Shooting NYC for Afghanistan

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davide

Well-known member
I'm looking for advice on a shot I'm going to be doing the weekend after next. The scene takes place in Afghanistan, but I'm going to have to shoot it in NYC. It's a medium-wide (28mm or so) static shot of archaeologists in the desert stacking up crates to be loaded on a truck. The perspective is going to be straight on and perpendicular with the horizon.

In order to cheat it I was hoping to film it like in these pictures. The first is credited to Michael Reichman at Luminous Landscape. The other is the work of cinematographer John Alton in The American in Paris.

I figure that with the foreground silhouetted and the background a bunch of haze and swirling sand I can get the vibe of the deserts of Southern Afghanistan without actually being there. Any thoughts on how to best go about this using an indoor set? All help will be greatly appreciated.
 

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Some colleges of mine used West Virginia to double Afaghanistan. They found a large construction site where they were moving a lot of dirt around. Also a strip mine or something like that would work.
 
I just shot a film in Savannah Ga, in which we used a sand quarry to double as a desolate/mountainous location. It worked very well.

Do you have to be on an indoor set? How big is the set? I don't think anyone would ever expect you to replicate a wide afghan exterior on an interior NYC set.

Let us know more details.
 
Thanks for the advice so far. I don't have to do it indoors. But logistically it would be easier than finding a place 4 hours outside of the city by train. The sound stage is large enough for the shot. I noticed I accidentally put in 20mm when I meant 28. And that's in cinema terms not still photography. So I guess more medium-wide is a better description. I'm not trying to replicate the exterior as much as the tone of the exterior. The horizon and the mountains that should be in the background were this Afghanistan will be completely obscured by haze and sand as in the shots I uploaded.

How would one go about doing that on an indoor set? I've got about 20K worth of lights that I can use for the shot.

Although if anyone knows of a location around NYC that would fit the bill, please let me know.
 
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