I was curious: with all of the money that goes toward buidling movie sets, how many of these structures are still standing, put perhaps, to other uses?
For example, in Spike Lee’s Do The Right Thing, pre-production included a number of neighborhood renovations that the director left in place as a thank you to the community after the movie was completed.
One of the most surprising was discovering that the entire village of Sweethaven from the movie Popeye was built in Malta and turned into a popular tourist attraction!
I’m not sure about the motel, but the house at the top of the hill where mama was preserved was preserved and made part of the Universal Studios tour in Hollywood for years (may still be, dunno). I think it was used for other spooky house-on-the-hill scenes in other movies as well.
Many sets like this are reused. Burbank Studios has (or had, I haven’t been there recently and I know they sold off many holdings) a “New York” street which was used over and over again whenever they needed a New York street ambience, natch. Change a few signs, touch up (or down) a few items, and make another movie or TV show. Then you leave it alone until the next project comes along. Rarely is a set built from scratch then immediately razed.
On the 20th Century lot, you used to be able to go in the main gate and as you drove through the lot you passed by incongruous facades side by side; a western bar next to a glass office building next to a bombed-out WWII church. During filming, the camera angles prevented one from intruding on the other. And of course they are all just fronts, not interiors, which are done in huge indoor facilites called sound stages.
In the future, no physical sets may ever be built – everything will be done with green screens and computers will fill in the backgrounds.
The Bates Motel is on the Universal Studios back-lot. If I recall correctly, it’s just a few feet away from the Whoville set built for the Grinch movie.
For Titanic, they built a new studio with a large tank in Rosarito, Mexico, (just south of the border with San Diego). I don’t know what happended to the Titanic sets, but I understand they have used the tanks for some other seagoing saga’s such as Master and Commander.
The house in Psycho was a 1/5 size model of an actual house that still stands in Kent, Ohio. I remember reading about it, as a bit of trivia, in a James Michener book about the Kent State shootings.
Oh, forgot to add about Titanic: only one side of the ship was built at the studio in Mexico, as a facade in nine-tenths scale. Through re-dressing and image reversal, the starboard side also served as the port side for various scenes. The facade was dismantled after the movie’s completion. A detailed 14-meter model was also built; I don’t know what became of it.
One of the ships used in Pirates of the Carribbean is a tall ship that’s based out of Seattle.
I still remember the newspaper feature length article that ran on how the crew sailed her down the Pacific coast and through the Panama channel and out to where they were filming in the Carribbean. I get seasicker than a dog, but I would’ve loved to have been on that trip.
If a set is made particularly well, and built in a somewhat obscure location, it tends to stay up and used as a tourist spot. It can really draw in a lot of visitors if it’s done right. I believe that Hobbiton has been partially restored, for instance.
Other times a lot of sets will be kept up if they’re suitably generic, such as a Wild West town, so it can be reused for other movies and TV shows. For example, some of the buildings in Back To The Future III were from a few classic Westerns of the past.
Back in the old days of the great studios, sets were indeed re-used often. In THAT’S ENTERTAINMENT, for instance, you see the New York Street set at MGM that was used in dozens (perhaps hundreds) of pictures – they’d change the signs in the store windows, change the cars and people on the street, and presto! a new street scene for a new movie.
The theater set built for the 1927 Phantom of the Opera was built to last, and was used in many movies, including at least two remakes of the same film. I belive it still exists.
The scene in *Star Trek IV *where the Bird of Prey crashes into San Francisco Bay is actually on Paramount’s backlot. Back in the 40’s, it was used for pirate movies or something and they discovered it again in the mid-eighties when looking at some blueprints and dug it up again for that movie.
Not sure if it’s still being used 20 years later though.
The gazebo where a murder took place in David Cronenberg’s The Dead Zone was built in Niagara-on-the-Lake specifically for the movie. It remains there in the middle of a town park where it’s often used for concerts and other events.
MGM killed two birds with one stone when they were making Gone With the Wind.
They needed to clear the lot of the King Kong set to make room. They lit it up and filmed the burning as the burning of the Atlanta. (Although Atlanta didn’t actually burn. I believe the CSA set fire to ammunition so the Yankees couldn’t get their hands on it.)
It still made for a spectacular scene as Scarlett and Rhett flee the city.
Selznick-International Pictures made Gone With the Wind (MGM released it). Selznick was housed in a rented section of the RKO Pictures lot, which also contained the standing Great Wall set from King Kong. The gates were built for The King of Kings (1927).
You are correct, ivylass, the GWTW actually depicts a the Burning of the Atlanta Depot, not the Burning of Atlanta, which took place two and half months later. The depot fire was intentionally set by a Confederate rearguard to prevent a trainload of ammunition and materiél from falling into the hands of the Union army.
If you are ever in the western portion of Colorado, you might drop by Ridgeway, Colorado (not that far from Teluride Ski Area). It was the the tiny town that **True Grit **rebuilt. The film that got John Wayne an academy award also got the town a make over. The town got a new city hall, a new bar, and two or three other buildings which are still used today. The irony of the make over is that the buildings which look the most rustic and old are probably some of the newer in the town.
Many other Westerns use as their sets permanant sets in New Mexico (Silvarado for example) and Arizona (Rio Lobo for example). More recently you can see them in television shows.
You are correct. Legolamb, SpinyNorman, and I took a tour of Universal Studios when we were in LA last year visiting SpinyNorman and Shayna. I looked through my pictures and posted the Bates and Whoville pictures here. The lots were next to each other and parts of Whoville were behind the Bates Motel.
