Location Manager John Rakich joins Kat and Dom to talk about what it was like bringing the Shadow World to reality - and how he was able to navigate some real-world issues on set. An incessant fire alarm? A city park fountain that doesn’t work? Not a problem for John! The trio discuss everything from where the glass in The Institute came from to how the Shadowhunters navigated morning rush hour traffic.
John, How are you buddy? Hello, I'm good. How are you go ahead? I'm doing well. Have you got a Captain America sheld in the back? I do? Look a look for the sword. Yes it is. I don't even have one of those. That's amazing. And what's the one that's all chipped up on the side. No way, it was an actual fighting one, huh. I bought it. I got a bunch of stuff from the auction sports which I gave one away to charity for charity auction. That a couple of Stellars that I gave to the writing staff that I know Taylor actually has yours cat. No way, Wow, that's so took mine away from me. We've talked about this on the podcast quite a bit because I wrote so many in season one, I just mystically didn't have one every season in season one was just a little fragile. Yeah, it turns out, John, it's such a pleasure to have you one. Thank you for taking the time to when Chats was happy to be a part of this all. Absolutely well. Welcome back, folks, to return to the Shadows. Today, we have a very special guest, one of the magical people behind the scenes of our show who We truly could not have done this without John Rackett, our location manager. Welcome, thank you. I'm glad to be a part of the show. Come on the podcast and be part of the show. Hopefully I have to correct something technically. I think I'm one of the three long people that have been on the show longer than anyone else. Yeah. So the show started filming in August. I started in March of that year. There you go. You were hired before us. Yeah, actually we were. I remember when they were trying to cast it. Can I make it even weirder? I was a location scout on the movie WHOA. Well I did know that. Yeah, I knew that you were the location scout on the movie because I feel like we've spoken about that at some point, because we doubled some of the locations, right, like we changed them, but we Yeah, there was a couple that we used in too many thankfully. Yeah. No, yeah, it's wow. There was a few things in season one. I remember that We're that we used in both that were very quickly in season two. Not locations, but like the swords. The swords were swords from the movie the swords, the props, the glass and the institute actually was recycled from another movie. No way, do you know what the movie was? Resident five? That makes sense because constantly, Yeah, all the there was a huge set we had where um Neiler runs through a tunnel of glass and they spent a lot of money on all this glass, so they put in storage and someone it came tyme to build this set. They went, we have this glass, and nobody thought that it wasn't the right glass. It wasn't gimbaled, which is why we had all those reflection problems and the heat, and just let and put everyone inside it. Who knew? Who knew? This is just the things you figure out when you're on set. But it was the It was the hardest thing is when we saw these trailers come in that said are on them, like what it's And then the stuff from the mortal instruments they basically just recycled as much as they could because they kept it all as well, you know, it's already got all the rings on it. And then season until we've got rid of it all and fixed it. Yeah, before before we dive headlong into a reunion that we've all been longing to have. John, why don't you tell everyone at home, what your position was on on Shadow Hunters, what you did, what your day to day was. So I was hired as the location manager for pretty much almost all the show, which I can cover later. Um So, my the job location edge is we basically take this script and the concept and the ideas that the writers the producers have in the production designer and find practical real world locations to film this and to make it part of the story, part of the character. Um So that literally was my job was to get the script, to break it down and pitch ideas that we then see whether they work or not. And then being television, we then since we had most of the scripts, we could see what we would go to enough times to necessary to build what was going to be on location, and then literally with the creatives try to find things that work for the story, the look. And then once we secure all that, the location department job changes very much from creative to logistics. Were then responsible for permits, permissions where the unit goes, where that everyone eats, where the bathrooms go, all the unsexy parts of the actual making of a production. But so it's interesting we've had a few a few different crew members on over the course of and very often that same phrase kind of gets recycled with crew right. Very often it's that you know, this is the unsexy behind this means part. But what people need to realize is that TV shows aren't made without these unsexy parts, like they just don't function on a TV show. That will remain nameless and how long ago will remain nameless because otherwise you can backtrack and be like, oh, he did this six years ago. It is exactly what it was. It wasn't six years ago. That's not what I'm talking about. But they didn't put they didn't have crew bathrooms. We were shooting on on a New York street and we were we were filming somewhere quite far away from that, and it it brought everything kind of to a halt when we figured it out like this or you know, this needs to change, and a couple of their actors were very very stringent, like this is something that needs to change, but it doesn't grinds everything to a hold all of a sudden. So without all of these, you know, I can't say it enough. Said again, I've said it before. I sound like a broken record. But without people like John, these shows don't get made. There's you know, the actors and the directors and the producers get so much credit for being on a TV show. But like John says, our job started months after his job started, you know what I mean? Like and he and you could say, because you recycled so much stuff, you're in a way still on that job, like it's still thinking about shadow Hunter is like, oh, I wonder if we have some stuff there that we could use on this next thing. Take this next Yeah, you're absolutely right. Again. The location manager in the department usually is one of the first ones hired, and usually then the last one is there. So I you know, from Cradle Degrave, we're involved in every aspect my department. The bathroom thing that that grinds to a halt, A hundred and fifty people need to go somewhere. And the funny thing is here where we're based out of there's actually law we have to follow. How many there's there's actually I have a mathematical table that I have to keep of how many people we have, how many actual holes as the referred to, we have to have how many holes? And I've been on some shows where that number got huge and you know, the last thing you need is all of a sudden, the line up of thirty people trying to get into a porta job, because then where's the you know, we're trying to shoot. Where is the director? Well he's waiting in line. That doesn't fly. Well, I mean the you know, the biggest detriment to production is the loss of time. Time. Yeah, well, and that's I mean, truly, it's so many aspects of production, from the creative to the logistic, is all problem solving, and it takes creativity, and it takes you know, a knowledge base and experience and everything that you know, you clearly have become so well versed in to to figure it out. So, whether it's you know, as dumb said, the you know, the the unsexy parts of filmmaking or not, it's all so necessary and so instrumental to you know, doing the flips and things that we all love. Just you know, our biggest challenge sometimes is where they want to put lights. Yeah, you know, a DP points because I want to let on that roof. Well, we don't know if we can get up there. That's not our roof. We just can't just walk I just can't walk up there. With a cord. It takes time. And you know, yeah, as you said, it's it's a lot of little Yeah, it's a lot of little moving pieces for what everyone ends up watching on screen that they don't see behind stage. And my department is one of the ones that actually interacts with everyone's. Yeah, there's not an aspect of production that somehow doesn't cross like even