Christina Cominelli, who lives in Newburgh, is a location scout who most recently worked on The Four Seasons, a Netflix series starring Tina Fey and Steve Carell that was filmed in the Hudson Valley, including Beacon and Cold Spring.
How did you become a location scout?
I studied film at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. It took a long time to get my first job. I emailed tons of people while working at a coffee shop, and the first person to get back to me was an assistant location manager who helped me get my first job, as a location assistant. That was seven years ago. I worked on a bunch of jobs and eventually started scouting, which is what I had wanted to do.
Why did you move to Newburgh?
In 2019, I was living in Brooklyn when I got a job working on the HBO show I Know This Much Is True. The production was based in Poughkeepsie. If you live in New York City, production puts you up in hotels for the run of the show. Every job I’ve had since then has been based up here, so I was spending a lot of time living in hotels. Two years ago, I decided to move to Newburgh, and now I have a better sense of the neighborhoods and towns in the area, which is helpful when you need to find specific architecture or terrain.
What did you do with The Four Seasons?
A main location in the series is a lake house, so we spent a lot of time looking for that. I used Google Maps to look for lakes, then drove around and knocked on doors. [The series used a home in Putnam Valley.] Since the series takes place throughout the four seasons, you’re looking for things that look good in winter, spring, summer and fall. We had to find a ski slope, a college town and stores and businesses that look like they’d be in the town [in the series].
Google Earth is useful if you need something specific. For example, the lake house needed to have a lot of land. You also need to make sure it’s viable for production. I found a house on a hill that ran down to a lake, but you need to park trucks and equipment. That’s harder to spot if you’re driving around but easier to see on Google.
How do people react when you knock on their door and tell them you might want to film in their house?
They’re usually confused, or they think I’m selling something. Once you tell them the stars who are in the movie, people get excited. It’s interesting because I get to meet people that I wouldn’t usually come across.
What’s the hardest part of the job?
Driving around and trying to find the exact locations that the director wants can be tricky, but the hardest part is when you find the perfect location and things don’t work out. We were supposed to film at a school, for example, and it was just a reshoot, so it was all last minute. They wanted to shoot during a school day, which is pretty much impossible. Someone may say yes, but then the superintendent says no. You have to make sure you’re talking to the right people. That’s called “clearing the location.” It might work for what the film needs if you could film there, but to clear it, you need to jump through the hoops of getting the approvals and permits.
