Chicago is Gotham City

Although not as common as in New York and Los Angeles, movie filming does happen quite a bit in Chicago. It's not too exciting to watch since it progresses very slowly (except for the time I saw a mob screaming and running up La Salle street one weekend afternoon) but occasionally you see a celebrity (I saw Sandra Bullock in the Santa Fe building once) and you get to wonder how the little bits they are filming will show up on screen.

Last year large portions of the latest Batman movie were filmed here. The visualization of Gotham City under Chistopher Nolan's leadership shows the fictional city as very art deco. Art deco is a great design style since it can be both very modern and very evocative of the 1920's. For the first Dark Knight movie (Batman Begins) some filming was done in Chicago - enough so that some iconic buildings (like the Chicago Board of Trade) could be seen. This time around a lot more filming was done here.

The now vacant 1920's post office downtown (which, in Sears catalog heyday, was the busiest post office in the wold) was used as both the "Gotham National Bank" and the "Gotham City Police Department." I got to see first hand a little movie magic. They added an addition to the building, that from the front looks very real and part of the building, but the side shot shows how fake it is.

Also a bit of Hollywood fakery were signs posted around the city pointing out filming locations and parking available for crew members. The signs pointed out the filming for "RFK" or "Rory's First Kiss" the title Dark Knight was filmed under. I wonder if false names like that ever work since we all knew what was going on. I do know, however, some people who never noticed the temporary name change on the post office.