget reasons) they mix in some LA street scenes and a faux-Chicago backlot. They're pretty careful about mixing the two, most of the LA scenes are shot in close-up, no palm trees visible, etc. Usually I can only tell because of the telltale LA sunlight. All of Dick Wolf's Chicago shows include neighborhood scenes also, and Joe Swanberg's films/shows.

I'd say Chicago neighborhoods are getting more screen time than ever before.

A lot of the reluctance for directors is due to cost, on-location filming is very expensive. However, Cinespace is supposed to build a backlot with some Chicago-authentic facades, so hopefully that will help a little bit too (within the constraints of backlot filming).

I mentioned it somewhere else but Chicago PD recently paid me $7500 to stop work for a day at one of my construction sites so they could fill a scene they needed a construction site for. They literally filmed for three hours and left. The amount of money activity like this must inject in the local economy is absurd given how much they threw at me for basically nothing.