A few weeks ago I received a card in the mail from Warner Brothers studios. The card was an invitation to a free tour of the studio lot.
At 9:45am Saturday morning myself and two friends (WB said I could bring up to three other people – Chi stayed up too late Friday and decided not to come) proceeded to the parking lot next to the WB general building. Normally parking is $5 in this lot – for us it was free. Upon getting our tickets we found out that these free tours are a dry run for future paid tours. There will be two levels – a 90 minute tour for $45 and a five hour tour for $150. Our sample was of the former. We watched a short promo film in a small theater to introduce the tour. Then it was time to hit the stretch go-kart for a ride around the lot. We first went by an exterior casino set that will be used this month for shooting Ocean’s 13. Next was a tour through the exterior town (Chicago) locations for the tv show ER. After that it was over to the outdoor town set for Gilmore Girls. Boy, a certain somebody would have paid big bucks to see that, too bad (for her) she didn’t think I was useful enough to keep around! We even got to walk around the set (which has also been used for countless other movies and tv shows like the Waltons and Dukes of Hazard). Then we passed by some actual filming being done for a commercial. After that we were told to put our cameras away for the majority of the rest of the tour. Some things included were more sets for Ocean’s 13, the metal shop, the wood shop, the plumbing department, the Friends set building (which had a blue “racing” viper parked in front for some reason), the entire indoors set for the new show Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, a small museum of movie cars (featuring two batmobiles, the General Lee, Cricket – from AI, the Mystery Machine, and the Harry Potter car), the television museum, the Harry Potter museum, and more.
Having never gone on a studio tour I wasn’t that impressed (after all – I haven’t even seen any of the Harry Potter movies – so why is a whole floor full of memorabilia supposed to make me tingle?). My comrades let me know however that they’ve gone to the tours offered by the other studios and this one was actually a bit better.
They saved the best for last though. The stretch golf cart’s next stop was a back-alley on the “New York City” outdoor set. In the street they had set up several tables (with shades) and a lot of food. There was even a live band – DA Bookman & Air Tight. The food was great. They had fresh grilled burgers, really good fresh hotdogs, watermelon wedges, gourmet fresh grilled pizza, lots of drinks (including San Pellegrino Limonata), and even an ice cream cart full of goodies for desert. The band was a very good modern jazz group. I knew right away they were some serious musicians when I saw the bass. The bass player was playing an eight string bass guitar. I’m not even sure if I’ve ever seen one being played in real life before. We actually sat there listening to the band for about an hour and a half.
All for free because I’m a Burbank resident.
To see pictures of the things I described above (that we were allowed to photograph) – download the zip file here.
