It's a new trend in movie and TV production. These days, when scenes are shot in New York City, buildings, streets and neighborhoods often are made to look like someplace else -- Chicago, Arizona, even Iraq. NY1's Michael Scotto has the story in Part Four of his series, "Hollywood on the Hudson."

"The Good Wife" was set in Chicago, but outdoor scenes were shot in locations across the city, like outside the courthouse in Long Island City, Queens.

Many of the movies and TV shows filmed in the five boroughs are all New York, but locations across the city increasingly are being used as stand-ins for places across the U.S. and the world.

"We go to Staten Island and use it for Arizona or North Carolina," says Jonathan Starch, executive producer of "Law and Order: SVU."

NY1 followed a location scout for the CBS show "BrainDead," a new series set in Washington, D.C. but filmed here.

At the city's Emergency Management command center in Brooklyn, he took a series of photos. Later, the director will decide if the city offices can trick viewers into thinking they are inside FBI headquarters.  

"You can't see New York out the window. So you look for things that from out of the window, it just looks like the city," says Brooke Kennedy, executive producer of "BrainDead." 

New Yorkers think of the city as distinctive, but producers say there's an almost limitless number of locations that actually can look like someplace else.

60 Centre Street in lower Manhattan has been used in a number of productions set outside New York, like "The Good Wife." Fort Totten in Queens has been a stand-in for an American military base in Iraq.

The Bloomberg administration made it easier to shoot here by streamlining the permit process. Those permits cost just $300, $3,200 to use a city-owned building.  

Parking spaces and police assistance are thrown in for free.

"We're the only city that has a dedicated police unit for film and TV," says Julie Menin, commissioner of the Mayor's Office of Media and Entertainment.

Aside from such assistance, producers say the city offers something they can't find anywhere else outside of Hollywood, a point made at the recent Tony Awards, when a video bit by host James Corden showed a number of Broadway stars in the audeince and in roles they once had on "Law & Order," which is shot in New York. .

"We have the great advantage of having Broadway and off-Broadway as a great training ground for television actors," Starch says.

A deep bench of talent to go along with all those locations.