The city of New York is an uncredited character in The Forgotten. Production began in the fall in Brooklyn, in the recently gentrified neighborhood known locally as "Dumbo" (Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass) — which is in fact between the Manhattan and Brooklyn Bridges. The area provided the exteriors for Ash Correll's (Dominic West) apartment and that of several scenes built around a car and foot chase undertaken as Ash and Telly Paretta (Julianne Moore) flee the police. Overall, the film shot in numerous areas of Brooklyn and Manhattan as well as select locations in the Bronx and Queens. Other Brooklyn locations included townhouses in Brooklyn Heights and the western edge of Prospect Park.

The production spent several days in the Wall Street area of Manhattan at Chase Manhattan Plaza with its huge and distinctive Jean Dubuffet sculpture, "Group of Four Trees." A scene that finds Telly in the Brooklyn Public Library was shot at the General Society Library on 44th Street in Manhattan, which is the second oldest continuously operating library in New York City, and one of only three private libraries left in Manhattan. Built in the 1890s, the library is an integral part of the General Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen of the City of New York.

There were also a few locations outside of New York City, including Harriman State Park in Rockland County, Westchester Airport in White Plains and two Long Island locations -- a beach house in Hampton Bays and the dunes at Caumsett State Historic Park in Huntington.

Interiors were shot at the decommissioned Military Ocean Terminal in Bayonne, New Jersey, where numerous sets were built, including the inside of Ash's apartment, a cottage, Dr. Munce's house, a motel room, police headquarters, an airline office, the upstairs of Telly's townhouse and a huge neglected hangar where the dramatic climax of the film takes place.

"Manhattan is a sort of ominous thing looking over the shoulder of Brooklyn, and it's a character in this movie,' says producer Dan Jinks. "That's very much the kind of mood Joe Ruben was going for. In addition, we shot in the fall and winter when it's bleak, cold, and scary looking, especially in Brooklyn."

Producer Bruce Cohen concurs. "It was such a thrill for us to be shooting in New York. Unfortunately, over the years so many productions have gone to places like Canada, Australia, and even North Carolina for financial reasons. But in doing so, you lose the tangible atmosphere that only New York City can give you. The feeling that shooting in New York gives to the film adds to it immeasurably."

Julianne Moore, who lives in New York City, was also a factor in the decision to shoot the film locally. "I live here, my children are in school here, and I did not want to go away," she says. "But It was also important because the city is almost a character in the movie. I like the huge urban presence. It adds colors to the story."

Linus Roache was also happy to be filming in New York. "Every American project I've done ended up shooting in Canada. So to actually shoot on American soil is fantastic, and New York is my favorite city in the world, so I loved it. I like the whole New York vibe — always have. Just being with a New York crew is really a lot of fun. There's a great energy."

Of course, shooting in New York meant having to factor its unpredictable weather into the equation. Nicolaides says, "The biggest challenge making the film was that the director and the head of the studio both wanted the movie to have a cold, winter look. We started at the end of October, a very volatile time of year weather-wise, since we're going from fall into winter, yet the story takes place over the course of only two weeks. Therefore, what you start shooting in October, you'll have to watch when you're still shooting in January. The weather changes drastically from October to January in New York. That's the hardest part of shooting here."

The "Dumbo" neighborhood was ideally suited to the look and tenor of The Forgotten, according to director Ruben. "We wanted to pick locations that had a slightly 'off' quality. 'Dumbo' was perfect because parts of the area are very desolate. All the varying shapes of the bridges and highways brought a dreamlike — and at times nightmarish — mood to the film. The street where Telly lives is basically an idyllic beautiful block, but it has that highway right behind it. So right from the beginning there's a tension between those two locations. We chose Brooklyn partly because it's less familiar, though Manhattan is close by, so you know exactly where you are."

In planning out his approach to the film, Ruben drew up a set of visual rules and he and director of photography Anastas Michos largely adhered to them throughout. "I wanted it to be kind of cold, bleak and beautiful in general with warm light mainly when you're in the kids' rooms," he says. "We used long lenses to give a feeling of paranoia and being watched, and very wide lenses to give a slightly distorted view of that world. We also had a couple of rules concerning color. The first was basically to keep it out of the movie except when showing the children. There was no red in the movie except for Julianne's hair, so she would pop whenever she was on screen — which she does anyway."

Adds Michos, "The visual style is basically realistic. Although we wanted the film to have a perspective — the sensation of being watched — we never deviated wildly from the feeling of heightened reality. I used a film stock I thought would give me the best latitude. I wanted to do a digital intermediate from the beginning, and our producers were very supportive. As far as lenses go, we used a standard Panavision Primo package but we pretty much stayed on the long end of the range. A 75mm lens was used for a lot of the master shots, and once we retreated way back and shot the master with a 300mm lens."

Production designer Bill Groom was glad to be shooting in Brooklyn since he's lived there for almost 20 years. "When I read the script it felt like Brooklyn to me," says Groom, who has worked on all of Ruben's films for the past decade. "We split this movie into two looks — the memory look, and the present-day. My feeling was always that given Telly's emotional stress, her memories were more real to her, more vivid, than the present, because in the present she's lost in the search for a child no one believes she ever had. Thus, her memories are in some ways the most concrete and the most real to her. Anastas also felt that the memory portions of the movie should be vivid and more colorful than the present- day scenes, which are mostly cast in fairly somber colors — not monochromatic, but very muted and much less intense than the colors in the memories."

"I think this is a unique movie in that the locations we used in Brooklyn are presented as they actually are," Groom continues. "This is the Brooklyn that people actually live in and that has charming, beautiful architecture. Brooklyn Heights has the largest collection of intact pre-Civil War houses of any neighborhood in the United States. It was one of the first landmark neighborhoods in the country. There is a whole middle to upper middle class world that exists in Brooklyn that most people — even New Yorkers — don't know about. For a long time, Brooklyn was a well-kept secret and the people who lived there were happy that the rest of the country, including other New Yorkers knew nothing about it. It was like a retreat from the city, but close enough that you could walk to Manhattan across the Brooklyn Bridge. It's a really interesting part of the city and this movie presents it as it really is."