‘The Bear’ unit production manager has 3 words for Chicago-made projects: Locations, locations, locations
CHICAGO — “Not necessarily realistic. But authentic.”
That’s one credo Carrie Holt de Lama, a veteran of the Chicago film industry, has learned through countless hours of driving around, with a location scout, a filmmaker or alone. Her mission: find a building, an intersection, a vantage point or a vacant lot that suits what a script requires. Preferably something that hasn’t been filmed a million times already.
Aren’t those words “realistic and “authentic” synonyms? Well, kind of. But when you make a movie or shoot a series episode, authenticity often becomes less about objective accuracy and more about subjective rightness. The right locale, the perfect backdrop for a specific scripted scene, often makes zero geographical sense (favorite to “The Bob Newhart Show”).
