Film Locations Glossary
Doubling
What is doubling?
Also called standing in for, or location double.
Doubling is using one place to stand in for another on screen, such as Atlanta playing New York or a Toronto street playing Chicago.
It is driven by incentives, cost, and access rather than by geography, and it puts a burden on the locations and art departments to remove or replace anything that gives the real place away. Signage, license plates, street furniture, and architecture are the usual tells.
Example
Atlanta doubles for Brooklyn. The tells are the license plates, the fire hydrants, the street signage, and the power lines, so the art department covers or replaces each and the camera stays below the roofline.
Figures are illustrative, chosen to show the mechanics rather than to quote market rates.
Where you'll see it
A creative and incentive-driven decision at prep, which then becomes a locations and art workload.
Common mistake
Solving the architecture and forgetting the small print. Licence plates, hydrants, street signage, and power lines are what tell an audience which city they are actually looking at.
Related questions
- Why do productions double one city for another?
- Incentives, cost, crew depth, and access. The look is achievable in many places; the rebate and the ability to close a street are not.
- What gives a doubled location away?
- Signage, vehicle plates, street furniture, hydrants, road markings, overhead lines, and architecture that belongs to a specific region.