where the hair and makeup decides to sit put their chair down. It has to be location that can end up being you know, something to do well. So that sort of leads into my first question. We we get these cheat sheets, we get these brilliant cheat sheets and it's called all this information and like, um, you know, stuff that we should ask and whatever. And I listen, I look at that zero and I just I think of questions and that's what I do. It's very similar to how I work on set. John, Um, but so question nuber one. So the and this is always fascinated me. And I've never really found the time to ask the question because when we're shooting on like a busy street, like you know in Toronto, Young, I think we had shut down for a second there. What what's what does that entail? Because that's you know, we're shutting down a huge section of the metropolitan area of Toronto, And for anyone who's been to or lives in Toronto, they have sort of a semi one way system, so every other street kind of goes one way throughout the metropolitan So shutting down one of those really does make a huge fucking issue. It's a real problem in Toronto. So tell me tell me a little about that, sure. I mean, the greatest thing is that we're based is a city where the actual city is a good partner with us in production. We we tell them what we want to do and they kind of help us figure out the best way to do it. So when we did shut down the section of Young Street, which is a main artill year road, we always knew from the beginning that's going to have to be on a weekend. We the only the only way they let us do it is on a Saturday or a Sunday when there's less traffic or you're less impediment to business. So it then just literally becomes us working with the city, the fire department, transit everyone to make sure that we're not impacting our schedule works for their's. The neighbors and residents all known got on board and let us do what we did, which is basically shut down a block and a half of a major street and rewrote traffic. The funny thing was, that's actually one of the few locations where that was Matt Hastings episode. He and I got into a disagreement over that one, and I'm glad I want Early on in that season, he walked into my office and said finale Avengers Battle on the streets and he walked away. But you would do routinely, would just throw things to give us ahead. So we started pitching stuff, and we took them downtown and went where there's this corner, there's this block, there's this block. And they didn't want to work on a Saturday because it required shifting schedule. And then the idea was would just build it in the parking lot with green screen, just green screen, which to me is like a knife in the heart because it's never gonna look right. You're never gonna have these effects. Can do the world, but you can't get that sense of scale um as much as you want to try. And what happened was this cat you had to you had a conflict that meant you had to work with you had a Saturday available because we had to get you off something faster. At that point, Oh, that's what I was going to a maze runner. Yeah, and that's literally why all of a sudden, no one was fighting about being on a Saturday. And that was like the back of parking lot. And I literally politely argued and said, it was the dumbest idea you're gonna have. We can do it now, we should just do so we did, and it was really it looked phenomenal, and we staged the traffic. We staged the traffic jam, which was even smarter because parking lots are expensive downtown, so that traffic jam was pretty much most of the cruise cars parked down the middle of the street. That's right. I didn't know the buses, most of the cars there because although if you think about it, that scene, it's just two minutes long traffic jam New York City, although a lot happens in it, so the cars never have to move. So we just basically stacked crew cars, put in picture cars, because if you watch the scene, no vehicles ever moved through it. No, that's true, that was right, you know, it was free the day, the scene looked brilliant. It did. Oh yeah, it's one of it's one of the best scenes and it gets you know, replayed and re edited over and over again. That's in my personal reel. I got footage from from them for it. Yeah, that's amazing. Well because it has that scale and because you feel the city and you feel that kind of open expanse of space, and then we got the drone to go around the buildings that just look brilliant. So again in that case, much like any world closure, the city really was helpful with us when we explained what we wanted to do and they gave us the permission and the storefronts all you know that we covered up. We're all happy that was really put out. Canadians are nice as well. That it's a big part of experience, you know what I mean. Like we we we did. We filmed the most recent show I just finished was we filmed in New York and we did a lot of stuff on the streets and there was there's a lot of like so we we do things and John obviously Cat you guys all know about this, but for the listeners at home who may not know about this, It's called a lock off, which John mentioned briefly, and you literally lock off for both traffic cars and traffic walking walking traffic. You lock off two sections of the street, the top and the end, and people can't travel through those. But correctly, if I'm wrong, legally, we're not allowed to stop pedestrians from walking right correct A police officer can or a barricade, but you can ask someone to start, but they get to you. I know New York like the back of my hand. No New Yorker is gonna starting to go right through. Yeah. It was very colorful morning scenes. Yeah, no kidding. We had a couple like we had a great steady cam operator Patrick, and there are a couple of moments where someone said something a little colorful to me on the way and camera just go straight up to the sky like we're not seeing any of that. This is a Netflix show. We got now would bring it back down when when we're ready to go. But yeah, New York is a less now with the opposite though, with you Cat when we did the when Matt wanted to get a scene of you walking through a crowded streets literally, remember that I was there that day. There was three of It was a camera operator, a grip Matt, myself and a costume person and we just threw you in morning traffic, morning rush hour, pedestrian traffic, but mostly them all going the other way so that they were looking at the camera and it worked. It was like the opposite work and nobody cared because they were just going to rush to get to work. Yeah, because there's you know, you put up a little sandwich placard on the street. That didn't do that? You didn't, I thought. I thought. We literally, we literally created a wedge behind the camera of our body so people would have to go around it. Oh my god. So for the listeners at home, this was the scene where and I think it's season two, episode one, when Clary has decided to run away from the Shadow World because she feels like she doesn't belong anywhere and run them back to the Bigland Academy of Art. I know she loves to run away various times. Um. But it was by Union station in Toronto downtown, which, as you know, if anyone has ever been to Toronto or has ever been near a Union station in any city in the morning, it's so the streets are packed and you know, you can't you can't get between people's shoulders, and it made for such an amazing scene because you just had this sea of coats and people and faces and yeah, I remember it was such kind of guerrilla filmmaking, but in the best west that was it. We love that. Though we've again we've said on this podcast we're sort of approaching the end of this season now, so we've we've talked extensively about the show. So if I'm repeating myself listeners, I apologize, But we've spoken quite extensively about the difference between shooting, for example, on a green screen, especially the three sixty green screen, which is quite hard work because on a show like ours is very hard work because we're imagining these things that we haven't even seen. It's not like a dragon, it's like a mythical beast, and we don't know what the fun that thing is gonna look So you're imagining this thing or this world or whatever you know, eden whatever it is. We have no concept of what that's going to look like, which is really hard work. And at least for me, the most exciting days are out on the street there because I can see everything, I can visualize everything, and it takes that this little element of difficulty out of my work