A. A variety of places, everything from the interior of Miami Metro to the interior of a residential house. .
Q.
Where is it supposed to be on the show?
A. Most of the locations recreated here at the studio are supposed to be in Miami, Florida.
Q.
When did we see it on the show?
A. You'll see sets at this studio in virtually every single episode.
Q.
What is it actually in real life?
A. A movie studio.
Q.
Where can I find it in real life?
This studio is called is called either Radford Studio Center or CBS Studio Center.
You'll find it at 4024 Radford Ave, in Studio City, California.
Although “Dexter” films a lot of their scenes out on location in the real world , many
(perhaps most) of their interior scenes are shot on sets, built inside
the sound stages at the studio.
Not all interiors are shot here. If they are only going to shoot once at
a location, such as at a residential house, they will often shoot the
interiors inside that actual house.
But if they know that they are going to have to return to the location
on a regular basis, they will usually simply build a set at the studio,
that looks identical to the original Interior, so they don’t have to
keep going back to the original location. (Rita’s house from the first
season of Dexter is a good example of this. And the interior of the
Morgan family home is most likely to wind up as a studio set for this
prequel. )
And of course, some locations don’t exist at all in the real world, such
as the offices of Miami Metro.
Over the years, they have gone through a
number of different exterior locations for that police station, ranging from
Miami to Marina Del Rey, but the interior of Miami Metro has always
been shot inside the studio. Miami Metro is a special case. Although the exteriorof the Police Station is an actual building in Long Beach (this time around), the interior of Miami Metro is a set built inside a soundstage at the studio. It is an exact duplicate of the office seen in the original series, rebuilt using the same blueprints that were used to build the original Miami Metro set at Sunset-Gower.
For 8 years during filming of the original “Dexter” series, they shot
the show at Sunset-Gower Studios in Hollywood. But for this new series,
“Dexter: Original Sin”, they changed studios, and are now working out of
the Radford Center Studios (formerly known as CBS Studio Center), in
Studio City, CA.
(The name Radford comes from the simple fact that the studio is located at the corner of Ventura Blvd. & Radford Ave.)
Most of “Dexter” has always been filmed In Long Beach, California, where
the coastline bears a close resemblance to that of Miami, Florida. But
for the original series, when they weren’t shooting in Long Beach, most
of the other scenes were shot near the studio in Hollywood.
It’s simply a
matter of convenience. If you can shoot near the studio, why not?
And now that they have moved to Studio City, in the San Fernando Valley,
it looks like most of those non-Long Beach scenes are going to be
filmed in the Valley, near the new studio.
Already, in the first episode, they have chosen locations in the Valley to
serve as the Morgan family house, the first crime scene location, Debra's high school, and
the first killer’s house.
This new studio has a long Hollywood history.
It has changed names over the years, but it is the studio that gave Studio City its name.
It first opened way back in 1928, as the Mack Sennett studio, where the
famous director churned out silent comedy classics starring the
likes of Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, and the Keystone Cops.
When Mack Sennett moved out, it eventually became Republic Studios,
which specialized in low-budget Western films, and started the careers
of John Wayne, Gene Audrey, and Roy Rogers. The Western sets at the
studio were later used for classic TV shows such as “Gunsmoke”, “The
Rifleman” and “The Wild Wild West”.
The ‘60s and ‘70s saw CBS move in, the name was changed to CBS Studio
Center, and along with it a number of classic sitcoms, ranging from
“Gilligan’s Island” and “My Three Sons” to “Seinfeld” and a host of Mary Tyler Moore
sitcoms such as “Lou Grant” and “The Bob Newhart Show”.
It’s a relatively small studio, at least compared to behemoths like
Universal and Warner Bros, but it offers 18 soundstages, plus a
residential street and in New York street (although the famous lagoon
from “Gilligan’s Island” was paved over In the ‘90s to make room for a
parking structure.)
[ Unfortunately, this studio does not offer a studio tour to the public.
For a studio tour, you'll have to go to either Warner Bros., Paramount, Sony or Universal studios. ]
