Locations - Part 3 - Calico

Today I made the 2 hour trek to the Calico Ghost Town to see if it was a possible location that could be used for the film. At first glance it looked like it had some possibilities but upon further scrutinization I found it to be a last resort. First off, not that this is bad, it was purchased from the mining company in the early 1950s by Mr. Knott himself of Knott's Berry Farm. What is cool is that he bought the town so that he could preserve our pioneering culture. Unfortunately, it does not fit our movie.


They have paved the streets, probably to keep things a little cleaner, so if we did shoot there then we would have to bring in truck loads of dirt to cover the paved road. This could cause a problem, mainly with the budget. I am not up to date on the price per truck load of dirt nor do I know how many truck loads we would need. Another problem is that we could really only shoot one direction. In the picture above you can see the entire town and the freeway. It may be small but for a western it is sometimes very important to be able to do a 360 shot without having to worry about modern architecture.

Because a lot of the story seems to revolve around the Saloon I find it very important that our location has a Saloon in it or at least an exterior of one. I was able to find a saloon at Calico it just seemed to missing half of it (as pictured below). There were other buildings that could have worked as saloons but it would be dificult to make it work with the script. Another thing to note is that most of the buildings are on one side of the street as well as the street goes uphill. With the layout of the town and the modernization of it, this location has been scratched off the list.




On a good note, if the weather keeps up the way it has been - Sunny in January, there's LA for you; can't wait to move to where there are real seasons - then I might be able to make a trip to Bodi without having to worry about getting stuck in or stuck out.