John Fedynich has been a location scout for ten years. In addition to working for Sam Raimi on all three of the Spider-Man films, he has also worked on Pollock, Changing Lanes, The Pink Panther (remake with Steve Martin), Copland and many other film and television programs. Q: How did you get into this type of work? A: I traveled internationally with an educational, cross-cultural exchange group called "Up With People". Through this group I traveled to over 20 countries and lived with close to 300 host families. It was an incredible experience and I made many friends. The father of one of these friends worked in film doing stunt work. I met with him and explained my interest in working in film production. He knew my strengths and suggested doing location work. He recommended some people in New York. Once I stopped traveling, I made contact with these people and began working as a location scout in New York City. I am now managing many film and television projects in the New York City area.

Q: Are you a native New Yorker?
A: I was born and raised in New Jersey. And I still live in New Jersey, but I’ve known New York all of my life. What’s different is that I knew New York as a tourist and once I started getting into the business I realised that there was so much of New York that I was not aware of and that’s what’s been exciting about the type of work I do.
Q: Do the Spider-Man films create their own version of New York?
A: We use old pre war buildings with architectural detail. The look is certainly not futuristic and while there’s no reference to time in the movie, I think you can tell that it is real time based on the cars and the way the people dress. I think that’s what makes Spider-Man popular. Not only can people related to Peter Parker and the challenges that he faces by being Spider-Man; they can related to the activity around the story, because it’s today.
Q: How do you begin a project a large as Spider-Man 3?
I begin by working with the production designer who gives me Sam Raimi’s vision of what kind of New York he wants. I get the script and sometimes I get art renderings of location ideas. I then go out and find the locations. I take photographs and I send them to Los Angeles for the production designer, Sam and the producers to review. Once a location is approved, I start contract negotiations with the owners of the location and begin setting up all the logistics.
Q: How far in advance of filming do you start your process?
A: Well, the Spider-Man films are different to other films I’ve done before. Sometimes it’s eight weeks in advance; where for Spider-Man it was almost a year in advance. We had to set up a lot of New York locations early because some of the interiors of these locations had to be recreated in Los Angeles and they were filming in Los Angeles before coming to New York. So they had to recreate these interiors based on the exteriors. In addition, they wanted to get a head start on the visual effects. We had to set up quite a few locations in advance so they could start photographing and creating whatever they needed for the film in terms of the visual effects months before the New York production was scheduled start shooting.
Q: What is the biggest challenge you faced on Spider-Man 3?
A: I think one of the biggest challenges was to create somewhat of a different look from Spider-Man and Spider-Man 2. You know, New York is only so big. Also, what is different about this type of film is that I had to look at it from Spider-Man’s point of view; which is high above the city. It was great to have a different perspective of the city and show the city in a different way. In most films, everything is usually shown from street level.
Q: How did you achieve that perspective? Did you find a building and go to the roof?
A: Oh yes. I’ve probably been to the top of a good number of buildings in New York City. Let’s use Times Square as an example, because that’s the most known part of New York. You don’t get on top of one building to understand what it looks like. You are going to access different parts of Times Square so you have different perspectives of how Times Square looks from above. So I had to venture to the top of many New York buildings to experience the skyline and to see the perspective from above looking down. It was great.

Q: How many locations did you use in Spider-Man 3?
A: About 30. Everything we did was big. Nothing was what we call your normal walk and talk; two actors walking down the street. It was Spider-Man flying into the location. It was having cameras fly from one rooftop to another along a wire. And in certain locations we had 200, 300 and sometimes 400 extras in the background. This is filming on a grand scale.

Q: Describe some of the locations used in the Spider-Man films.
A: The Flat Iron building is used for the Daily Bugle newspaper offices in all three films. Peter Parker’s apartment is in the east village. We spent a lot of time looking for that because we needed to find the right exterior. Not only was the right building important but the right neighbourhood was important because he doesn’t have money and we wanted to show that he was living in a neighbourhood that was a little more down trodden.

Q: Tell us about some of the obstacles you face during production.
A: We picked a location that was in the downtown area near the financial district. From August until January everything was fine and then I got a call that the location we were going to be using was scheduled to be torn up by the city to create a new transit system. So I had to scramble and try and find a new location that worked for that particular scene. We shot quite a bit down by the financial district which was logistically challenging. Since Sept 11th that whole downtown area is being redone and so there is a lot of construction. We had to coordinate with the city and all these construction companies as to where and when we were going to be filming so we could work around each other. I also had to account for parking, noise and disruption to the neighbourhood.

Q: What is the Spidey-Cam?
A: The Spidey-Cam is about getting Spider-Man’s point of view. Spidey-Cam is when we run a line from one building to another and then they run a second line that the camera actually swoops down into the canyon of the streets. It is an amazing part of the production. Once a location is set an engineer survey of a rooftop needs to take place to determine if the roof of a building will hold the weight of the Spidey-Cam system. The crew that puts this rig together is amazing to watch. They occasionally work with limited space and can engineer any location provided to them. The crew can work incredibly long hours as they have to build the rigs, practice the way the camera is going to run on the Spidey-Cam lines and then actually be around for the filming. There can be 10 to 20 crew members working on these rigs. Once the rigs are anchored on the building rooftops they run a line to each of the buildings. This happens by dropping the line off the side of the building and running it down the street to another building. We have to stop all road traffic for safety which means we need the help and support of the Mayor's Office and Police Department.

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