day. Um, it adds difficulty to your work day. It takes a little out of it keeps you employed. Yeah, but the true the location becomes a character in the store. It does. If you think of like iconic movies, of iconic scenes where they take place, even if it's fictitiously, you know, created like Toronto became New York, It's still a character and everything. Absolutely. And you know, if for anyone who's read the books, and for anyone who you know has watched the show, the city of New York in in any piece of media becomes such a huge character in it and and takes on kind of a life of its own and is a you know, mythical being in and of itself. But it felt as though, and I'm sure this is largely due to you, we found such a great rhythm on the show of having most of the time in studio and on stages when we had our own space and our own stuff, and then having being able to use the rest of our resources to go out and do some really major, huge locations. And you know, I didn't know this when I moved to Toronto, but even some of the locations we used in the pilot, like the Distillery District and that nightclub and all those things. Those are pretty prominent and usually very busy Toronto locations. And say when when the the when the Distillery District was pitched by McGee, a lot of us just kind of hung our heads, going, Okay, it's a real pain to go there, but fine, because the those who don't know what it was an old distillery that got gentrified and surrounded by condeminiums and shops and restaurants. It's the residents that's always an issue. But we we did. We made it work. It was just it wasn't our favorite place to pitch. Truthfully. The hardest day, and on the first episode is the pre shoot day. The park we are in was just I don't even and I even I don't even know remeter, I haven't even made it. But that was like we had a pre shoot day of a Clary flashback with a demon coming out of water. That was the fountain didn't work. We had to we had to bring in We had to literally crack a fire hydrant to put water in this thing. Yeah. Yeah, the the actual mechanics of the Parks fountain didn't work. They couldn't get water to it, so we actually got to crack a hydrant with permission and run this thing up. Um. But the nightclub, you mean the nightclub with the incessant fire alarm. They kept going off. Forgotten about that right three times that one night because every time they opened the doors, the smoke would uh below the atmosphereic smoke that we used to make everything look pretty and sexy. When you go, you fill the room so it's like a pressure room. And we opened the doors, that smoke would fly out and go two floors up, and then in the same building, go into the intake and set off the fire alarm because the owner of the building didn't want to disable the system until the third call from the fire department and then he flicked the switch. But that was you know, Finding the club was interesting because we tried to avoid certain things from the from the movie, so it's a different we found about the club. We don't have had the little alley way and stuff. And I'm going to jump ahead to the last episode. I really fought I wasn't on the last two. I was kind of there for you. I was doing another show waiting for season four to get Greenland, and it didn't. I was in the same building doing this horrible Christmas movie for free Form. I couldn't leave, so I was still kind of involved. And when I saw the last two scripts, I kept arguing that the very very last scene of the show should have been in the same alley from the first episode of the Nightclub, saying it's this, It's that, the end, is the beginning, is the end. It just never ended up happening because of their schedule, and I kept arguing, what I'm going it makes more. Even Todd agreed, but it just wouldn't work. Just couldn't figure it out. Yeah, that happens a lot. There's stuff that we really think might work and pitch and it gets being creative and it's other people's inputs. Other things end up being decided voices. It's nuts, Like it's you know, auditioning for us is is it's sort of a similar process, Like you impress one person who's normally the first person who meets, like a casting director or a casting associate. Great, you've impressed that person. Then maybe you impressed a series of producers or the director. But then there's the money people. Then there's like the heads of the studio, the heads of the network. Like this is group tests. You remember what tests used to be, like our tests for Shadow Hunters. You sit in a theater, you sit in like an auditorium, and you have forty people who work for Disney and free Form and then people who work for Constantine, all of the people who have these sort of career defining moments in their hands, and if one of them says no, that is then thrown into question. It's a real big like we don't know, and it's it's not prefer that. Yeah, I prefer that to the zoom screen tests. I preferred to zooms. But now I'm sort of getting into a bit of a rhythm with zoom. I think I'm like, anyway, that's boring, that's this isn't about John. We need to another time. We always during COVID, I was on a show. We decided to do an in person production meeting with COVID protocols, which basically involved seventy I have of us standing in a studio around the perimeter yelling at one or another. That is very quickly. Yeah, I want to know how one gets to be a location manager. How did you find this career path and what what led you to this job? Okay, so I'm gonna have to go back in time. I was living the dream, living at my parents, my parents based, but working at a record store if you remember where those oh yeah, highlight. My sister actually was in the film industry for a while as an assistant director and she was on a TV show where they had fired their fifth office pit and said, well, my brother can do it if these people can. So that's how I got into the business. And I didn't know what I wanted to be and and my office was next to the locations office, and they all sounded like there, you know, bat shit crazy and having a lot of fun. And I started talking to them. And the first job I got, you start at the bottom, like a location p a setting up tables, chairs, garbage cancer. The first job I was given was given by a location manager named Richard Hughes, who was the other location manager on Shadow Hunters, because I made them hire him. So that was it. I just started. I fell into it. Um I did a good job, people started hiring me more. Someone on the show and said, hey, do you know how the locations got And I went no, and they went, while you grab a camera and take some photos. So I scouted for a long time, worked my way up to an assistant location manager, and then, funny enough, while I was waiting to start officially because I scouted for the movie in pre production, took the directors around and then there was a lull until they we're going to get green light. That was where I actually got an offer to location manage my first show ever, which was a show for Netflix called Hemlock Grove. It kind of just fell into it and and you know, I have an aptitude for it, I guess, and it's something I enjoy doing. And you know, what was going to be a part time job just to make some money, has not been a twenty five year career. Wow, that's amazing, awesome. Yeah, I like the puzzle. I like the creative puzzle and then the logistical puzzle. Cool. So, like you said, it's it's it's a lot of problems solving on both ends. And it's a lot of juggling because people have to realized while we're doing one day and we're also setting up three more and then you know, wrapping out yesterday. So it's a constant movement, especially on television. Yeah, I don't have a funk man. We moved so quickly on that show, like for the for the amount that we did with like you know, flat packing sets, so like indoors for people listening at home indoors. When these sets are also inside, they look spectacular, they look like the room like it's actually amazing. The second you leave them, they are like plywood like like they are sticking out, and they're all designed to go completely flat very quickly, go in the back of a truck, and then go to somewhere else. That's they're designed to do. And so we had that with sets coming up and down. We have the stunts, we had c g I everywhere, and I think the longest episode were the longest episode other than the pilot, which took a month. But we never spent more than two weeks on an episode, which is insane when you think absolutely episodes. Yes, sixteen days per episode, sixty eight to get it