To see the previous posts from this cross-country trip, click here Land Trips | Cruising “C Ghost”
We spent a good part of the day today taking the behind-the-scenes tour of the Warner Brothers Burbank Movie/TV studios. It was only a half mile from our hotel – a nice and easy 10 minute walk.
After a short introductory film, we got in an open-air shuttle and were taken to the lots where hundreds of iconic movies and TV series were made. As we walked down the streets in the lot, you would swear you were in a real town.
The building facades were not real brick or stone. They were either wood or fiberglass made to look just like the real thing. This way it was easy to convert a New York city street into a Chicago city street when one production ended and another began.
The buildings that did have interiors had only a ground floor, despite what it looks like from the outside. The upper areas inside these buildings were used to hang lighting and other tools of the trade for filming on the ground level.
We also got to tour one of the many soundstages where most inside scenes are shot (no cameras allowed). It is amazing to see the enormity of work that goes into one of these productions.
Lastly, we went through a museum of sorts having a large collection of movie memorabilia from some of the more famous movies made by Warner Brothers.
Tom signed up for a “green screen” session to see what it’s like for the actors when doing dangerous high-speed action sequences.
They had a large exhibit for Harry Potter and Fantastic Beasts. These were not just mock-ups but the original sets.
At the end of the tour, they let you hold an actual Academy Award statue.
Later in the afternoon, Tom took a drive out to the famous Hollywood sign to get a good picture (featured pic for this post).
Tomorrow we leave on our last leg of this outbound journey. We should arrive in Folsom California sometime in the mid-afternoon where we will be staying (at Kyle and Glennis’s place) until Monday morning. Then we will make the relatively short drive to Lake Tahoe and check-in for the summer. We will post weekly from there just like we did last summer.