Friday Night Lights is a sports drama based on the true events surrounding an Odessa, Texas, football club. It centers on the Permian Panthers football team and is set in 1988. We get a look into the players’ and their coach’s lives as they get ready to compete in the state championship. It has a strong emotional element that pays off towards the conclusion when the story reaches an explosive ending. The location also plays a significant role in it. Here are the locations where “Friday Night Lights” was filmed.
The widely praised network drama “Friday Night Lights” shows both the East Dillon Lions and the Dillon Panthers as the teams try to compete to be the nation’s greatest high school football team. The main characters of the show are Coach Eric Taylor, his wife Tami Taylor, a guidance counselor at Dillon High School, and their teenage daughter Julie. The series, which spans over 5 seasons, explores a variety of storylines, including quarterback Jason Street suffering a spinal injury during a game that terminates his football career. Lyla Garrity, who leads the Panthers cheerleaders, then deals with Street’s injury while simultaneously managing her relationship with him and much more.
Friday Night Lights Filming Locations
‘Friday Night Lights follows the narrative of a football team that influences the lives of its players along with their coach in the journey of a championship game. The place the team is from plays a significant role in the story since it has a big impact on the players. The players struggle early on in the show to live up to the enormous expectations of their hometowns and to respect the heritage of the victories that came before them. The filmmakers looked to Texas and found multiple locations throughout several cities to connect the story together in order to imagine the town in a way that generated all these emotions and more.
Houston and Austin, Texas
The tale of the show Friday Night Lights is set in Odessa, Texas. While the crew visited a number of other Texas places, Odessa was also sought out for the filming of some important moments. However, for the most part, the filmmakers combined many locations to give it the authentic feel of Odessa. The most significant setting in the series is Permian High School since it is where the lives of the football team’s coach and players change. The crew headed towards Westlake High School, located at 4100 Westbank Drive in Austin, to film the school scenes. William B. Travis High School also served as the backdrop for a few inside scenes.
For the shooting of the football matches, different locations were used. Abilene served as the location for the scenes shot at Shotwell Stadium. Additionally, a football game was filmed at the Houston Astrodome (8400 Kirby Drive). Burger Stadium was the location for a few Ratliff scenes. Additionally, the cast filmed numerous sequences at Austin Studios, located at 1901 E. 51st Street. The show includes scenes filmed in Taylor, Elgin, and Manhattan, all in Kansas.
Although most of the sequences were shot on location, a few were also shot on specially designed sets. For instance, the scenes that took place in the high school’s locker room were shot on a set that was constructed in the Palmer Auditorium’s basement in Austin. In Midland, a different set that replicated the Astrodome’s locker rooms was constructed. Austin built a second set that was similar. These places worked together to provide a complete overview of the football team’s history.
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Other Texas Locations
As luck would have it, the mascot of Pflugerville High School is also a panther; therefore, nothing needed to be changed in the production for filming. Fans of the series can still go to Kuempel Field for a Friday football game and take pictures in front of the “Home of the Fighting Panthers” sign, despite the fact that this field was only featured in the series pilot. Near the Austin Bergstrom International Airport, the Practice Field and Panther Field House were both filmed in the previous Del Valle High School athletic facility. The majority of the series’ filming took place mostly in these two locations.
The Baker Center, a former high school that is now the Alamo Drafthouse offices, served as the location for the filming of East Dillon High School. The location has also served as a high school in the “Walker” television series. Brian “Smash” Williams and Matt Saracen both worked at the Alamo Freeze, a neighborhood Dairy Queen on Manor Road. A signed “Friday Night Lights” poster honoring the show is still available here for fans. This site was also used in the Spike Jonze-directed music video for the Arcade Fire song “The Suburbs.”
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