ready, eight to get it done. And people realize, although you have eight days to get it ready, you really only have six because if by day seven and eight you're not ready to lock everything in your Yeah, because six and seven it was five and six would be like your tech scouts right, like you're actually physically going to easily. And so you know you're lucky on season when it was you know, you get the earlier we get scripts that everyone gets them, the better it is for us, the more we can get ahead of things. But then you know, we don't see the director of that episode until the first day of prep, and he might have different ideas for everything that we've already agreed on. We were lucky on Shadow Hunters that we didn't have that much. But I've been on some shows that the director Watson and everything gets wiped out that you spent the last two weeks pre planning because he's got a different idea. Can you imagine, Oh what a nightmare thought that I will not I will not name. But this director, that was what he was known for and he enjoyed doing and he enjoyed coming in and causing chaos and he would just sit there and giggle. We have no room for chaos, goblins and television. No, we were we were lucky. I mean, we had scripts as early as we could. Um, Susan three was even better because I was at that point, you know, we knew Todd Darren. I met the writers of Comic Con. They actually gave me access to their notes, so I was one of the few people that had I knew more about what you guys are going to go through than anybody else because I actually had access to hit their handwritten notes and their meetings. Just because work it's more collaborative. Is nothing worse than we get a script and it's like, well we really don't have that. If we can pitch, like tell me what you're looking for, we could pitch something else. Because there was an episode they wanted to shoot it on the Staten Island Ferry, you know, like we don't have the Staten Island Ferry. That remember getting mixed and I remember being like, fun would be a cemetery. Yeah, it was the cemetery in the end. Yeah. And then there were some scenes where it's like it's you know, how many times can we be in a park? Can we just think of something else? Right? Yeah? The most example is that one season that we had ended up shooting at the St. Lawrence Market. Oh yeah, that was actually scripted to be in a park. Wait, I remember that it was at a park and we're driving with Matt we're driving on the locations go back to look at some stuff. It was not Mike L. Murray myself. It wasn't actually like I can't remember who's doping that um, But Matt was in the van. We drove by St. Lawrence Market. He went, what's that St. Lawrence Market? You want to go take a look? Sure? And he looked at me in can we film here? I went, yeah, they're closed on Mondays. Can then can we shoot? And we did. Ended up changing that whole scene to be in that market with you know, flying demons and stalls being broken open well, and then ended up being so much cooler. I don't know if you remember, Don that was the scene that there was a big race demon that I was changing. Get me right, the big big trailer line, Yeah, I remember, But even even the werewolf being tossed into the cabin, the windows being smashed, there were so much that came out of just one spot that we drove by and thought this would work better than and see. I love what you mentioned about the writer's notes, because this is something that we talked about a lot on the podcast. But that's just another example of you know, often on TV shows, people don't end up sharing or in anything in entertainment or most workplaces, people don't often share resources or information as much as they could. But simply by telling you what's going on and keeping you in the loop and giving you information and having that sort of round table, open door policy that we had on Shadow Hunters with all the departments, it added so much to the show and it allowed everyone to do work that was so much more elevated because we were just informed. And that's you know, that's something that that I wish was more common of, you know, just having anyone being able to get information. Honestly, Yeah, it just shows how it can be when it's fully collaborative. It just becomes more enjoyable, more of an art form, more of everyone putting the best they came out there, Even like the Garden season three, that was two months of us trying to figure out what that was going to be here between this sets a dad, we build it, what do we need and then settled on the ruins that we ended up being there. That's so cool, amazing that actually, So that collaboration leads me to my next question. So talking so again people at home, there are many many instances where we've built a set, and the set has a front door, so as soon as you leave that front door, you're outside somewhere, and that has to be unless we build an outside set that has to be, which the Hunter's Moon had. You know, we built that entire street, which is incredible, like the whole street of Chinatown, like like two blocks each way or a block each way, which is just fucking wild. Um. But like the Jade Wolf is a good example. When you leave the set of The Jade Wolf, you're on the docks, which is outside, which obviously for us was relatively easy. But what is that? Like? What does that dance with you? Between I set there? Right? Like I imagine those guy or not set back? Who who builds sets? I mean construction based on the art consartment, But usually that the question is when they go outside, what is outside? So you know, and usually you try to go to the script to pull it as much information. What city is it in? Where does it take place? What's around there? And if you can't, then that's when you have conversations with the showrunners, you know, other producers, the designer, you know, where in because it was New York? Where in New York? Is this okay? So what does it want to look like? Like which part of the city are we thinking of? Because that even drives things like the subway set, what subway sign will beyond there? So you walk out a door, you know, let's take Season one the locked in the Antique Shop, which is a place that we all hated. Um, we needed a two story building that looked interesting, and we actually found this wretched place that the owner was a hoarder on the third floor. But thankfully we never went back through again. It was right that you up and it was a nightmare. Right, Yeah, you no longer lives there and it's now being turned into some swanky condominium with still maintaining the base of it. But yeah, that's what is outside is. This is an important lookwise because it also drives what set decal dressed at what you know picture cars will be there, because I mean, I spent a lot of time in New York and I was always arguing all from Brooklyn, the caps can't be yell that they're supposed to be great because you get the stock cars that are you know, they're not crowndexed or this. So if you wanted to make it real, you really kind of get a sense of where, like you know, where was the institute? Which churches it really is supposed to be. Are we going by what's in the books? Are we going by what we decided by the stock shots that we bought, because that drives everything. So yeah, even just opening the door becomes a big, huge thing, right. I did a movie um where It's not Out Actually was all done on location. We weren't in the studio a tool. We had two different sets for breaching and clearing a room and played at U S. Marshals for breaching and clearing a room, and then we go down into the basement. So the upstairs room was one set and the basement was a completely different place. And when we got there we realized that the door opened the other way. Like, this is a real fucking problem because we can't change it. There's nothing we can do. Go and rewatch the movie. The door is They took it completely off the hinges and it's just rested already opened on the other side. That's happened to me in the past. We've shot the stage component first, and we go on the location the doors in the wrong side, so we have to move the door. You move the door, Yeah, like, if you have the time, you hang it the other way. Yeah, no choice, it's it's I can't remember if it was Spielberg or Scorsese who said recently it's being on being on a set, being a director, when it would acted, you know, locations, whatever. It is, like, it's problem solving. That's what you do and you need. The better you get at it, the quicker you get at it, the more you're going to progress in your career, Like