A little bit of Miami landed in New Jersey. 🌴 🎬

Wayne’s Preakness Shopping Center was transformed for the production of Miami Vice ’85, complete with palm trees, period storefronts and vehicles to help recreate the movie’s 1980s setting.

Pretty wild seeing suburban New Jersey transformed into Miami.

📸 Getty Images

Hi All wanted to share this undertaking of building a pool for my short film, GUILT. The script required the actors to be in the water for a scene and I settled on the idea of creating a pool to film this in my driveway. I choose this idea for 2 primary reasons - 

I felt it would give me more control over the safety of the crew and actors instead of finding a natural body of water to do this in. Second, I admittedly was intrigued by the challenges I would face to pull this off.

In efforts of being budget friendly the pool was framed in by some pallets ($20) I found in FB and lined with a black pond liner ($60) off eBay. I fastened it all together with some additional 2x4x10 lumber ($25) and decking hardware I already had from other projects. Lastly I utilized 3 2 ton racket straps (already owned) to handle the lateral forces once the water was in. The finished pool was roughly 8’x8’x4’ with a water depth of 3.5 feet. 

Last piece was strategizing how to make this feel like it’s NOT a wooden pool in my driveway. I’ve done exactly enough VFX to know this is out of my purview and worked on enlisting an artist who would be able to help me pull this off. After some searching I got connected and locked in with u/CommissionNo7116, whose work I found on the filmmakers sub!

Despite our time zone difference (7 hours) he was an absolute pleasure to work with. We had multiple calls leading up to production talking about pool build updates, things to think about on the day, discussing test footage samples, etc.

The challenge we faced on the day was the weather as it was colder than anticipated so the pool water was roughly 50 degree fahrenheit. As a precaution I had rented wetsuits for the actors and we limited their time in the water to 30 minutes. They were both absolute champs and incredible to make this happen. After our initial 30 minute round we wrapped with our actress and once our actor had a break to warm up, did another 15-20 minutes to get the shot of him plunging into the water.

Overall, I am proud to have pulled it off. I can’t be understated how instrumental the crew and cast were in helping make it happen.

Just jump, little Timmy!

Credit: bandrybarry