... a Chicago suburb ...

Sony Pictures Television
There are eight drunken Phillies and Bears fans off-screen in those respective shots.

... and Hanover, Germany.

Sony Pictures Television

Those are all a short hop from our studio, but they look like completely different cities. That wasn't easy -- Albuquerque largely lacks dirty alleys like the one above because of the way it's laid out, so you have to find the one special one and make it count.

Sometimes, you have to give your location a little help. I scouted for another show which was filmed in Albuquerque but set in Palm Springs, and every scene required palm trees in the background, lest viewers forget where the characters were. ABQ isn't exactly overflowing with palms, so we had to lug huge trees around with us from set to set.

But it's trains that are my true nemesis. Remember the big train robbery in season five of Breaking Bad? There's one privately-owned stretch of rail near Albuquerque. Only one. When I showed the location to the show's creator, Vince Gilligan, he asked to see others. My response was "How can we make this work?" Luckily, he loved it and pitched us the whole heist while we were there scouting it, even before he wrote it.

Obviously that scene worked out, but sometimes they don't, which is why Breaking Bad didn't end with its planned showdown on a secret Nazi moon base. In another, 100 percent less made up example, a movie I worked on wanted a stand-in for the Garden of Eden in the middle of an Albuquerque winter. I did what I could, but they had to shoot elsewhere when the desert decided to snow.

On the other end of the difficulty scale, the car wash from Breaking Bad is in the neighborhood where I grew up. So to any aspiring location scouts reading this: Always take a moment to consider if your local mall would look good hosting a dramatic conversation or a high-stakes shootout.

Sony Pictures Television
Or even a zombie apocalypse.

We ran into the same problem when trying to shoot the final meeting between Walt and Lydia, the corrupt businesswoman helping him move his meth. We wanted it to be in a Starbucks, which would have fit Lydia's personality, but they turned us down, because for some reason they frown on making it look like Starbucks is a really easy place to slip someone poison. We ended up in a local place with a Starbucks vibe called The Grove.

Sony Pictures Television
And now their ricin latte is more popular than ever.

Movies with more destruction than most wars, like Man Of Steel, can land major chains like IHOP because hey, it's a free reminder that IHOP exists and is an okay place to stop off at after a movie. But neo-Nazis, meth, and piles of dead bodies aren't the best subject matter for a lot of companies to associate with, no matter how popular the show. But come on, doesn't knowing that Walter White once ate at Denny's make you want to go there a little bit more?

But it's not only businesses who aren't crazy about getting into showbiz ...

Unfortunately, the name of the show also turned some people off. Many homeowners were okay with having a fake pest control company in their house, but as soon as I mentioned a drug lab, I was shown the door. Ultimately, Breaking Bad's popularity worked in our favor, but there were days when we'd scout entire neighborhoods and be told "no" by everyone the moment we mentioned meth. Finding someone to let us film Ted, Skylar's boss, having a near-fatal accident by slamming into a table was tricky too. I guess no one wants to be known as the owner of a house where you can accidentally cripple yourself.

We also lost houses when people who weren't familiar with the show agreed, only to later learn that it was about a violent meth kingpin. Churches were for some reason especially opposed to inviting us into their places of solemn worship to film profane conversations about drugs and violence. We couldn't even get a church parking lot for a planned scene where Hank and his police partner Gomez meet up to chat -- one agreed, then backed out a few days before shooting and sent us into a scramble for a non-denominational parking lot. So many churches said no to us that eventually we stopped asking.

And yes, all of this eventually has to get written into the show. In fact ...

When looking it over, some of the writers found an abandoned pit and just about lost their minds. Their original plan was for a captured Jesse Pinkman to get chained up in one of the buildings, but the writers giddily decided to stick Jesse in that pit to be tortured instead. It gave the bad guys more menace and cruelty than your standard thuggish neo-Nazis.

Sony Pictures Television
"So what was this pit originally used for?"
"You really don't want to know, Aaron."

I'm currently working on a Matthew McConaughey movie called Gold. The director wasn't thrilled with one of the locations we found, but then he spotted a woman tending her horses and it inspired him to add a completely new and important scene. And that's how a good location scout can turn a drama about searching for gold into an inspirational family horse-racing movie. Okay, not really, but I don't want to spoil the scene we did add.

Obviously, a location has to be secured, because that suicide scene would be a lot less dramatic if a couple of students looking to get high in a stall wandered into the background. But there are times when you can't get permission to, say, block off an entire section of highway because the highway patrol just knows that you only need, like, 45 seconds worth of footage. Budget's a factor too -- we can't afford to book an entire hotel simply because we want to shoot there. Big-budget movies can get around this by heading to an entirely different country. Skyfall, for example, kept losing out on pre-credits chase locations in South Africa and India before they finally settled on a backup site in Turkey. But in television I can't up and say, "Hey, what if we packed up and headed to Vermont?"

My absolute worst nightmare came true when we were preparing for Breaking Bad's fourth season. We spent a lot of time at Gus Fring's chicken farm in the third, and as it was a prominent business, we took it for granted that no one was going to abruptly demolish it. Spoiler alert: The owners decided to abruptly demolish it.

Sony Pictures Television
No warning. I thought we were hermanos.

I called them about securing a new contract, only to be informed that the buildings were being torn down the next day. We had huge plans for that farm, and we may never know how differently the show would've played out if the chicken business had been making them better money. Instead, I grabbed a producer, a cameraman, and some contracts that would allow us to shoot establishing shots. Then I convinced the demolition company to tear it down from a certain angle so that our crew and his crew could do their jobs simultaneously. We got what we needed for the first few episodes, then transferred all the farm equipment to another location.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why the part of this shot that's just out of frame is nothing but rubble:

Sony Pictures Television
And chicken corpses strewn as far as the eye can see.

Psst ... want to give us feedback on the super-secret beta launch of the upcoming Cracked spinoff site, Braindrop? Well, simply follow us behind this curtain. Or, you know, click here: Braindrop.

For more insider perspectives, check out 5 Surprising Things You Learn Designing Movie Monsters and 5 Reasons Doing Movie Stunts Is Harder Than You Think.

Subscribe to our YouTube channel, and check out 4 Simple Tasks That Are Way Easier Than They Look in Movies, and watch other videos you won't see on the site!

Also, follow us on Facebook. Or don't; we don't care. But please do! We really care!

Have a story to share with Cracked? Email us here.