you get good at solving whatever this issue is. What is this issue? It's a door. Great, we take it off, We put it on the other side. Amazing, done, that problem is taken care of. You know, is it nighttime or daytime? We need to fix that problem. Okay, great, we do it like this and it's fixed, you know. And that's sort of other shows. You show up on a set and the director goes, oh, I don't want to look that one anymore. I want to look that way, and it's just we're not, okay, great, how do we do that quickly? Are An actor comes on set and because I just feel like I need to walk over here on this line, and everyone the face of knowing for yeah every time, but I mean I did a show where I did a show where our director of photography, which it wasn't able to ever come scouting with us. And here we show up each day going why are we here? Well, no, I don't like that. I want to be over then I want to be down the street. Oh no, no, no, yeah, well, y's not we show up. That decision has been gone through several people, and several money has spune, equip people getting things ready. Yeah, well, and then the simple things as well, like this, This question then needs to go back to the writers, and we were in Toronto, the writers were in l A. So if we show up at eight in the morning, it's five in the morning in l As, they're not up yet. So how do we answer that question? Do we wait for five hours and lose a hundred thousand dollars an hour while we're renting this set? Like no, Yeah. That was the funny thing in season one is that the people that were behind behind the scenes hadn't really on episodic television a lot, so they didn't see the benefit of having a showrunner or directing producer. And that's what the explanation was. At six in the morning, when we have to figure out whether this is blow or green? Who were calling right? And they went on like, well, you have to have someone here who can creatively have the power to make that Half those writers are here with us. Um you know which one I've been on. I did a series called The Expanse where half the producing team was always in towns. We always had right away. Very different of mine is on the Expense Dominique Tippa Yah. One of my first big movies with Dominique, and the funny thing was for Science. One of the producers was actually an astrophysicist. Actually he decided you don't want to do that and wanted to be a movie producer and that he could always answer like all the techy questions right off the bat. We never questioned if he was making it up because we just assumed you was right. Yeah, I mean, you need to have someone there that can make that call. And if you know, that's why the directing producer on television shows is such a valuable and an important position to a absolutely like Matt on Season two and three just steered the ship from the box all the time. He was just so good at being able to just make executive decisions and at any at any juncture. But on that note, I have to ask what is and it can be maybe on shadow Hunters. Maybe this is a two part question on shadow Hunters. And then just in general, what is the wildest problem that you've encountered or thing, most unique thing you've had to find and how did you solve the problem? Okay, wildest, there's two, U, there's two. One was what show it was? We were going to film at this really ratty divy house at the end of the day and we found out that was bed bugs in one of the rooms. We had to get. We had to get the bed bugs and it turned out it was in the son's room, who was a bit of a slob in the mattress. But we had to get an exterminator to come in quickly, which is hard to do, and they found no no, no wordable lie. They found a father and son Christian exterminating team. Wow, never heard of that before. And I mean they got the job done in the crew and the crew was informed and said, look, if you really don't feel safe and don't go in. But we did did the job. The most bizarre one Resident Evil three. We needed to do a scene on a beach with a helicopter with the right at the beginning, right, Yeah, I've done. I'm a flashback to a scene from another one. Yet she walks through an airplane, gray garden. There's a helicopter and a bunch of flashbacks. The helicopter never flies. The director fell in love with this tree in this beach three and a half hours away from Toronto, in the sam Bank Provincial Park. The producers thought for us to find another spot that was closer. No, he had to have this tree, this beach, and we had been in discussions with the park to provincial park like a state run park, with a park superintendent about The plan was we're gonna fly this helicopter and landed just because it's easier for us to fly it there than put it on a trailer and crane. Everything was fine, but four weeks before we're supposed to film, the park superintendent says, oh, you know, you can't land a helicopter there. We've been talking about this for five weeks, so I didn't realize that. So we go back to the producer whose answer was fix it. So we ended up we I was the assistant on the show, ended up going through the part like park law, literally going through like what's called the Parks Act of Ontario to find out why I can land one here and not here, and it was because it was by the water and had a row. It was bizarre stuff, but we found a loophole thing at the Minister for Parks and Recreation could amend that law. So then we did. We literally found a way to get someone. It's not easy to get in front of politicians to get it. Turned out someone from Toronto City Council was going to be an event a car with them to some conference and we kind of gave her our notes and they pitched it and explained like this is we need to just this is why we're doing this. And all I remember getting is a phone call from the park superintendent three weeks later going I don't know what you did, but you got your permission. And there is literally a line in the Act that at that time there was a three day window of change. The law was amended for three days only to land a helicopter on this beach. Now did anyone from the crew know that when they show up, No, that the producers care. No. But at the end of the day, by Boss and I are like, we changed law and it's still in there. It's still a little byline because obviously with all law of things, every all changes are in there. But we literally have to change provincial law to put a helicopter in the scene. You change the law of Canada for film that I'm waiting for a federal one that hasn't happened yet. That's the next step, is it's problem solving. It's no is an easy answer for people to give, and at some point it might be no, but you just try to find any way to work at it properly. Like we didn't violent anything. We just found that there was a way to change that well exactly. And that's that's the fun of that sort of creativity is uh fun at the end. Yeah, during and worried you're gonna lose your job while it's happening. But yeah, sometimes you do have to go back and say, look, the answer is no. There was sometimes some places I'm around shadow hunters they wanted to go to and it just didn't work. We couldn't do what they wanted. You know, you kind of go with it. But we're pretty lucky most times that we either got what we wanted or we were able to creatively find a way out. Well, none of the locations that we were on ever felt as though it was the second choice, or felt as though it was makeshift in any way, shape or form. It know. The stress at the beginning of season two was when they said we want to go back to the boat. You know, I was gonna ask, I was gonna asks. The first boat was sold because there was a good span of time between seasons. They had sold it for scrap and it was being hauled, I believe, and I think it sank somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic. Yeah, oh my god. Yeah, they'd buy a lot of scrap boats and shipped them overseas and they did out of it. Sometimes they don't make it. How did they get And there's just like down a massive river somewhere out So Lake Ontario was the bottom of the Great Lakes. Eventually, if you just kept going east, you get into the St. Lawrence Canal through Montreal and straight out to the Atlanta which wow, I didn't know that. I just assumed it was like a reservoir. There's no cargo predominantly big ship just go to Halifax. But Montreal they stopped there two smaller ones like the ones we were on that go to to Toronto, Hamilton's through the canals to Lake Erie. They they go all the way to northern Ontario or you know, Minnesota, basically drop off grain or whatever whatever. We're