“The timing has to work or it’s a definite no-go,” Chandler says. “They might just generally need a classroom or auditorium, and then I go through the specs on what’s available and they can decide whether or not they want to visit.”īut the far bigger consideration is the timing, which is dependent on the academic calendar. “Often they know the spot on campus that they want to consider for a shoot, but sometimes they’re not quite sure,” she says. The process starts when a film location scout reaches out to Chandler. It’s an amazing feat of logistics and know-how, and it’s exciting to be part of that.” “And what I do find very interesting about my work, and about these productions, is how they can come to campus and completely transform a location overnight,” Chandler says, “then almost just as quick, film their scenes and move on. What I do care about is what they want to shoot and what we’ll need to do on our end to make it happen.”Īll of this makes her perfect for the job, which she’s been working at full time since the end of 2015.Ĭhandler poses inside one of the malleable spaces of Briarcliff Campus Building A that are so attractive to film productions. “I don’t care if a production is packed with A-list talent or a bunch of unknown, up-and-coming filmmakers. “A scout might say in passing that, you know, someone like Ryan Reynolds is in the movie, and I wouldn’t be impressed,” Chandler says. On top of that, she’s rather indifferent to the cult of celebrity and outsized personalities that might step foot on campus for a film production. She freely admits she’d much rather curl up with a good book. What Chandler herself will never imitate, however, is being a big fan of movies and TV shows. We can imitate Germany, we can imitate California, we can even imitate a colony in space.” ![]() “Also, the university features a number of different architectural styles that give filming crews a lot of options. “Emory just has a beautiful campus-our landscape is visually striking and evokes that ideal collegiate feeling,” Chandler says. In fact, a wide variety of Emory locations have been featured in dozens of productions over the past decade. With the state of Georgia now one of the nation’s top filming hubs, the university has become a popular locale for shooting movies and TV series of all types. “Film crews just love the look of the main building and its surrounding facilities, and they love that the interiors can be adapted into just about anything they might need,” Chandler says.ī ut Building A isn’t the only draw at Emory-including its Oxford Campus-to attract Hollywood and indie productions. Netflix’s Ozark briefly transformed a space into a modern-day mental institution, while Disney’s WandaVision turned a courtyard into an autopsy theater for a fallen superhero. The productions for Hidden Figures and First Man used Emory’s Briarcliff Campus to double as 1960s-era NASA control rooms and offices. “And the building’s interiors are so varied you can shoot a number of scenes right next to each other and they’ll look like they’ve been filmed at completely different locations.” ![]() “I had a production designer once refer to Building A as an exoskeleton that’s perfect for making it into just about any kind of institutional setting they need-from a bustling hospital to a sedate bank lobby to a nondescript government office,” says Denise Chandler, head of film production management for Emory. It’s no wonder why movie and TV productions hold the location in such high demand. If that weren’t enough, Building A’s labyrinthian underground tunnels and eldritch elevators help Stranger Things achieve its creepy, Netherworldly vibes. Today, it’s a mostly empty, five-story complex filled with vacant offices, lobbies, conference rooms, auditoriums, and lab and clinical spaces. Erected in the 1960s in the brutalist architecture style-a showcase of concrete, steel, and glass-it was originally used as a mental health treatment facility before being purchased by the university decades later. In real life, however, the Hawkins Lab is simply an old academic building-Building A, to be exact, located on Emory University’s Briarcliff Campus. Not only is this edifice of elemental evil home to the unspeakable experiments performed on the show’s Eggo-loving protagonist Eleven, but it’s also a portal to the malevolent Upside Down-a dark mirror world whose creatures terrorize the sci-fi show’s scrappy band of young heroes. I n the Netflix TV series Stranger Things, few sights elicit shudders from viewers more than the foreboding presence of the Hawkins National Laboratory.
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