“Any time the surroundings represent the real story, it’s going to help you as an actor,” Thornton states about filming on the actual location where Bissinger’s story is set. “It puts you in a different frame of mind. In the case of Friday Night Lights, we shot part of the movie where the story actually took place, out in Odessa, Texas. When you’re around the people who were actually there when this happened, it gives you a certain sense of nostalgia and an emotion that maybe you wouldn’t have if you were shooting someplace else.”
Adds director Berg, “It was really important for us to come shoot in Odessa. It made production a bit more challenging, but it’s so unique. It’s so wide open and, I think, really quite beautiful. It was very important for us to get that look of the town on camera. I knew we had to film at Ratliff once I came down and watched my first Permian game. There was magic in the air.”
Before Berg led his production team to the flatlands and oil fields of West Texas, Austin, Texas’ capital city, figured prominently in the first half of the film’s shooting schedule. Friday Night Lights shot in a variety of locales around Austin (including interiors at William B. Travis High School, doubling for the halls of Permian High, and Burger Stadium, briefly standing in for Ratliff) during the first five weeks of production before heading out to the windswept landscape of the Permian basin.
While much of the production filmed on actual, practical locations in each of the three Texas cities (Austin, Odessa, Houston) chosen for the project, seasoned production designer Sharon Seymour did construct one key set for the movie—the Permian locker room, which Seymour designed and built inside the basement of the Palmer Auditorium, Austin’s shuttered downtown concert arena.
Seymour also collaborated with veteran set decorator Carla Curry to dress another locker room in Midland (Odessa’s twin city, 20 miles east on Rt. 20) to double for locker rooms in the Houston Astrodome, where Berg staged the film’s climactic state championship game (the ‘Dome’s locker rooms were deemed unsuitable for filming). Allan Graf, one of Hollywood’s premiere second-unit directors and stunt coordinators, set up shop in yet another locker room in Austin (St. Stephen’s Academy) to begin his football training program for Berg’s sports drama. In addition to designing the football plays for the film, the former U.S.C. offensive lineman was also responsible for drafting the 40-man squad to fill out the ranks of Permian’s team (beyond Berg’s principal cast), as well as those of the rival schools in the script.
Graf is one of U.S.C.’s gridiron greats from their phenomenal 1972 NCAA national title team, which enjoyed an undefeated season culminating in their climactic win over Ohio State in the Rose Bowl. He is also one of Hollywood’s best known pigskin “choreographers,” designing and staging the football action for such films as Oliver Stone’s Any Given Sunday, Howard Deutch’s The Replacements, The Program, The Waterboy, Necessary Roughness, the recent Cheer Up and Cameron Crowe’s Oscar®-nominated Jerry Maguire.
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