lucky to find another ship and hope that no one would notice on that by much that it was a completely different I didn't notice. I was on both of those ships. I didn't notice. I didn't notice. I think there was like a crane missing there. There was a crane on the second in the second boat. There wasn't on the first. Yeah, that's the only thing I noticed though, because I literally fought underneath it. I had a fight scene under it, and I was like, I don't think this was there before. But I drink a lot, so who knows, maybe it was missing. I don't know. Well, if any any shadow hundreds folks out there, if anyone ever finds the boat, maybe we'll have to have like a you know, dive to the most Yeah, scuba expedition for the fun. But tell us, John, tell us more about the boat debacle. So how do you have what's the pro sets of finding not one, but two boats that can be used to film very very much. It was we were just fortunate at the time that there were these There was that one both boats were basically moored for maintenance, and you know, both ship lines were open to us coming on there because I mean it's it's money for them for literally doing nothing. Um both and both have been filmed friendly in the past. It just it was just extremely lucky that both boats were just more there basically what I think the first one didn't even have an engine. Yeah, it was just it was basically just tied up. And the second one too, it was it was down for repairs that we're going to take you know, a couple of months. See, otherwise we would have had to probably go to like you know, the next next place over would have been Hamilton, that might have had a boat, but just having one in the exact same spot, well by a couple of feet, um, was just completely you know, good luck for us to start the season that way. And it just happened to have a beautiful skyline of Toronto that you can delete this the sand Tower and pop in the Empire State Building and you're good to go. Yeah. My favorite is when shows forget to do that. Yeah, across there's like, there's so few of them in our show. But every now and then you see like the t from the Tim Horton's and I'm like, angle those in New York. Oh No, it's so when we show stuff on screen, we have to get clearance from the studio what names we could show. But the problem is a lot of the clearance that we use is from the States, so they don't recognize Canadian brands. Like there's one scene where you guys are I think you're walking in the second cup sign you know, Tim Hortons, and we're just like they wouldn't let it. They didn't have an issue with it, but we're just interesting. I just found this out on I was just working for Netflix. Um, I guess because it's streaming or because Netflix has a deal in particular. I can't remember what the reason was, but they said Netflix doesn't have to do you don't have to do that. You don't have to get clearance for anything. We were using iPhones, we were all using Apple products. We didn't have to pay Apple anything. Yeah, clearance clearance is a weird thing that it's It's if you line up for clearance people and ask them as in question you're gonna get four different answers, right, So, fus I was to tell you, are you allowed to use Major League Football's names, the players, the teams in a movie, you'd say without their permission? You'd say no. But there's an entire movie called Concussion where they never once asked for permission, and literally because because they didn't actually lie, it was all factual, they were allowed to get away with it. Well, I wonder if that's that must be very fluid now as well, because I know my brother is a is a coach for the Ingrad rugby team in the R and D department, and I know they're bringing in versions of technology now with different things where they talk about things like this, if you do something like this, like if you move forward with this technology, the information from this will belong to the player, not to the club. It will belong to the player directly. So when you start doing like with the movement of things like n f T s and whatever, if you n FT a touchdown from a football team or whatever, then you can't reference that. Again, you can't reference the guy's name without having to pay them, because they have they have monetized their one thing and made it you know there's which is really interesting. Um, yeah, it did. That's you. I can't imagine that you're wrong in any way because for different people different Yeah, no clearances when they start involving our department, just that we just kind of lose our minds because it's really it's someone else to deal with it. I can get a sign off from the owner of the building. You want to change the sign great, Please don't ask me to get clearance from a subway, right, yeah, just call it something else. Just walking down the street eating a sandwich. We had a scene like that. We had a scene in the morning when Matt wanted to finish his coffee and they were like just drink it in the scene and like we're walking onto the scene, they're like wait, wait, wait wait, and they ran off and they put a like a heat sleeve on it cover up the logo. Whatever the fine go. Do you think nobody wants to game a throne Starbucks moment where they can only imagine how to pay Starbucks of fortune to get that in or to pay them off like they was an accident. Yeah, but most times nothing ever happens, right, It's let's just you're doing something disparagingly with the bread and most companies really don't care rate branding for them. Yeah, like Starbucks so good that it was in a mythical land years ago, starks Bucks, starks Bucks. That's a very good cat, very not just a hat rack. You know, you, John, are one of the folks on the crew that have really been active on Twitter and with the fandom and all of that. So, as you know, the Shadow fam is a magical being of its own and they are angels on this earth. So let's talk a little bit about your experience with the fandom and uh, you know, being at the comic cons and and what's what's that been like for you? Okay, So, first and foremost, I am a fan of stuff, like I know currently I am still you know, I consume the content. I attend, you know, New York and San Diego comic con. I run a panel at San Diego about location scouting. But it's I would being immersed in within the people that you know, pay my salary. But the Shadow Family just they've always been you know, pleasant, if they're they've got great hearts. I've been happy to meet a few of them, more than a lot of that person not just you know, they're not rude on social media, they're engaging. Because I've been at all the appearances, like all three New York's, the two San Diegos, and the amount of times I'll get like the worst not the worst. The weirdest one was the third time It's at New York when we were at Madison Square Gardens. They had everyone show up early in corrals like Penn's to keep the line to the cue going. So I was in one of the first ones and I start getting Twitter notices asking if that's me there, and I'm like yes, and people were there respectful and I'm not to start pointing out that I'm in the crowd, not that I wouldn't mind, but they've been great. I still communicate with quite a few of them. Half my Instagram is shadow Hunters fans Um. There was a time I turned out I was in London for a conference when you guys had a convention and end up meeting a few people that I've met before. Oh, they they're they're great. You still stay in touch with a few of them. I mean I still send them Christmas some of them Christmas cards. Yeah, I mean they've they've been good to me in It's been fun being part of the community. I love the Shadow fan They're they're great. I mean, I can never say, you know, I know the definition of you know, fan comes from fanatic, but yeah, but I don't think that's necessarily the the apt definition anymore. I think they know. I mean, we can't and I both have experienced a fair share of the fanatic version of it, which is and with I don't know if it's the same with you, Cap, but with me, very often it's it's partners that get the rough end of it, Like my my girlfriend gets the rough end of it every now and then, and then you sort of go through it and you go, this is like three people of the millions that we've met and the millions that watched the show over the course of like, I'm not gonna and I'm sort of this is my old age coming through, and so my gray hairs are adding to my knowledge. I saw this thing recently, is I'm not going to give you. I'm not giving you the privilege to take away of my happiness. You