Found on NBC Secrets and Stories from Set *SPOILERS*

Found on NBC: Secrets and Stories from Set *SPOILERS*

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Sadly the popular NBC show Found was not renewed for a third season, which both surprised and saddened me. I haven’t really posted anything about it, but I was lucky enough to work as an extra on the show for about five days and was hoping to work on it again if it got renewed for a third season. But the good news is that since the show is over I can reveal a bunch of secrets about how the show is made and what it was like on set. Also fair warning, I am going to possibly spoil some of the movie magic behind the show, so if you don’t want that sense of childhood wonder destroyed, this video probably isn’t for you.

Found Set Secrets

Well first of all it shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone out there that the show isn’t at all shot in DC. It was shot in a smaller studio in Atlanta. I would give more details about it, but it was very small and specific to the show and I am sure things will shoot there in the future and if I gave the exact address I don’t think future productions would be very happy with me, but for anyone visiting Atlanta you would be surprised how many tv and film studios are speckled around the city with many just being one or two turns off of a main road. Most of the studios are in highly commercial or industrial areas so you wouldn’t be expecting them anyway as they just look like a large warehouse surrounded by other buildings so you may have been really close to someone filming without even realizing it.

And when I say it was shot at a studio in Atlanta, I mean almost all of it was shot in that studio and I mean more than you probably realize. They filmed as much as they could in the studio, even many shots that you may have thought were on location or outdoors. My favorite example of this is the bus station. I am willing to bet a good amount of people think that this bus station is possibly a real bus station or that at least it is outside. Well no. The entire bus station is located inside the studio and yes it was about two stories tall. And so I hear you saying “well what about the bus, surely the shots with the bus were outside” - no those were also inside the studio and that is a real bus and they would just roll it in and out when needed. Since we are on the topic of the bus station, want to know something fun about the front of the building? Most of the front glass actually can swing out. The reason it does this is because as you can tell the space inside the bus station isn’t very big, but camera equipment is. So if they wanted to get a shot of let’s say Margaret sitting in the front, you would either need to be super close up to get it normally or you would just conveniently put the camera inside the wall so you can get the distance you need. Now they absolutely did bring cameras inside sometimes, but since most shots were from the front of the station looking in, this gave them some much appreciated flexibility.

Now imagine that you wanted to quickly get from the bus station to the DC police department to visit Trent… well guess what? You aren’t going to need a bus, in fact they are so close in real life that if that bus got loose it wouldn’t have to go very far to crash into it. To give you a sense of the studio, let me John Madden this a little bit to get you an idea of how close everything really was.

So here is our studio. Down south here we have costumes and a little bit above that we have background holding, which is basically just a whole bunch of folding chairs. Between them there is a bunch of random storage for props and walls and other pieces of set. Then we have the bg craft services table which is very important and then we have the sets separated by a hanging backdrop from the ceiling. Here on the right we have the bus and bus station and the bus would be kept off camera here and then be rolled up and then right next door was the police station, which was basically just the bullpen area and then a long hallway with a square part up here that you could walk around. Then these two sections were separated by a dividing wall with a bunch of other set pieces, like the jail and I believe M and A and the apartments were all in this area, but I really was not supposed to be around there because that was none of my business and I don’t like getting kicked off set for being nosey. Over on the right here is where the props department was and on the left behind the bathrooms is where everyone would eat lunch! Catering would be way outside here and the good stash of generally forbidden crew crafty was hidden up here (smiley face).

So now you are probably thinking - Frank I watched the show and what about all those places that they went to catch a perp, they had to all be on location somewhere. And while I can’t attest to all the locations, I would not be surprised if the vast majority were either on or very close to set. One example I know for sure was in episode 21 which was the last episode I worked on. You know that shady warehouse that they tracked the kidnappers down to who kidnapped the wrong family? Had to be some random warehouse they rented right? No! If we go back to my little drawing we can see that what they did was they shot it in a corner up here that had that look already and its own closet and they literally built a new wall right here that is just wood and veneer. That’s all it takes to make a random open space in a studio warehouse look like anything you want it to fairly quickly. This is also why they would store things like whole sections of walls over here because if the crew needed to create a location for next week’s episode they could quickly mock up something that looked close enough to what was needed and then tear it down when they were done. And these things were not put together to last, like I think I remember them screwing some last minute supports in between takes. Now they did shoot some on location, but if they could get away with filming in or around the studio they absolutely tried to. It may seem like shows like this have a huge budget, but you would be surprised how cost effective they have to be to get it done right. They shot each episode in about two weeks and only did a few takes of each scene before moving on and they tried really hard to save as much as possible when they could. NBC tv shows have been some of the most frugal productions I have been on in terms of being cost effective and shooting efficiently, especially when you compare it to something like the Righteous Gemstones which shot like it had money to burn.

So if you watch and see the police station walls and they look like cinderblock, guess what? That is just like a foam veneer on a wood frame and when I first leaned on it, I was afraid that I was going to accidentally punch through it. But it looks real and that is what is important. Also if you were wondering, this is why many conversations with Gabi and Trent happened either in the bullpen or in the hallway as those were all that there was. And when talking about the hallway, whenever you see a shot there, remember that just around any given corner, there were probably many people hidden away back there who were working on the production. For example down this side of the hall way you would probably have a production assistant or two telling the background actors when to go along with some hair and makeup people and a little further back assistant directors / directors / grips / gaffers all waiting in case they need to come out to fix something at a moments notice and they are just barely hidden off set.

