Last April, casting directors were hold casting calls in Atlanta for background actors, stand-ins and even college students for the new Baby Driver movie. Now with production over, Edgar Wright’s Atlanta-filmed production finally hits theaters. But what was it like to film in the ATL?
It is important to note Baby Driver centers around a young getaway driver who suffered a childhood injury leading him to move to the rhythm of a personal music playlist. The setting of the movie takes place and focuses on streets of Atlanta, an important aspect the movie’s director wanted to highlight.However, when the movie was just a script, Baby Driver was originally going to shoot in Los Angeles.
Baby Driver’s film supervising location manager, Douglas Dresser, told KFTV that the movie was originally written for Los Angeles but due to Georgia’s film tax credits it was changed to Atlanta.
“Edgar Wright then changed the script to be set in Atlanta so we didn’t have to cheat it as another city. We scouted for just over two and a half months in October to December, prepped after the first of the year and shot in the spring,” Dresser explains.
To match the movie’s music with the filming location Wright would take the cast and crew through the streets of Atlanta to make his vision come true. Dresser says, “This was my favorite part of the film. Walking the streets of Atlanta and finding the little bits that made his vision come true. Edgar would joke with us as we hit the streets: ‘Come on fellas, let’s get our steps in!’.”
This was not an easy task considering filming for the entire movie took place nearly all on location and the team had organized more than 40 street closures over the course of the shoot including main sections of I-85, a major highway that travels directly through the city of Atlanta.
Dresser told KFTV, “The streets names in the script are for the most part the real names of the streets. The neighborhoods are the neighborhoods. The city of Atlanta was great. The Mayors Office of Film and Television, the state film commission, Atlanta PD and the Georgia state troopers were a tremendous part of making this movie a success.”
Georgia is currently the most popular filming location for some of the biggest movies of 2016. This is due to Georgia’s film tax credit, which awards selected productions up to a 30% tax credit. Many other major productions have seen this opportunity including several Marvel superhero productions.