Closed Hospitals in the Los Angeles Area Get a Second Life for Television and Movie Filming as Turn Key Sets

Some facilities are better than others but when you stop and think of the shows we see on television, hospitals are all over the place as someone is always getting shot, or something along that line.  The location though formerly used for Scrubs though was not as nice as some of the other locations used.

Scrubs Television Show Hospital Filming Site Filled with Rats

The one I remember though was the Bucket List which I believe used the closed Century City hospital for it’s set.  BD 

Bucket List

The scene, for an upcoming episode of the CBS crime drama “Criminal Minds,” actually unfolded last week on the former Sherman Way campus of Northridge Hospital Medical Center, which solely serves as a location backdrop for shows that have included such dramas such as TNT’s “Rizzoli & Isles” and "Hawthorne."
The Northridge facility is among a dozen current and onetime medical centers and hospitals represented by Real to Reel Inc., a 30-year-old Van Nuys location agency that has built a successful niche supplying location managers with something they frequently seek: film-ready hospital settings.
“Hospitals are a staple of crime dramas. Someone’s always getting shot, so we’re always going to the hospitals,” said Jeffrey Spellman, location manager for “Criminal Minds,” which plans to shoot its next episode at another closed hospital, St. Luke Medical Center in Pasadena. “To have a facility like this makes our job much easier.”

Reel to Reel’s clients include St. Luke Medical Center in Pasadena, used in Clint Eastwood’s Oscar-winning boxing drama “Million Dollar Baby” and HBO’s vampire series “True Blood,” and St. Vincent Medical Center, the working hospital in downtown Los Angeles often used by crime dramas such as “CSI,” “The Closer” and “Southland.”

The former Northridge medical center, for example, has gimbal windows that can swing open to make it easier to shoot inside rooms. The nurse’s station table was lowered to improve camera angles.
"These properties are affordable, they’re turn-key and they’re ready to go and directors love them because they offer a variety of looks," Onyshko said.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/entertainmentnewsbuzz/2012/02/criminal-minds-other-shows-turn-to-hospitals-for-filming.html

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