Kriti Mehrotra
Netflix’s newest reality game show ‘Floor is Lava’ takes an amazingly classic childhood game and turns it into a competition for a $10,000 grand prize and bragging rights. Instead of hopping around from one piece of furniture to another at home imagining that the solid ground below is a deathly liquid of boiling lava, the Netflix series asks teams of three to navigate obstacle courses set up in the “rooms” of a “house” to get from one side of it to the other. Threatening them everywhere they look? A pool of bright red liquid, or “lava.” If a contestant falls in, they’re done for.
The reality competition series is as silly as it is fun, and to be honest, it’s more slapstick than it is strategy. In each episode, three teams tackle the same course, so it can get old a little quickly, and thus, the entertainment factor relies completely upon how effective or ineffective the teams are in completing the course. Mostly, it’s a lot of screaming, but it’s still entertaining.
The one thing that is quite annoying, though, is the over-explanatory narration. It’s as if the reality series has just come back from a commercial break. You don’t have to repeat everything. Yes, we know someone just fell into the lava. Yes, we know that they hit themselves. How? Because we saw it all happen! The extra recaps of the same scene from different angles don’t really help much, either.
Floor is Lava Filming Location
‘Floor is Lava’ takes place in a single soundstage room, with the obstacle courses being redecorated and reset after every team completes the level and after every episode. It is filled with hot orange liquid, and a few stepping stones of various sorts are dotted with them all. Some of the elements in the small space can even be manipulated to change the whole landscape and help you can complete the obstacle course.
All three levels of it are shot in the same soundstage – presumably in one of Netflix’s production hubs that are all throughout Los Angeles – which has been dressed slightly differently for each level – The Basement, The Bedroom, and The Planetarium. While the settings are different, the sizes of the room, the camera placements, the entry and exit points, and the lava itself makes it abundantly clear that it’s all done in one single location.
In addition to the hundreds of thousands of square feet of “production hubs” throughout Los Angeles, Netflix Studios has soundstage spaces in New York City, Toronto, Madrid, and even New Mexico. But, since Los Angeles is the center of all things Hollywood and because nothing else is specified by the show’s producers, we think it’s safe to assume that ‘Floor is Lava’ has been shot in the Hollywood Studios of Netflix.
Read More: Will There be a Floor is Lava Season 2
