Law & Order: Los Angeles given 13 episode pick-up, other L&O News

Not "make up" so much as "perhaps misremembering and naturally exaggerating."

Anyway. I know what scene they're referring to in that article and it was very obviously chroma'd but there has been also very obviously shot-on-location stuff in New York City as well this season, much like there was in Washington DC last year.

Obviously the majority of stuff was done here in L.A., but one chroma-keyed sequence of a helicopter chase hardly indicates that they didn't do any location work in the Big Apple.

 

^No, I saw a video feature recently that shows the extensive use of greenscreen to create the illusion of cityscapes that aren't actually there. Tons of shows use it, not just for obvious things like helicopter stunts, but for wide shots of characters on streets with skylines or landmarks in the background.

 

^ In L&O, for example, there are a lot of scenes where we see the detectives interview someone at a palatial corner office apparently high up in a skyscraper. If they do use greenscreen for shots like that, it must be very detailed, since the view outside the various windows appears to be seamless.

 

Spoiler: Ritchie Coster on Law & Order, although I'm not sure why I'm tagging it.

Actually, the one I'm thinking of his his lone SVU appearance, "Or Just Look Like One." In that episode, the killer turned out to be his ex-model girlfriend. He just helped her dispose of the body.

In his Trial by Jury appearance, "Skeleton," he was the killer. I believe he was convicted at the end for murdering one of his girlfriends. Although, the original girl that he was accused of murdering turned out not to be dead at all.

 

For the first 8 episodes of season seven, 24 only spent a week filming scenes in Washington, DC. After that, the writer's strike happened, and I don't think they ever returned to shoot more material for the remainder of the season. The scene between Tony and Jack at the reflecting pool, for example, was done entirely with green screens.

Everything I've read has indicated that a similar shooting schedule with only a few days in New York City was followed this year.

 

^ That is also how most of those other shows like CSI:NY, NYPD Blue, Without a Trace, etc. did it. They did almost all of their actual filming in L.A., but went to New York for a week to do all the location shooting and establishing shots they might need.

AFAIK, Law & Order was one of the first shows to be set AND FILMED in New York City. Dick Wolf, God bless him, insisted on it.

TBC, did you see that one Ritchie Coster ep where he was the cab driver? It was called "Bodies". I don't think I've ever seen a creepier character in all of L&O, and perhaps all of TV in general.