Now let’s get to the good part - the stars! Sadly I am going to have to keep this to Mark-Paul Gosselaar who played Sir, Brett Dalton who played Trent and Shanola Hampton who played Gabi as they were the only main cast who I really interacted with at all. I did have some interaction with Kelli Williams who played Margaret, but that was because she was directing the episode and she literally gave me directions on set. But that is a different hat than when being an actor so that was all business and being on my best behavior. But she was good, had a clear vision, was excellent with communicating what she was wanting to get out of a shot and was really great with working with a team even when the rest of the team struggled a little bit.

Let’s start with the big bad himself - Sir. This is probably the most interesting story I have about being on set. So the first episode I did was the one Kelli was directing and I didn’t know anything about the show. I mean almost nothing. I knew it was called Found and that they found missing people and that it had good ratings. That was pretty much it. I was split that day which was a bit odd where the first half I was playing a person at the bus station and the second half I was slated to be a police officer, which is strange but they got their money's worth. And for that second half I really didn’t get used at all, they had lots of other police officers in that day and most had been regulars and so they used them for those scenes and I was afraid that well it just wasn’t my day and that I was just not going to get used again, which happens sometimes, it’s not abnormal where they think they may need you and then it turns out they don’t and so you don’t get used. But on the very last scene they needed two cops and I had a decent look and hadn’t been used yet so they put me in. They placed me in the back hallway of the police station and they positioned a bunch of news reporters with fake cameras around and I believe it was either the first or second assistant director who came over and gave us a really quick run down of the scene. She said so this is when we are bringing in Sir for the first time and he is like the big bad of the show and this is going to be the first look the audience gets at him being captured and it is going to be shocking because he is going to be all disheveled and he normally stays really neat so it will be a big deal and you are bringing him in to the station after he has been captured so it’s a big reveal. You just need to walk him down the hall while they are trying to get an interview. I have no idea who this Sir guy is but I can walk down a hall pretending to arrest someone, easy peasy. So they finish getting ready and the actor playing sir comes in and I don’t remember if we were actually formally introduced or if it was just a hey these are the cops this is the scene cause it was pretty quick, but they did have to figure out how he was going to be chained and if he was actually going to be handcuffed behind his back or if he was just going to fake it and at one point they even thought of just having him hold a gatorade bottle behind his back like this so from the front it would look like he was handcuffed, but anyway we shot the scene. I grabbed him by the shoulder and walked him down the hall like three or four steps maybe and did about three takes and boom we were done. I didn’t really think much of it other than oh wow if this makes the cut I am definitely going to be seen because the camera was like four feet in front of me. As someone who basically just does extra work for big productions actually getting visible screen time is a big deal even if nobody notices you. So I was pretty psyched about it, but didn’t really think much of it otherwise. Flash forward to about a month later and I brought up the show when talking to a patient and the first thing they said was “oh yeah isn’t that the show with that Saved by the Bell guy on it?” and my first reaction was “what saved by the bell guy” and it’s not because I didn’t know the show. I grew up watching saved by the bell. I just had no clue who he was talking about. And I was confused cause there aren’t many guys on saved by the bell so there weren’t many options to choose from and I certainly didn’t remember seeing Mario Lopez anywhere on set. So I pulled up IMDB and looked up the show and it hit me. I arrested Zach Morris and I didn’t have a clue. I thought that he was just a day player or like the bad guy for a story arc over a few episodes. I think it was because it felt just like an everyday thing and he didn’t have a pretentious air or anything, he was just very professional. He came in, hit his marks, was pleasant and then moved on to prepare for tomorrow. And for the other times he was on set he was the same way, professional, and well prepared, but he mostly kept to himself so I didn’t even think twice about who he was. Sadly in the end the scene got cut and if you watch the episode it makes sense because Sir never needs to be brought in to the station and it would have really screwed up the episode if it was kept in.

Brett Dalton who played Trent was a bit more relaxed. He was a bit more casual, still completely professional, but would be a bit slower to go back to his trailer or a little more likely to make small talk or meander a bit on set, but overall a very nice guy. Now Shanola Hampton who played Gabi is by far the biggest personality and she was a ton of fun to work with. She was always a little ball of energy, singing songs, saying hi and hugging everyone. Like she hugged me before I even met her, literally I didn’t even know it was her. I was standing in the little corner nook of the police station off camera and this little thing grabs me by the side and starts hugging me and at that point I didn’t even have a chance to realize what was going on. Luckily my instinct now after not recognizing a bunch of people on set is to just go with it and meet the energy so before I even saw it was her I side hugged back and was like hey! Cause in the moment I could only remember her character name and I didn’t want to just call her Gabi like I didn’t know who she was. And hugging everybody was normal for her, like one day she literally went to every single background actor and gave them each an individual hug and talked with them and she remembered just about everyone she had worked with before. If you want to get a good sense of her real personality, watch some of the bloopers or behind the scenes interviews with her because she is much more fun than her character and she is definitely smaller and cuter in person. Honestly I hope she does well and moves on to bigger and better things because she is very skilled and showed it with how well she crushed that character. So I think I am going to end things here because this video has probably gone on long enough, but if you have any more questions about the show I will do my best to answer them in the comments. Thank you so much for watching. I am Frank Cioppettini with Servetty Software and I will see you in the next one.

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