Kriti Mehrotra
The addition of crime and suspense to a character’s otherwise mundane life and the presence of a few red herrings has always attracted audiences, which is why mystery drama is such an evergreen genre. With the kind of viewership that shows like ‘Riverdale’ and ‘Stranger Things’ has managed to garner, it is only natural for streaming services to try and come out with unique stories in the same genre to get audiences’ attention and appreciation.
Launched by Apple TV+, Home Before Dark is inspired by the real work of underage reporter Hilde Lysiak and follows a fourth-grader journalist, Hilde Lisko, as she moves from Brooklyn to a small lakeside town and subsequently tries to uncover the truth behind a cold case that everybody in town is trying to keep a secret.
Even though the show is a mystery drama, the juxtaposition between the innocent face of Brooklynn Prince (‘The Florida Project’) who plays the protagonist, and the dark themes of the show surrounding the small town makes ‘Home Before Dark’ a bit scarier and creepier than initially expected.
Home Before Dark Filming Locations
Created by Dana Fox and Dara Resnik, ‘Home Before Dark’ — even though heavily inspired by real-life events — is a work of fiction. A bit like ‘Nancy Drew’ or ‘Veronica Mars’, Hilde Lisko is a self-publishing 9-year-old investigative reporter who is trying to dig for clues to solve an old case in the small town that her father left behind. As the series progresses, Hilde and her friends cause havoc by riding their bikes and putting themselves in dangerous situations just to satisfy their need for answers.
Since ‘Home Before Dark’ is a mystery set on a small lake, it needed to be filmed somewhere calm and serene but that could look eerily empty and unpopulated when necessary. Due to the series’ premise, the visual representation’s perfect mix of bright and dark scenes and utilization of space are significant.
Although the area of filming is necessary to the plot-line of any series, more often than not, it is not actually filmed in the location of its setting. Similarly, even though ‘Home Before Dark’ is set in a small American town in the state of Washington, it’s filming location was Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
Vancouver, Canada
The filming of ‘Home Before Dark’ has taken place in Vancouver, Canada. While the actual locations of filming are unknown, there is no doubt as to why the production team chose Vancouver to be their set. The show was filmed from January to April 2019 in the city.
Filled with every aspect of nature, from mountain ranges to beaches to forests, Vancouver is easily one of the few cities where every genre, set anywhere, can be filmed. Not only is it accessible to the big production houses in the US, Vancouver also has an abundance of film-minded people eager to provide a helping hand and be a part of the crew.
After picking a serene yet relatively low populated area near a water body with lighting for effects, it would have been quite effortless for Vancouver to be depicted as the small lake town in Pennsylvania. In fact, a lot of shows and movies that are set in the USA like ‘Supernatural‘, ‘Riverdale’, and ‘Midnight Mass’ or ‘50 Shades of Grey‘, ‘Tomorrowland’, and ‘2012’ are all shot in Vancouver.
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