don't deserve that. There's so many people who strive for our happiness, and we strive for theirs, and just makes the world go around, the full year and yang of the world. These this this minute percentage of people that want to be negative in some way. I'm not giving you permission to take my happiness away from you anymore. That's not yours. You don't get that privilege. It's not for you. And like you say, the vast majority of people have been so supportive, without whom we wouldn't be here, not only doing the podcast, wouldn't have done the show. The show wouldn't have kept going about people who enjoyed it. And that was always the fun of joining all those conventions and seeing the fan base grow, moving from the basement of the jabits to swear gardens, and that many people just that that love the show, we're involved in it. It's it's still great when I go into a convention and still see people dressed up. Yeah, it's so wild. Well, and it's incredible too, is that you know you get to see over the years Domina I have met and I'm sure you too have seen this. We've met so many folks who you know, they were fourteen or fifteen or twelve when we first met them, and now we still every year we go to conventions or see on Twitter, we get to hear about their you know, university, or their jobs or the progress they've made in their life, or get to watch these people grow into themselves in so many amazing ways and see the fandom support them and see these friendships grow and blossom and developing through people. Yeah, like people who have connected through a mutual love of the either these stories or you know, you guys did the locations whatever. It is like seeing people develop these relationships within that is really sweet. Like we've seen people get into romantic relationships from like two people who are separate at these conventions that we've gone to and then all of a sudden they're holding hands and we're like on a panel like, hey, those two, I think those two hang up now. And then they asked us a question. I'm like, Shah, I wasn't listening. I'm sorry paying attention whatever. But it's it's it's a fandom that it's never like on most of I've never had been on a show that I had it that was such passion and became its own community and published books and stuck together and you know, just the whole campaign just trying to save the show. Still We still have a bench in New York in Central parkos and hated to as which is wild. I haven't seen. I still haven't seen that. I used to walk down there all the time. It's it's it's pumbling. It isn't there isn't it really is, because I've walked past it a few times and it's like, that's just odd, but in a great way, like nothing I've worked on has a bench that that that that the studio realized how much fandom loved the show of product and decided to put money towards something. Well, that's why we came up with that idea, you know. It was we were the show and I was talking to Harry about it, and we're like, well what if we did you know, what if we did this and and made you know, not a monument but a spot that people could go and remember the show in the place that it existed. And the studio was kind enough to help out. So, you know, I didn't realize the studio put towards it. That's really nice. Yeah, free Form came in and helped us with it because it you know, it's not it's not a small expendi. It's also a place where fans can always know where to meet when they if they want. Recently, I was gone already from New York. But we we did it at this commit We had a convention that sort of fell apart. Yeah, I'm aware. I had my plane ticket in hotel and I had already checked the flight in and it was literally that morning when I'm watching, I'm getting tweets from fans that know me, and I'm like, what's going okay? And I reached out and like, I have this ticket, I could go. I just feel guilty because it's your money that I'm going to be spending, So try to be supportive on what you guys did. There was brilliance. I used, you know, making lemonade. That's really all we did. But so the first day I met fans in the hotel and then I left because I had to go to a bachelor party. It was only supposed to do that one day anyway. And then the next day everyone met around the bench that's where Anna and everyone went and go. When and saw everyone was like, look we're going to meet around the bench. That's go and hang out and you know, do what we can um and it was nice. Yeah, I mean it was mental. It was a mental mental thing to happen, but it was nice to have, Like you say, this is this is sort of our spot in in which that could have been what that was horrible, at least something good came out of it. Exactly. That's what the Shadow Firm does. You know, anytime something happens, good or bad, they always find a way to make something good out of it. And I will forever be in awe of this community. John, I gotta ask, what are your favorite locations? Like? I don't want to say one because that seems like an impossible that could be like trying to do stuff on my my laptop whilst also speaking into microphone and freaking idiot. Um, let's say top top two or top three? Is that too much? Gonna hate the first one? No, no, no, because anyone who knows me in town is gonna expect the answer. Um. I am a very big fan of the former hern generating when that funk the herd? How have we not spoken about that? Beautiful? It looks amazing it I've spent I've spent a massive amount of my career in that building. Everyone has. It's so funny we had zach Levi I do you remember when we saw zach Levi. I come up and he was like, we're filming in this place more it's it's like the heroine or the herd, and I was like, you're filming in that? He was like, dude, I'm in the super suit. I was like, I don't know, let's tell you bright try and stays We're going to show where We rented it for a year. Show was that the second season of c for Apple TV. The first couple of episodes we literally built where those columns are, like where the tunnely aspect of it is. We literally turned that into ten blocks of a city four years in the future that with like two story buildings and rope wires and future. So the sea was the Jason momoister as an Apple where there's a viral a plague that turns everybody blind and then you now cut into the future where everyone's basically blinded, being each other with swords and sticks, like their technology doesn't at all. It sounds like, yeah, the first season was shot in Vancouver. They season two and three in Ontario. UM, but the idea was it was an entire world where everyone is sightless, so you know there's ropes where they can use their sticks to get around in the designer it was it was actually another show where we were all very open and collaborative and creative because we were building a world, but they needed this big space that worked. And the designer came in and the producers they loved the space because we could build a world. It is I mean it is. It is gothically beautiful and can become anything. Really is it? Is it the prettiest pills in the world. No, But I take any director in the place, they all lose their minds. Well, it's just the way the light bounce is and there's so many lines and angles and shadows and you know Ravens one we used the outside for Renlis. It has multiple of looks. That's that's why I like it. Um trying to think of what else. I mean, the conservation area that we did lake Lynn and also the garden Rockwood is another favorite of mine, just because topographically it's very different. It always looks good on camera. Other ruins were the whole lake Lynn thing. We were up there. We were up there for like a week when we and it was just like every day was gorgeous. We'd get there in the mornings and like the ice had covered everything. They were like ferrets running across the ice and it was just like the most breathtakingly beautiful place. And then the ice melted and we got to see the lake and it was absolutely stunning. Yea. And they got to go back and spend two nights with fake snow and on the red gown. Well, and even the there was that one scene we were chasing at gold now or at sunset with that fight scene in the woods and just the way that the sun was setting to with the trees and how the drone got to drive through and everything. It just limestone, fast row. Just it looks great. Fly to fly, yes, that's the words you're looking for. Drive on air or fly. I don't know. I'm not a drone operator. I don't know the terminology. If I had to pick two of those would be the two. But we were lucky to be in a lot of really visually