Maine Medical Center Appears in ABC’s Political Drama ‘Designated Survivor’

If you saw the return of ABC's "Designated Survivor" starring Kiefer Sutherland this past week, you may have noticed a familiar looking building in Maine in an establishing shot.

We'll try to keep this as spoiler-free as we can since this episode resolved a mid-season cliffhanger, but an exterior shot for a scene taking place at George Washington University Hospital in Washington D.C. was actually an aerial shot of Maine Medical Center in Portland.

You can clearly see Maine Med and all its surrounding landmarks, including Hadlock Field, The Expo, I-295 and Union Station Plaza.

Production companies will typically purchase stock footage to use in shots between scenes as establishing shots. The scene was switching to a hospital room, so ABC Studios bought stock footage available of Maine Medical Center to use in the show which cost them as much as $750 for a total of about 2 seconds on screen. How do we know how much it costs? We found the stock footage they used online. 

How awesome is that?

You can see the clip of Maine Medical Center on Designated Survivor on Hulu at about the 7:30 minute mark, but you'll need a subscription to Hulu.