For my birthday this past month, my wife got us tickets to the Warner Brothers Studio VIP tours that gives you a behind the scenes glimpse of Hollywood (Burbank actually, but who’s checking except maybe Rowan and Martin….).

We were greeted by the world-famous Warner Bros water tower (now empty because of earthquakes) and in the shadow of the tower, we made our way to the tour area.

We were booked for the 10:30 tour and with a bright, sunny and hot SoCal day we were off in the golf-carts

to see what we could see (like the “Governator” in the coffee shop)!

I brought along my trusty Nikon D200 and my 18-200mm VR lens, some extra cards and a spare battery just in case. We had been told there was still-photography allowed (no video) in most places, but most of the main-sound stages were off limits to cameras because of copyrights and stuff….fair enough.

Our tour-guide, Susan, was great. A wealth of information and a natural chatterbox, so she was the perfect tour guide.

The first area we went to was the “city” set. An incredible outdoor facade that can be re-made into most any era or locale. The bricks, pipes and other era-specific decor are primarily made of plastic or other easy to use materials and are painted, aged and weathered according to the production company’s needs.

We got to go inside the cafe which has starred in many movies and it featured a mostly finished interior (unlike most of this “city”) and even had a pivoting-mirror on the wall so they could film in front of it and still avoid reflections.

There were construction crews on the street preparing the sites for thier next role and it was cool to see the flotsam and jetsam of Hollywood magic.

Then we jumped back into our cart and wizzed past this “motel” that is actully office-suites on the WB lot, but is dual-purposed like most of the buildings on the lot. If they need an apartment building with cars out front, what better way than to have the employees cars out there (smart boys those Brothers).

We then scooted up to Chicago and got a glimpse of the Chicago-set and a highly detailed Hospital used in the TV show “ER” . It even had a mock-up of the El-train supports and security cameras and a cop car inside the parking area. There was enough dirt and grime to make the set look amazingly real, even in person.

The only thing that gave it away was the movie-lights all around the set…not a feature found at too many hospitals.

Across the street from the hospital was a cool quickie-mart, fully stocked and ready for any hunger emergency…

Further down the road was a more “homey” set, star in many a movie and TV show. The details were awesome and again, these houses were all dual-puposed as office buildings. Some even had multiple-fronts, so you could shoot on one location and have 2 or more houses…way cool.

We even shot by “Miss Patties” school of Ballet, but I don’t think it was named after my wife (sorry Honey….).

There were some curious lawn-ornaments that you usually don’t see in your standard urban settings, but other than that, you couldn’t tell these houses from the real thing.

Now we headed off to the sound-stages to see filming in process. Here’s where the copy-right issues came up and they locked-up our cameras good and tight. I felt naked.

We saw some cool sets and the lights and sound equipment was just awesome. We also visited Clint Eastwood’s favorite sound-recording room and I can only wish I had half as much equipment as they had in there. It could easily hold 100 musicians as well as the neccessary Technicians. Awesome.

We got our cameras back just in time to go to the Prop room which was the set-up used in the TV show “Friends”. It was awesome. It had so much detail, it made a pawn-shop look underutilized. They had all the usual lights overhead and we were told how filming was accomplished in this area. Coolness.

Central Perk lives….

As we passed the huge sound-stages (no photos allowed here, so you didn’t see this….)

We headed for the Star Cars museum. It was a small room dedicated to a few cars including the BatMobile, Harry Potter’s car and The General Lee from that unforgettable movie …uh, what was the name of that one???…..

We then had a brief tour of the Warner Brother’s Museum which had some nice displays downsatirs and some awesome stuff from the Harry Potter movies upstairs (I would love to be a Prop maker at a major studio like this…way cool).

All in all a good tour that’s lots of fun. it lasts about two-and-a-half hours and goes non-stop.

We, unfortunately, didn’t see any stars, but ran into a very large Jim Morrison on the way out!

As Bug’s friend Porky would say…”Th…Th…That’s All Folks!!”