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CORRIDORS OF POWER: DESIGN AND LOCATIONS
Los Angeles
Creating the intricate newsroom and print shop where Cal, Della, Cameron and co-workers work at The Washington Globe required not only exhaustive research, but also two sound stages at Culver Studios in Culver City, California, to host the newspaper. It was the most detailed set on which the filmmakers could remember shooting.
To imagine the work environment of the writers and editors of The Washington Globe, production designer Mark Friedberg and five-time Oscar-nominated set decorator CHERYL CARASIK toured the offices of several newspapers, including The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times, took endless photos and reviewed archival documents that would give them inspiration.
Nowhere was authenticity more important to the film than in this newsroom. "Our special effect is our newspaper set," the director proudly notes. "We put all our love into that set. It was built over a vast area of two stages, opened up to be together, and it was double height. Some days, we had 250 journalists in there. I don't think anyone who's seen the film doesn't believe this is a real place."
Says designer Friedberg of the process: "Most people think they know what a newspaper office looks like. Ninety percent of all newsrooms do look the same in certain respects: dropped ceiling, oppressive lighting and endless perspective. So we had to make it more real than what the average person can imagine. We also had to do a little improvising to make the fluorescent lighting more beautiful. We were using it to light our scenes, not just type copy."
While working with film crews for more than two decades should have prepared him for what he'd find, Friedberg was still surprised by the surroundings. He laughs: "Mostly what we found is how messy reporters are. Filing is something they don't have much time for; filing means just piling your papers in a particular stack. Our technical advisor's main criticism about our newsroom was that it wasn't messy enough."
That advisor was R.B. BRENNER, respected editor of The Washington Post's metro section. Like anyone who watches as his profession receives the Hollywood treatment, Brenner was initially skeptical of how serious the filmmakers took their responsibility to accuracy. Those apprehensions were abated in his first meeting with the director.
"When I first met with Kevin, I was struck by how knowledgeable he was about newspapers," recalls Brenner. "He had really done his homework. He comes from a documentary background and he obviously had a real interest in journalism, as well as a respect for it. Mostly, in that first meeting, he was looking for precise detail in understanding what we would do in certain situations."
Offers Macdonald: "We tried to be as accurate as possible to what it's like to be a journalist for the film. The Washington Post was enormously useful and helpful, and they really took us under their wing. Every actor went on a tour and spent half a day there. They let us film their printing presses and advised us. They also gave us R.B. Brenner, who we met while we were touring the place. He really kept us on the straight and narrow. R.B. is so responsible and ethical and sees journalism as an important public institution. He believes, as a reporter, you are responsible for the society you're living in, and you can do so much harm by printing an untruth."
Brenner became a key part of the filmmaking team, taking a sabbatical from his job at the Post for the month of filming newsroom sequences in Los Angeles. Also, he spent full days on set when in Washington--even while continuing to edit his newspaper's daily metro section. His advice on details would extend to minutiae no designer could imagine. Brenner says: "Cheryl would get parking tickets from D.C. and have them pinned up, as well as laundry receipts with a Washington address and garage repair slips. Even things that went in the drawers were authentic because she and Mark believed it was all part of making a character out of the set."
What struck many on the production was how much traditional journalism was changing as readers and reporters alike primarily received their information online. "We are also reflecting the downsizing of American newspapers," Friedberg notes. "These are people almost literally buried under their paperwork, now doing the work of what three or four of them used to do. Another sign of the times was that a lot of desks were going out the door, leaving open spaces."
The Washington Globe's newsroom took up about 20,000 square feet, using almost every square foot of the soundstages. The high ceilings at the Culver stages were particularly well suited for the job at hand. This was important, as the offices at the Globe were two-tiered, with editor Cameron Lynne's office strategically perched in a corner of the second floor.
Cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto used this design to capture another perspective. He angles his cameras to shoot through Cameron's glass window and capture the ant farm that was below her. Relates Friedberg: "It gave that mid-'70s film perspective of oblique angles and being far away from the characters. It was also important to provide a space for her that was integral to the rest of the newsroom. She's not in an ivory tower; she's a working reporter like the others."
This was at the direction of Macdonald, who explains his rationale: "There are things in our movie which are a homage to All the President's Men, one of the great American journalism movies ever made."
In addition to detailing the office with hundreds of reams of paper, the effects team had to feed different images onto hundreds of desktop computers. A sprawl of cables and wires ran under the newsroom floor from a back booth where screen images were conjured. They were then transmitted to the hub of the newsroom, flash-feeding monitors.