great places that worked. Yeah, well all thanks to you, clearly thanks to I'm one of many many people that make it all happen. I mean thanks to you and your team that works with me. But even then it's just you know, it's on screen it's it's the set dressing, it's the cinematography, it's the special effects. We're all cogs in this machine that put this town blow up. There, we're going to marry up. Yeah, that's what the heart and soul of shadow Hunters was. Everyone committed to that. You know, I'm you know, being a cog in the machine, but also trying to help the machine run better simultaneously. And I think that's why you see so many incredible things happen in that show. Kidding definitely, but I mean, like I said, even you know the church that we did with the Church of Talta, with that ballroom scene that we had to dress every single time we went into that place. Yes, that was I got to see so little of that because I had the fucking head on the whole time. I could see, like the eyes I could be, had the dress and build that every time. Oh my god, that's right. But oddly enough, that was a recycled location that was the same one we used in the very first episode as the Brooklyn Academy of Art. No, was it really Yea, that was the same church, same building. I had no idea. That's insane, wow, unbelievable, Like I said, I asked to find something in Matt's eyes that was decrepit ballroom, and we just couldn't find anything that worked perfectly. But this we could make that space work. And I mean I remember it took them like eight hours of just putting the cobwebsite every time that every time it appeared in the script. Again, it was just like it's more just having to match what was seen before and tell John, Tell, tell the people at home how you do cob webs, because obviously we don't leave spider holes. That's like it's like this nozzle. It's almost like a insulating foam sprayer and they just sprays out like strands of I don't know what the dries up. Yeah, it's like hot blue being rejected. Yeah. Yeah, it's like a hot blue gun. I didn't know that because the cob webs there were like over everything from the air coming down it was and it was like two guys in respirators just spraying all this stuff. And then someone had to come in with dust to age and all the dust it Oh, I remember the dust we had. I don't know if you remember them. In Lilith's apartment, everything was covered in a layer of dust and had to be redusted constant all the time, like when you take rafters. Yeah, I guess that's right. Oh man, Yeah, no kidding, well, John, thank you so much for joining us. Before we let you go, I do I just want to ask, what's what's next, what's coming up? What do you headed towards? What do you want to do? What's it like? Uh? My dream job went to New York this year. I can't say it out loud. There was a Marvel show that was going to be coming up here that because the cast didn't want to relocate, end up going in New York. Um, they don't know. Toronto. Toronto is amazing. The studio was all for it. It was just the one one of the key actors really is insisted on not leaving New York City, got it. I guess I'm happy to be I'm you know, content to be employed. Yeah, you know, I've been lucky enough to be consistently working. It's just a bit of a quiet time right now. So I'm just waiting to see what's next. It's a couple of projects I'm waiting to see whether they're ready to go. And it's so funny trying to into people like what a quiet period is, Like people not in the industry who are like, odd, I just heard that they're doing this. You should audition for this, And I'm like, yeah, you just hearing that it's happening means it's like in the beginning stay ages of pre production. I'm that's not gonna hite my desk for a year, you know what I mean, It's not going to stop filming for a year and a half. Like there's all two years even Like that's not it's just not how this works. January by the time that they've already started exactly in the can and just sitting there, it's done. Yeah. That's the thing is it's pre pandemic. We had the artificial streaming boom, which is why it was it was busy, and then COVID hit and then afterwards it was just insanity. And now we've gone back to what the rhythm used to be. I mean, I've been doing this long enough to know December January you don't really work February March. It's cyclical up. Just getting back used to that. Yeah, but you know, the pandemic changed, Yeah, it changed quite a lot. You know why wasn't we were in the middle of a show. The dropped tools. I was. They kept me employed part time the whole time because we literally just walked away from million dollar sets that we're all out like. C was a very huge show with a lot of the massive sets that were built. They just walked away, and then we came back and hellishly took what was supposed to be a television series and decided we wanted to shoot it with one director and do it like a feature. How many episodes do you do? Eight? So we also then had season two. They decided, Okay, we're gonna block. We're gonna block, shoot it like a like a feature. So a hundred and seventy four days. By the way, you have four weeks of prep. Holy well, Jason Momoa schedule was so tight that we had to shoot too. It was it was a slog. I mean, that was that job. Those two seasons was twenty seven months of work. Unbelievable, but hey, working, you know, working somehow you accomplish it though. That's the thing. The film again, it was a huge show with big explosions and big stuff, and you know, we were outside a lot, which was nice, especially in the winter. Yeah, no kidding, how quite describe it to people? Like shooting in New York and they're bringing me my jacket every time it gets close to zero celsius. I'm like, don't want about you guys. Four years I did four years and so on. I don't want. So it was a conference in one location conference in London called Focus I go to every year because I go on to a trade association and it's in the first week. It's usually it's the first Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday in December and I show up there and everyone there is stick with your coats and I'm like, it's the springtime. What are you're talking about? Yeah exactly. Nice. Yeah, you're in your shorts, like ready to go for the beach like Canada. I don't even own one of those. Yeah exactly. I mean I was in Santa Fe shooting you know, a Western this year, and yes, it's cold, but you know, I'm wearing so much Fabrica on that show. I'm like, guys, come on, I have so many layers. This is this is nothing, this is me I was. I was in Atlanta right before Christmas and it was everyone there is complaining how cold it is, and like it's one degree celsius what you're talking about that We're good. I don't worry about it anyway. John, thank you so much for being a proud of us than sharing the stories. Um, we really appreciate it. I mean for us it means such a such a lot because people get this insight about the geniuses who really put this show together. So thank you for not only being on the podcast, but for being such an integral part of our show. Absolutely and my pleasure. It's got a highlight for me. It means so much to share these dories because Dom and I can talk about it all. We want to be like, oh, John told us this, and John said that and he did this thing. But to hear it from you and to hear your perspective and your insight, and I learned so much today. Thanks so much. I'm happy to talk about the show anytime you have questions and complaints about why we shot stuff in where I can always give you the you know what, next time we do a mail bag episode. Alright, angels, here's the deal. Next time we do a mail bag episode, if you have any questions for John drama that was decisions for what was made and when and where and why certain people if people understand I get start up early enough that we're there. When they discussed why certain people get hired in season one, there was a lot of drama season one that I remember some of it. That's why certain people weren't asked back and going to go. And we've got another episode to film right after this. But again, John, thank you so much, Thank you, John, Thank you. Hi Return to the Shadows as hosted an executive produced by me Dominic, Sherwood and Katherine McNamara. Our executive producer is Linggley. Our senior producers are Liz Hayes and Diego Tapia. Our producer is Hannah Harris and Kristin Familiar, and our intern is Sam Kat's. Original music by Alex Kinzy performed by Alex Kinzy and Kathryn McNamara, and the episode was mixed by Seth A landscape