As much of Neighbors takes place between Mac and Kelly’s house and the Delta Psi Beta fraternity, the production team was tasked with finding two homes side by side that could accommodate the production. The perfect pair of houses was found in the historic West Adams district of Los Angeles, which became the production’s home base for the majority of the shoot. And once the location was settled on, the real fun began: creating the frat house environment, and, more importantly, dressing the stage for each of the epic parties featured in the film.
Production designer Julie Berghoff and her team began researching fraternity life in the simplest manner possible. “I literally Googled ‘stupid college pranks’ and ‘outrageous parties’ and a bunch of great images came up,” she says. “We researched for hours and looked and presented ideas to the director, Nick, who was so open to hearing ideas like a black-light party or duct-taping someone to the wall.
“We had a blast with the black-light party and wanted to create the craziest party we could. We wallpapered the inside of the house with black-light fabric and peppered all these various elements of white and contrast throughout. We had black-light streamers, balloons, bubbles, glasses; it was endless.”
However, filming the party scenes was not always as fun as it looks onscreen. “Shooting party scenes is actually a little unpleasant,” concludes Rogen. “The black lights at the party were eventually nauseating and we were covered in toxic bubbles. At the hot-house party everyone kept warning us not to look directly at the lasers because we’d be blind from the military-grade lasers that were everywhere.”
Neighbors is available beginning Sept. 23 on Video On Demand. Check your cable system for availability.
© 2014 Universal Pictures Credit: Glen Wilson