After a month of filming the interior Globe sequences, the production moved off the studio lot to shoot at various locations around Los Angeles. These included the downtown Bonaventure Hotel, as well as the Mayfield Senior High School for Girls and Centinela Hospital in Inglewood, where Della goes to check on a hospitalized deliveryman caught in the assassin's line of fire. The production returned to the Culver stages for two more weeks of L.A. filming. There, the team built the interior of Cal's equally messy apartment and the motel room where Dominic Foy is interrogated by Cal, Della and Stephen.
Washington, D.C.
State of Play filmed in the District of Columbia longer than any recent production in the memory of veteran location manager CAROL FLAISHER. The filmmakers were looking for locales that showed the D.C. where citizens live and work, not just the monuments that tourists come to visit. Flaisher battled multiple bureaucracies to provide State of Play with the working person's version of the nation's capital.
She is the first person to admit that Washington is not an easy place to shoot a film. Admits Flaisher: "There are endless agencies you have to go through for permits: district, district police, park service, park service police, U.S. Capitol, secret service, general services administration, to name a few. Security, for obvious reasons, is tight and there are certain places you can't film. The district police, though, are fabulous. They were what made filming here even possible."
The Maine Avenue Fish Market, near the waterfront--one of the few remaining open-air fish markets along the East Coast--was among the first locations the film used in Washington. There, Cal meets with Pointcorp insider Red Six to track down the mercenary doing Pointcorp's bidding. Days later, the production shot on a street in front of the World Bank Building. It was a study in contrasts that represented the diversity of D.C.
Another key location was the Library of Congress, the nation's oldest historical and cultural repository, where the production filmed the scene in which Stephen and Collins hold a press conference after it is revealed he had an intimate relationship with Sonia Baker. Included in the audience were actual members of the press, such as Watergate icon BOB WOODWARD, BOB SCHIEFFER of CBS, MARGARET CARLSON of Bloomberg News, The Washington Post's E.J. DIONNE, JR. and blogging journalist STEVEN CLEMONS.
The Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium was also the site of several days' filming. Considered by many to be one of the finest examples of classical architecture in America, the building is located on Constitution Avenue across from the National Mall. One scene shot on the balcony incorporated views of the mall museums and the congressional dome.
From these historical edifices, the company moved to a storefront that played a key role in Washington's past and remains a D.C. pop culture landmark. Ben's Chili Bowl on U Street, near the historic Lincoln Theatre, is renowned for both its food and the part it played in quelling the riots following Martin Luther King, Jr.'s assassination in 1968. It was an island of calm during that storm along U Street, a primarily African-American area where Duke Ellington and other jazz greats performed at the Lincoln.
The history-rich section of Mount Pleasant, in D.C.'s northwest area, provided the modest brick building that served as the exterior of Cal's apartment. Shooting at night, the production turned into a big block party over one weekend, as businesses along Mount Pleasant Street remained open and local residents stayed up all night watching the filming.
Among the federal agencies that offered the production their headquarters were the Department of the Interior and the Department of Housing and Urban Development. The latter was turned into the exterior of the hospital where Cal comforts a shaken Della after she nearly becomes another victim during an assassination. A dozen rainbirds (sprinkler systems) lined the roof of the enormous complex, providing suitably dreary ambiance for the scene.
The Scottish Rite Temple on 16th Street, in the Dupont Circle area, is one of the grander architectural accomplishments most tourists in the nation's capital don't see. A recreation of the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus, the landmark has front doors that are guarded by two sphinxes representing wisdom and power. It was designed by John Russell Pope, also known as the designer of the Jefferson Memorial. The film shot several scenes there, including the interior of Congressman Collins' office and an exterior sequence in which Cal and Della walk past a rehearsing marching band.
Both the lesser-known Americana Hotel in Arlington, Virginia, and the infamous Watergate Hotel served as key scene locations. Likewise, the Kennedy Center opened its doors to the production, allowing it to re-create a children's ballet--at which Cal confronts Senator Fergus--in one of its marbled reception areas. Even the Metropolitan Transit Authority allowed the movie to film a couple of key scenes. This was not a permission that was easy to come by, considering content, safety and service restrictions.
For the end-title sequence, the crew was actually able to print its own copies of The Washington Globe. Explains Macdonald of one of his proudest moments in production: "It's The Washington Post's printing press. They allowed us to print our newspaper at their shop in Virginia. You see the Globe with the headline that is the end of our story going through their printing press."
READ INTERVIEW WITH KEVIN MACDONALD
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