Dexter: Original Sin Filming Locations: Brian kills Barb on rooftop (with chainsaw)
The
location: Brian kills Barb
on rooftop (with chainsaw)
Q.
What is it supposed to be on the show?
A. A rooftop.
Q.
Where is it supposed to be on the show?
A. In or near Miami, Florida.
Q.
When did we see it on the show?
A. We see this bloody location near the end of Episode 9, of Season 1, and again near the start of episode 10.
Brian Moser charms a middle aged woman named Barb into accompanying him from a church bingo hall. He then abducts her.
When she
comes to, she finds herself tied up on a rooftop.
She realizes who he,
since she is the social worker tasked with driving Brian away from the
Morgan home, when Harry & Doris realized he was too dangerous (as a
child) to keep in their house.
Brian, who has grown up to be a bloodthirsty psychopath, blames her for separating him from his younger brother, Dexter.
He brings out a chainsaw, and murders the helpless, terrified woman.
The rooftop
location shows up a second time in the the season finale (Episode 10), when the Miami Metro police are
investigating the murder, after finding the dismembered body parts of
Barb on the rooftop.
Harry, who recognizes both Barb, and Brian's tactics, knows who did it.
And when he looks up, he spots Brian on the nearby rooftop, looking down
on the investigation. As he had done before with his previous recent
murders, Brian has returned to the scene of the crime.
There is a third rooftop
scene (in episode 10), in which Harry confronts Brian on the taller
rooftop from which Brian was spying on the investigation.
Harry holds Brian at gunpoint while
they have a lengthy conversation about his murders and Harry’s role in
sending him away as a child.
Eventually, Brian dares Harry to kill him, and when Harry hesitates, Brian disarms him and knocks him unconscious.
Harry wakes up on the rooftop, still alive, but handcuffed to a pipe. He
sees that Brian has written the words “You’re right” on the wall.
Q.
What is it actually in real life?
A. A rooftop, just not in Miami.
Q.
Where can I find it in real life?
A. These scenes were filmed on the roofs of two buildings at Radford Studio Center, the studio where they film Dexter: Original Sin..
The studio is located at 4024 Radford Ave, in Studio City, CA.
The roof where Brian murders Barb is atop a relatively low office
building, only two stories high, located right
next to Radford Ave, just north of the studio's main Administration
building (which can be seen in the background of the murder scene).
( The apartment building that can be glimpsed to one side in the background of the murder scene is “The Thomas” apartments, located across Radford Avenue, to the west, at 4121 Radford. )
The taller building, with the narrow, recessed windows, glimpsed in the background of the investigation scene, is the studio's main
Administration building itself, located immediately south of the murder rooftop.
It is on top of this tall Administration building that Harry spots Brian
spying on them, and where he later confronts him at gunpoint.
We have seen this Administration building before, in the scene where Laura was coerced into a limousine with a cartel member. But that scene showed us the building's south side, featuring the main front entrance.
This rooftop murder scene shows us the upper section of the building's back (north) side, while the confrontation scene with Harry shows us its rooftop. The
scene where Harry confronts Brian at gunpoint was shot on top of the
Administration building, which is right next to (south of) the first
rooftop.
Q. How the heck did you figure out where it was?
A. This was
tricky. While studying the details in the scene, after lightning
the screenshots in Photoshop, I noticed the narrow, recessed windows of
the adjacent building in the background, and what appeared to be an
apartment house across the street. I also noticed there was a notch of
sorts on the railing by the edge of the rooftop where the murder occurs.
It occurred to
me that it didn't make much sense for them to go out hunting for a
rooftop location, when they had the entire studio full of rooftops to
choose from. So I used Google Earth to take a 3D aerial view of the studio lot, looking for a matching rooftop.
But I found it easier to instead look for the apartment house across the street, and I quickly recognized it on Radford Street.
Once I knew where the apartment house was, I simply spun the view around
to see which rooftop was directly across the street, and found
that it was a low office building just north of the main Administration
building.
When I used StreetView to look up at that office building from Radford Street, I could even see the notch in the railing
of the rooftop, making me certain that I had found the right spot. But
that was confirmed even further when the 3D view of the north side of
the Administration building revealed those narrow recessed windows, looking exactly as they did in the background of the investigation scene.
The rooftop in the second scene is recognizable by the distinctive Plexiglass barrier
around the edge of the Administration building's rooftop, which
can be seen both when Harry spots Brian on the roof, and again in the
background of the rooftop confrontation scene.