Dexter Filming Locations: Dexter Driving in Miami Traffic (season 7)

DEXTER Filming Locations - hundreds of actual places where the TV show Dexter was filmed.


The location: Dexter Driving in Miami Traffic






Q. What is it supposed to be on the show?

    A. Several public street & bridges.


Q. Where is it supposed to be on the show?

    A. Across the Miami area.


Q. When did we see it on the show?

    A. In Episode 1, of Season 7, "Are You...?".

    The episode begins with Dexter driving fast and weaving (somewhat erratically) through Miami traffic, heading towards Miami International Airport.

    At first, it appears that he might be making a run for it, trying to flee the country, after his sister, Debra, has found out his secret.

    Later, though, it is revealed that he's actually  stalking a new victim, Viktor Baskov, a Ukrainian who is about to get on a plane bound for Kiev, and who killed detective Mike Anderson.

    Along the way, Dexter runs low on gas, and stops at a gas station to fill up.

    But the same scenes are replayed later, as he arrives at the airport.


Q. What is it actually in real life?

    A. Several public streets and bridges.


Q. Where can I find it in real life?

    A. For once, a Dexter location is actually what it appears to be.  Almost.

Most of those shots of weaving through traffic actually were filmed in Miami, Florida.

The top screenshot on this page, for instance, was filmed  on the Julia Tuttle Causeway (AKA Florida 112) - while heading east across Biscayne Bay, from downtown Miami towards Miami Beach.

Here's a Google StreetView showing the same signs and hill.



    But the very next shot (three down) was shot heading the opposite directions (west) on the same Tuttle Causeway.

    Here is a Google StreetView of that stretch of road.

    (The small sign you see on the right, reading "Miami Int'l Airport", is real.  But in real life, if  reads "7 miles", not "17 miles".)

    The bottom shot of him passing under a large Miami International Airport sign was shot heading west on NW 21st Street, just west of the 953.

    But the catch is that Dexter (Michael C. Hall) isn't really in that car, in those Miami shots.

    They just sent a film crew to Miami early on this year, and grabbed a number of useful shots like this, which they then mix in with local Southern California footage.

    In the few shots where we can see actually Michael's face (such as the second screencap from the top), he is actually in Long Beach, California, driving over the Queensway Bridge and along the Long Beach coast.  They simply intercut those Long Beach scenes with the authentic Miami footage, and voilà!: "Dexter driving in Miami".

    At 36:16, there is a particularly interesting shot, in which we see a cruise ship docked off Dodge Island, with the downtown Miami skyline in the background. That was shot heading west/NW on the MacArthur Causeway. (Here is a Bing StreetSide view.
    )

    What makes it interesting is that, for some reason, they flipped the image horizontally!

    Look closely at the screencap below, and you notice people driving on the wrong side of the road.

    Here is that flipped photo of MacArthur Causeway, as seen in the first episode.



    And here is how it looks in real life (via Bing's StreetSide view):




And just for the fun of it, here's the show's screencap un-flipped (by me):



Q. How the heck did you figure out where it was?

    A.  In the early seasons, I usually had to hunt down the locations after viewing the episodes, using clues from the various scenes.  By the now, though, I've developed a small group of fans, spies & tipsters who kept an eye out for Dexter filming in their neighborhoods, and would let me know in advance when something was about to film there.

    Between those reports, my own personal reconnaissance around town, and a few new resources I discovered, by the time the first episode airs, I already know most (but not all) of the filming locations, and only need to watch the episodes and match up the scenes with the correct locations.

    This group of helpful fans includes Rick, Ellen, Elaine, Mia, Joel, Susan, Eric, Jeff, Kerry & others. My thanks to all of them.

    In this one case, though, I can claim lone credit. And it took a little hunting.

    I've never been to Miami, but I've spent enough time looking at aerial photos and Google StreetViews of the city (while researching locations for these pages), that I'm now fairly familiar with the layout of the city.  Given the views of downtown, the cruise ship terminal on Dodge Island, and those palm trees on the MacArthur Causeway, it wasn't terribly hard for me to track down the exact locations using StreetView.  The only thing that threw me, for a while, was that flipped photo of the cruise ship. It made no sense, at first, until I realized it had been inverted...

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