Fun times at the old WB

This morning I woke up and headed to Warner Bro. I had a tour spot for 9:30 to get a fancy tour of the WB lot. The tour was 2:15 and cost $32. When I got there I saw a sign that said, "Do you have more time to spare and REALLY like movies and TV? If you do, sign up for our 5 hour tour - only $95!" Okay, that's like going to the store to buy a movie and discovering the super duper tricked out special edition is also on sale. How could you possibly buy the regular version of the movie when you know there's a super awesome version out there? I signed up for the 5 hour tour which started at 10:30.

We gathered in the VIP Tour Room, a small area with a store and costumes from a few movies and TV shows. I met Jenny and Chuck while waiting for the tour to start. They also had a couple of The Hollywood Reporter that my article was in, so it was neat to see it in print. There were 10 of us total, with Janice as our tour guide. We headed out the doors and onto the cart thing to take us around.

Not 10 feet from where we started I spotted John Wells. You might not recognize his name, but I'm sure you'll know his work. Wells was/is the executive producer on: ER,The West Wing, Third Watch, Citizen Baines and Presidio Med. You might wonder how I know who he is; I saw him on the bonus material on the ER season 1 DVD set. Janis took us to the Warner Bros museum where they have some props and costumes from shows and movies on the main level, and the entire upstairs is filled with Harry Potter material. The "highlight" of the Harry Potter section was the sorting hat. A security guard would have you sit in the chair and he'd place the hat on your head; a voice would come on and sort you into one of the groups in the movie. I chatted with one of the security guards and he told me the sorting hat drives him insane. There are only 6 things it says, and he's heard them all hundreds of times. Poor guy.

We left the museum and walked to the foley stage. Foley is where they record all the sounds we hear in the movies and TV shows. You know the sounds of footsteps, doors, chairs moving...those aren't recorded while the actors are speaking, the sounds are added later. We watched as two middle-aged men clomped around on wood, providing the sounds of people walking in the background of a TV show. They work in a mid-sized room filled with various props, recording all the sounds for shows and movies. It takes them half a day to do a 22 min episode. From there we went to the Eastwood scoring stage. The score is the instrumental part of a movie or TV show. The stage is considered one of the best to record on because of the setup and the materials it's made out of. A few years ago the stage was set to be torn down when Clint Eastwood stepped up and paid to renovate it, so now it bears his name. From the scoring stage we walked to a large room filled with massive panels and a huge movie screen. This was where they did the final mix for TV shows and movies, taking the score, dialog, looped dialog (recorded in a studio to replace the actors on set) music and sound effects and mixing it into the final version we hear on TV or in the theater. This was a very impressive setup.

Janice hearded us back onto the cart and we took off to see the Warner Bros backlot. The backlot is made up of simulated streets or buildings, and is used on a large number of TV shows and movies. Lois and Clark, ER, A.I., Spider-Man and Gremlins are just some of the productions that use the streets at WB. We walked around a bit, but it wasn't very interesting; it's just a street. Back on the bus where we went to the jungle backlot used for The Last Samurai (a new Tom Cruise movie), The Waltons and other productions, then we went to a large backlot which is used for Gilmore Girls. We walked around and saw the house the Gilmore girls call home, one of their friend's houses, and other houses used in a variety of productions. Back on the cart and off to the set of Drew Carey. Nothing was filming, but we hung out in the audience area and looked at the sets. From there we went to another set, this one was for All About the Andersons, a new show I've never heard of. It stars Anthony Anderson, one of Jim Carrey's sons in Me, Myself and Irene. Janice then took us to the set of ER, the area outside the hospital doors.

We were getting hungry, so it was off to the Commissary for some chow. This is the place that pretty much everyone eats at, but I didn't see any stars. After we left Janice said that Noah Wyle (ER) was sitting outside eating lunch. Damn, I missed seeing him! After lunch we went to see the prop area where they store tons of props that productions can rent. They had everything there, from funky tables and chairs to large egyptian cats made from styrofoam. Each prop has a barcode that tells you what production it was used on, how much the prop is worth and what it rents for. Props typically rent for 10% of the value of the prop per week. We headed to the craft area where they make things out of plastic. Building sidings, palm trees, bricks, "marble" statues...whatever. After that we went downstairs to check out this MASSIVE printer. I think it was 75' long, and prints on almost anything. They were printing out huge vinyl posters promoting the upcoming </i>Looney Tunes: Back in Action</i> movie. We also saw where they create backdrops for movies; they were working on a bunch for a new movie that's shooting at Paramount called Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events. It's supposed to be the next big movie, like Harry Potter.

Our last stop was at the costume department. The manager of the department came into a fitting room to talk to us and explain all about the costume designers job. Then we left the room and headed down to the storage area. It was a MASSIVE room with tons and tons and tons of clothes and shoes in it. We saw some costumes from Red Planet, Babylon 5, Demolition Man and tons of other movies. The Warner Bros archives people come through and snag things for the archives once a movie is done shooting; anything they don't want comes here. Really neat stuff, and it was nice that the manager took time to come and talk to us about her area.

Oops, somewhere in there we went to the Gilmore Girls house. I think it's where her parents live....I've never seen the show to know.

The tour ended (6 hours!!) and I went to Warner Home Video to hang with my friend and talk about DVDs. She's the head of their TV area, and super cool. Warner has some good stuff in the works for 2004. I also called my buddy at Paramount to see about getting a tour of the studio. He's going to be there tomorrow so he can show me around in the morning.

I left there and headed to find a phone to call my friend Jeremy. We met at VSDA in July and he lives in LA. I called him, but he's going to a church thing tonight but we might meet up after. I think I'm going to head back to Hollywood & Highland and go to CPK for dinner. I love that place. Mmmmm....