Location, Location, Location
Article in the Star Ledger: by M.Z.S
When you're exploring fresh TV terrain, it helps to have a guide who knows the territory. ON "The Sopranos," that role is filled by locations manager Mark Kamine, an industry veteran who is New Jersey to the bone - born in Jersey City, raised in Wayne and a resident of Montclair. Kamine says that when "Sopranos" co-producer Ilene Landress first called him about the job - after the pilot episode had been shot, but before production began on the first full season - she didn't say that a New Jersey background was essential. "But when you're working for David Chase," Kamine says - speaking of the "Sopranos" creator who grew up in Clifton and North Caldwell - "that certainly couldn't have hurt."
Kamine has stuck close to home throughout his career, seving as location manager on the period piece "Quiz Show," the romantic comedy "Picture Perfect" and other feature films shot in the tri-state area. But until "The Sopranos," he ws never asked to find locations that would scream "New Jersey" to the uninitialed. Uusally he was asked to fin the Garden State setting that either looked like somewhere else or were generic enough to pass for Anyplace, U.S.A. In contrast, Kamine describes "The Sopranos" as "the most intense New Jersey experience I've ever had on a (project)." Currently at least 75% of exteriors on "The Sopranos" are shot on location in New Jersey, with side trips into New York City and Long Island. Most interios are filmed on soundstages at Silvercup Studios in Queens. Most of the cast and crew live and work in the New York-New Jersey area.
"It's certainly possible to film New Jersey and New York locations elsewhere, but personally, I never think it feels exactly right," Kamine says. " 'The Sopranos' just wouldn't be the same hsow if it had to pretend to be New Jersey someplace else." Chase seconds that sentiment. "There's no question that shooting on location lends believability to everything we do. It helps the actors, too. It might sound funny, but the mere fact that you, the actor, are actually in the place you say you're in means a lot when you're shooting a movie or a TV show. As an actor or a writer or a director, you can learn a lot just from being in an area, having a chance to live and work there and get to know the people.
Since July of 1998, whe regular shooting commenced, Kamine and his colleagues in the locations department helped buid up a geographical nexus of locations that recur as the series unfolds. Kamine is careful to point out that few locations in "The Sopranos" have an exact realworld equivalent. The vagueness isn't just due to the drama's dark subject matter - though you'd be surprised how many legitimate companies are proud to trumpet their association with a show about mobsters. It has more to do with the malleable nauter of film editing. "The Sopranos" crew can shoot an exterior shot in, say, Verone, another interior shot in Montclair and a couple of interiors at Silvercup Studios, the put the shots together in the editing room to creat a convincing place that has no realworld equivalent.
Take episode four of the first season, in which Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini) takes his teenage daughter, Meadow (Jamie-Lynn Sigler) on a driving tour of colleges. While in Maine, they stay at a motel and tour a college; in the process, Tony randomly encounters a stool pigeon who's in the witness protection, tracks him down and kills him. "The Sopranos" crew never set foot in Maine. "The college they toured was actually Drew University in Madison," says Kamine. "The motel they stayed at was in Oakland, New Jersey. We filmed the scenes where they're driving around the roads, and the scene where Tony kills the guy, in New York state, up in Rockland County."
The opening credits sequence also takes a few liberties with geography, says Jason Minter, the assistant locations manager and New York City native who helped create it. But the ultimate goal is the same: to give views an abstract, almost poetic sense of New Jersey and its landscapes. A couple of years ago, when Chase was looking for ideas on opening credits, he had Minter and first assistant directory Henry Bronchtein drive around nothern Jersey with a camcorder, taping whatever they saw. Chase liked the jagged, staccato look of the raw footage so much that he wanted to duplicate it on film. So minder, frequent "Soranos" director Allen Coulter and cinematographer Phil Abraham revisited the locations on the videotape twice - the first time with a fulled loaded camera car, the second time with a hand held camera in a car driven by star James Gandolfini.
There were complications (The State Police don't permit camera cars on the Turnpike) and fakery (the World Trade Center is seen in Tony's rearview mirror coming out of the Lincoln Tunnel, which is not possible; the shot was taken from a road near the Liberty Science Center). But the result has the dsired effect. "One of the producers said, 'I don't know - I think you need Dramamine to watch it,' " says Minter. "But it works on you, especially if you're from New Jersey. It has all these things that stay in the back of your mind even ifyou move away."
Email: carmsoprano@aol.com