Bound By Honor

I joined Bound By Honor as line producer, taking responsibility for location coordination and on-set production logistics. The script called for several distinctive settings: an old-money mansion, a church, a bowling alley, and a shooting range with expansive views. Finding the right places—and figuring out which settings could be combined at a single location—became a challenging and interesting part of the project. I secured all the required locations without cutting any, then worked with my production team to plan around each site’s practical constraints, including parking and loading.

The bowling alley was the hardest location to secure. I contacted almost every bowling venue in Los Angeles, but most were outside our budget. We also needed more than the lanes themselves: to make the schedule work, we wanted a venue where we could film additional scenes. We found one in Hollywood that suited those needs, but parking became the next challenge. Cast and crew needed to park in a nearby lot and take a shuttle to set, while vehicles used for loading equipment had to leave the filming location once unloading was complete. With a limited budget, I negotiated rates with parking lot owners and planned the shuttle and vehicle movements around the filming schedule. Our production team had only three people, including me, so we had to be clear about who was handling each task and when. With careful planning and a lot of hands-on work, we kept the day moving without parking or transportation disrupting filming.

The production wrapped successfully, and we used every location we had secured. The footage captured the distinctive settings we were looking for, with high-quality shots that felt unique for a vertical series. Looking back, I’m most pleased with the intensive pre-production work that helped us get there. I created location overheads, allocated logistical tasks, and prioritized decisions that would have the greatest impact on what appeared on screen. During scouts, I distributed documents to department heads so everyone could clearly identify the spaces we planned to use. I also worked closely with the first assistant director to communicate the schedule across departments. That preparation gave us a shared understanding of the locations and the plan before we arrived on set.