While Mr. T and I had the pleasure of watching The Orlando Magic of do this to The LA Lakers:
Grandma, The Writer and Sammy hit The Maven's new place of employment and saw the movie, "Argo" on the house!
We had already seen the movie and the tickets to the game were my bday present to Mr. Tennis. Double the fun because our old home town did us proud. Perhaps triple the pleasure (for some of us) because the handsome Mr. Beckham was in attendance and they flashed his pretty face on the massive jumbo tron:
Jack was somewhere down in the floor seats, but we were up in the rafters and forgot to bring binoculars, so he was safe from our prying eyes.
I think Orlando Grandma got bit by the movie bug because she chose to spend her last day in LA touring The Warner Brothers' studios where we had watched a taping of "Two and a Half Men" the Friday before. We certainly had fun at that taping and it continued for this excellent tour.
****Long post alert!****
I will never know it if you scroll in a liberal fashion, so go ahead if this isn't your thing.
(Or will I? )
We were in a twelve-seater golf-cart-like contraption and had strict instructions about where and when we could take pictures, so my photos are somewhat limited, but I can fill in the blanks with my words.
"Mike and Molly" now film on the "Friends" soundstage, and we passed by
Conan O'Brien's hangout.
Tour starts out in the backlot which looks like "Smalltown" USA. Current productions filming here are: Hart of Dixie (using most of the outdoor portions of the town square), Big Bang Theory, Two and a Half Men, Mike and Molly, Dirty Little Liars, The Mindy Project, and that's where my memory stops.
Apparently this building front was used a lot in "The Dukes of Hazzard"
Current Feature film using sound stage and some outdoor areas, Hangover 3.
A poor picture, but they are re-creating the outside of Caesar's Palace in this sound stage.
This store front was originally built for "Casablanca" and was the Paris apartment used by Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman's characters.
We got a brief glimpse into the massive prop house at the studio which houses a permanent scene from "Friends", the studio's largest money making sitcom to date. In syndication it is still their biggest earning television production.
We came upon some blood on the floor....
That our tour guide quickly picked up.
And Grandma met an old friend.
There was a whole wall of Presidential and state seals used in various productions and many had "hold" tags for different shows who claimed them for use.
The prop house is four stories high and is one of the largest in Los Angeles. Warner Brothers' makes a good bit of money renting out various props, and their sound stages and back lot, to other studio productions so there was a lot of activity while we were there.
There is a small vehicle museum where pictures were allowed and I snapped a few.
Orange car in the background is from "Dukes of Hazzard"
And for us Big Bang fans, the capsule that "Howard" spent time in, in space.
Other non-picture visits were to a working sound stage where "Dirty Little Liars", an ABC Family production, although on hiatus, was still set up from their last shoot. During this portion of the tour, we learned how massive the lighting system is and how the camera easily fools us as far as how big the set is and how authentic things can look. To save space on the tight sets of hour-long dramas, only one camera is used therefore stretching the production time for a one hour show out to up to eight, 10-12 hour days. A half-hour sitcom, in comparison, is often shot before a live audience and uses multiple cameras on more open sets and filming is completed, in our case at Friday's taping, in four and half hours.
Our last stop on the tour is the one I wish I had pictures of as it was the costume museum. They had many historical costumes such as Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman's outfits from Casablanca and several Clint Eastwood outfits starting with his old westerns, "Dirty Harry" up to his most recent in "Trouble with the Curve".
Bette Davis and Joan Crawford's costumes from "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane" were spooky to look at and we got a kick out of seeing current movies represented including the costumes for the cast of "Argo" which Orl Gma had just seen the night before. Most interesting is how petite many of the actors really are, or at least their clothes seem to be - and I'm not just talking about the women actors!
Part of the magic of film.
The whole second floor was taken up with "Harry Potter" costumes and props. I never even made it up there!
Warner Brothers' number one rated TV show was represented right up front with the zany outfits from the boys (and girl) on The Big Bang Theory.
A wonderful history of the studio is also documented with various pictures, ledgers, contracts, scripts, etc.
It was a great wrap up to Grandma's visit and a treat for me too since I am such a movie hound.
Have a great week! I will be getting ready for the holidays in the next few weeks - a little later than most of my blogging friends, but I'm getting closer to being finished!
How about you?
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