The Warner Bros. VIP Tour
Historic Hollywood Trip 2008
Click Here to learn the history of the HOLLYWOOD Sign
The first stop on our tour was the Le Brea Tar Pits
Next Stop was the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles
Finally....we made it to Hollywood!
The Warner Bros. VIP Tour
Jen and Mel visit Bugs right before embarking on a two hour tour of the backlot of Warner bros. This was a fun experience.
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Jennifer and Melissa discovered that they both loved Daffy duck.
Television's "ER"
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(far left) The ambulance entrance to ER. (center) The famous entrance. The basketball hoop in the back right corner of the image was George Clooney's idea. He felt that doctors needed a way to relax and so they wrote the basketball scenes into the scripts....but the actors use this more for their recreation between scenes than it actually appears in episodes of ER. (right) The mechanic of making rain.
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(left) The curtain at the top of this building is solid black and has small holes in it. They pull this curtain when they want to simulate night. (center) Looking back toward Chicago. (right) The waiting room of the ER. The candy machine and the drink machine are. literally, cardboard boxes covered with large digital pictures. With HD television they have to use this technique so that it looks real on your tv screen. When you see a patient talking to someone at the window...the beds and hospital behind the person is also a gigantic digital picture. We were told that they can create pictures in 160" x 380" prints. This was really interesting for those interested in the way in which television technology works today due to the HD formatting changes taking place.
The Jungle.....?
This is where they filmed "Free Willy" It is as small as it appears to be. They used giant green screens and did CG work in post production. This empty pond was about the size of MARK 101. Seeing this made me want to see the movie again.
This is also where George Clooney saved the young boy from drowning when the child became trapped in the storm drain.
The Warner Bros. Water Tank
The most famous water tower in the United States. It belongs to the city and Warner Bros. is not allowed to do anything to it, other than maintain it, without the city's permission.
The "Friends" Sets
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(left) the famous "Friends" couch. This is a very worn out sofa. (center) It seemed crowded here, but then I remembered that the camera messes with our depth perception when viewing television. Things look more spacious when the camera captures the image. (right) The coffee menu board.
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(left) Central Park. This is where Pheobe and Rachel went running in the park (the episode where Rachel is embarrassed to be seen running with Pheobe). This patch of grass is so small, but that goes to the point that the camera makes space appear larger when on your screen. (right) this is the patch of grass where all of the football games that were played in Thanksgiving episodes and the Rugby match that Ross played in that to impress Emily.
These are the stairs from the flashback episode where Ross was going to take Rachel to the prom when her date couldn't go...only to have his heart broken when rachel's date showed up after all.
New York Warner Bros. Style
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(left) Warner Bros. version of New York City street. (right) imagine Spiderman hanging upside down and kissing Mary Jane. This is where it happened. Toby had to hang there for three hours to get that one shot. Also, he had to use nose plugs to keep the rain water from drowning him. He had nose bleeds and everything. Who said acting is an over paid profession?
Harry Potter was the featured Movie on the VIP tour
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Jen was so excited to get to see Harry Potter movie items. In the center picture, Jen was really looking in that car as if she was thinking of buying it. She was so happy about it all that I thought I would take her picture by the car. We were not allowed to take pictures at the museum, but the entire top floor was wonderful Harry Potter items. They had wax figures that looked so real it was eerie.
Pepé Le Pew
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These two definately need to get a room!
Pepé Le Pew is an Academy Award-winning fictional character in the Warner Bros. Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of cartoons. A French anthropomorphic skunk that always strolls around in Paris in the springtime, when everyone's thoughts are of love, Pepé is constantly seeking "l'amour" of his own. However, he has two huge turnoffs to any prospective mates: his malodorous scent and the fact that he comes on too aggressively or with too much passion, to both of which he is cheerfully oblivious. From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pepe_LePew
The Exterior of Homes from Favorite Television Shows
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(left) This is the exteriior shot of "Sara Conner: Terminator Chronicles" (center) This is the exterior of the Seaver home from "Growing Pains" (right) The steeple church in the left background was the church in the television series "the Waltons" and on the back side of this church was the local store. There have been many movies and television shows filmed in this area. Too many to mention.
Hollywood Blvd.
Musso and Franks Grill is Hollywood’s oldest restaurant, having opened in 1919. While the building has been modernized, the restaurant continues to attract Hollywood luminaries and visitors from around the world.
To learn and see more about this historic landmark at: http://www.latimemachines.com/new_page_6.htm
El Capitan Theater
The El Capitan Theatre debuted on May 3, 1926, as "Hollywood's First Home of Spoken Drama." That evening, limousines pulled up before the theatre's elaborate cast-concrete Spanish Colonial exterior (designed by architectural firm Morgan, Walls, and Clements) and deposited Hollywood royalty, who were attending the play "Charlot's Revue," starring Jack Buchanan, Gertrude Lawrence, and Beatrice Lillie. Inside, the audience enjoyed one of the most colorful and lavish interiors they had ever seen, featuring an elaborate $1.2-million East Indian design, created by San Francisco architect G. Albert Lansburgh.
Click Here for the history of this theater. Listed here is just a bit of the information, taken from the link provided, to give you a basic idea of the history of this Hollywood landmark.
The Kodak Theater
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The Kodak Thetaer is the location of the Academy Awards. (right) these are the stairs that take the stars into the theater. Jen is hoping our Harriet jacobs Documentary will win the Best Documentary Oscar this year...Oh, wait! That would have been last year! if we win, we promise to tell a story from history.
Eating can be historical too!
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They even advertise in the bathrooms in Hollywood. I wonder how much ad space costs in there?
Jimmy Kimmel LIVE
We were not interested in any of the "celebrity guests" when we walked by so we continued walking to find a bookstore. jen found a mint condition copy of Mae West: An Icon in Black and White for the original selling price of $35 as opposed to buying it used online for over $100 dollars.....not that it would not be worth that amount of money, but Jen is still a starving college student.
