Director: Brad Furman
Production Designer: Crispian Sallis
Starring: Bryan Cranston, Diane Kruger & John Leguizamo
Locations: London, UK & Florida
Location Brief: Recreating 1980s Florida and Miami across London and the UK
Turning London into 1980s Florida for The Infiltrator
One of the great things about location scouting is being asked to find somewhere that looks absolutely nothing like where you actually are.
For The Infiltrator, the brief was simple enough on paper: recreate 1980s Florida and Miami across London and the UK.
No problem.
The film tells the true story of US Customs agent Robert Mazur, played by Bryan Cranston, who went undercover to infiltrate the money-laundering network surrounding Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar.
Directed by Brad Furman and with production design by Crispian Sallis, the film needed a very particular world of 1980s Florida — palm trees, swimming pools, hotels, restaurants, offices and sun-soaked American exteriors.
The slight complication was that we were filming most of it in Britain.
Finding Florida in London
Around 90% of The Infiltrator was filmed in London and the UK, with locations carefully selected and dressed to double for Florida.
For a location scout, this is the sort of brief I love.
You stop looking at London as London.
A building becomes an office in Miami. A swimming pool becomes a Florida hotel. The right road, car park or modernist exterior can suddenly transport the story thousands of miles away.
The challenge is finding locations where the architecture, landscaping and surrounding details give the production designer enough to work with.
Sometimes it’s not about finding the perfect location.
It’s about finding the location with the right bones.
Recreating 1980s Miami
Period films bring another layer of complexity.
We weren’t simply doubling London for modern-day Florida. We were recreating Florida in the 1980s.
Modern street furniture, road markings, signage, windows, lighting and countless other details can immediately give a location away.
The locations therefore had to work both geographically and historically.
Working with production designer Crispian Sallis, the aim was to find spaces that could be transformed and controlled while still giving Brad Furman the scale and atmosphere he wanted on screen.
The results are a brilliant example of how locations and production design work together.
You can watch the finished film and genuinely believe you’re in Florida.
Much of the time, you’re nowhere near it.
Location Scouting and the Art of the Double
I’ve spent a large part of my career finding locations that need to become somewhere else.
London has doubled for Washington DC, New York, Paris and countless other cities over the years.
But turning the UK into Florida presents its own particular challenges.
The light is different.
The vegetation is different.
And, rather inconveniently, the British weather doesn’t always get the memo.
But with careful framing, the right architecture, clever dressing and a little help from the occasional palm tree, the illusion works.
The Infiltrator Filming Locations
The Infiltrator remains one of my favourite examples of location doubling.
Brad Furman’s direction and Crispian Sallis’s production design brought all the elements together, transforming locations across London and the UK into a convincing 1980s Florida.
That’s the magic of film locations.
The audience sees Miami.
I still see London.
Here are some of my original location scout photographs from The Infiltrator.
