For the filmmakers, it was necessary to set the film in a foreign location: it would add to the confusion that was required for the story. In researching possible locations, they fell in love with one location in particular: Salamanca, Spain, and its central square, Plaza Mayor. "It was critical that the film was set in Salamanca," Travis says. "There is no one worldview in this film. You can't figure out who shot the president by following only the American heroes; you have to watch all the stories, and since the picture is about us all, the film had to be set in a foreign location. In addition, I wanted this film to have heat, a sexy intensity, an exotic allure. That could only be Spain."
The filmmakers found the perfect location in Salamanca, a town a short distance from Madrid. According to Travis, the filmmakers soon fell in love with the town's central square, Plaza Mayor. "It's a spectacular plaza, an enclosed square that feels like an amphitheatre, full of life and culture, but also a place that would be scary as hell if it had 30,000 people fleeing for their lives," he says. "It's grand and eloquent, the ideal setting for a world summit, and it's never been seen in a big movie before. It's perfect."
However, as the pre-production process began, it became clear that shooting in Salamanca was not meant to be; with an action-packed script that required explosions, gunfights, and car chases, the Salamanca location simply did not give the filmmakers the flexibility they needed to pull off a production of this magnitude. With Plaza Mayor itself off the table, the filmmakers began to look for locations that could double for Salamanca and found what they were looking for in Mexico City. "When we had to find another place, we wanted to come to a country that had the contrast and intensity that you get in Spain. We found it in Mexico," says Travis.
The challenge for production designer Brigitte Broch-who won the Academy Award® for her set decorating work on Moulin Rouge-was immediate: rebuild an exact replica of Plaza Mayor in Mexico City, and do it in a way that the filmmakers can blow it up.
To build this plaza, the production discovered an ideal place in the southern part of Mexico City. Executive Producer Callum Greene explains, "We found an abandoned four-story mall which became a perfect area for us. We built our construction, carpentry, metal work, and plastic shops in the abandoned mall. Next to it was a pit where we built our Plaza Mayor."
Moritz says, "In a city of 25 million people, it's hard to find any empty land, so I consider it fate that it worked out for us. We were able to build our plaza in a place where we had total security, total privacy, and even weather protection, because we were in the pit. We were able to go back to Salamanca and shoot certain scenes there; the two blended together seamlessly. You really can't tell what was shot in Spain and what was shot on our set."
It took ten weeks, working seven days each week, with over three hundred workers to construct the set. "On a film set, everything must be done faster than you ever thought you could achieve it," Broch says. "When you have a great crew, somehow, it all gets done -- and it comes out looking spectacular."
In the end, Moritz says, "our Plaza Mayor was a masterpiece. I couldn't be more impressed with the work that Brigitte and her team did on this movie."
Travis adds, "You could have brought people from Salamanca and they would have thought they were in Spain."
Whitaker says, "The plaza set really blew me away! When I first walked in, I had the little camera because I was playing with it, and that's when I was like `Wow, this is amazing!' It looks so rich and full-especially with people in it."
Broch says, "It's always a good compliment when people say, `I didn't know they did it on a set.' That's all one wants."
The key advantage to building your own set is that everyone is excited when it's time to blow it up. When the moment came, it was all hands on deck. Moritz sets the scene: "We had fifteen cameras filming the explosion, including three up close, with no operator. We had stuntmen moving with the explosion and extras ready to run. We wanted to give this moment of the film a very visceral feeling."
Because of the way the film was shot -- in a realistic, immediate manner -- Moritz felt that it was important that the actors playing Secret Service agents have background training. To accomplish this, the filmmakers brought on board Ron Blecker, who, while serving a 15-year Army career, trained real-life Secret Service agents in the art of protecting the president of the United States; in addition, as a soldier, Blecker himself served on two presidential details. "It was essential that Dennis, Matthew, and the rest of the actors playing Secret Service agents, including the background actors, knew how real agents protect the president," says Moritz. "What really impressed me about Ron's suggestions was that not only were they realistic, but they usually also made the scene more dramatic and more exciting."
Both before production and on set, Blecker advised Travis and Levy on the ins and outs of the Secret Service -- tricks of the trade that came his way after years of Special Operations training. For example, Blecker notes, "Dennis Quaid's character reacts to a guy in the crowd that pulls a camera. The initial reaction by the other agents was to pull a gun, but that's not right. In fact, for the people closest to the president, their job is to blanket the president with their bodies. Pete was very interested in making those kinds of changes, to make the Secret Service scenes as realistic as possible."
Three weeks before the start of production, Blecker arrived in Mexico. His first order of business was to find 35 background actors to be Secret Service agents. "The casting department located 3,000 people, and I met and talked to every single one. We eventually got our list down to 60, and those 60 came in and did some basic maneuvers, training, and weapon familiarization. From there, Pete and I picked the 35 background actors."
Then, one week out from production, Blecker began training the actors. "The first thing we did was weapon familiarization," he says. "Most of the actors had handled guns in movies before, but Secret Service does things just a little differently, so I taught them how to pull and aim their weapons and move with a gun.
"Then, we went through movement tactics," Blecker continues. "We brought in hundreds of extras. We showed them how to move through the crowd, how different formations worked, what each person's responsibility would be, what they had to look for. Then we went through drills -- somebody would come at the president with a gun, then with a knife, then an emergency call would come in on the radio -- and got them trained on how to work as a team."
On the final day of training, Blecker introduced the team to his most difficult training assignment, the "Rescue Dean" exercise. "I've got a 175-pound duffle bag with a padlock on it and no handles. This bag represents `Dean,' the president's son, who has been kidnapped. I hid the bag at the studio and handed the actors a ransom note. They had a certain amount of time to find `Dean' and return him to me, a mile away. There was a whole scenario -- I made it as difficult as possible, because it's this kind of training that gets people who don't know each other very well to gel as a team. As cliché as it sounds, it was Dennis Quaid who delivered that 175-pound duffle bag across the finish line at the very end. You couldn't have scripted it any better.
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