Being in San Francisco, we do see some well-known films and tv shows being shot. Usually the streets are cordoned off. Once the office building I was working in was taken over at night for shooting some scenes from The Net (starring Sandra Bullock). A phoney protest demonstration was also staged on the street outside the building. I saw the overturned cable car scene from The Hulk. But the most memorable scene was from the movie The Presidio in the late 80’s. It starred Sean Connery and Mark Harmon and I was amazed at how many times they shot exactly the same scene over and over again. And like a good soldier, Mr. Connery did shot after shot without any complaints. A true professional. I’ve also been to the LA area where a lot sitcoms are shot. The one thing that you don’t realize until you go onto a set is how small it is. For instance, the living space in Frazier looks expansive on TV, but it’s really compressed in reality. It’s all due to the way the scenes are framed and camera shots.
My daughter was in The Adventures of Pete & Pete so I saw quite a few, most notably Adam West being at the wrong end of a spray of creamed corn.
And yes, all sets are boring. My daughter found that being in NYU student films was far more interesting, since you got to hear the students work out the shots. On real sets everyone is professional, and the actors are encouraged to hangout in their dressing rooms, or craft services, between shots.
I stand corrected. Does anyone else think it’s totally bizarre that Linda Lovelace for President and The Day After were both filmed in Lawrence, Kansas?
On trips into San Francisco, I’ve seen scenes being filmed for Charmed and Monk. Both shows are watched religiously in my house.
I saw some of the scenes from the **Matrix ** when the film was being made in Sydney.
As a long-time SoCal resident, I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve seen filming for television, movies, or commercials.
On the other hand, it takes them so freakin’ long to set things up for one shot that I usually vacate before finding out what they’re filming, much less the actual filming itself.
A lot of Nash Bridges was shot in Oakland and I walked by the trailers for the show once a month on the way to pay my rent. Also when I was in High School they shot The Pricipal at the old Oakland Tech campus. We students at the new Oakland Tech got to grafitti up the old building and we played extra’s in several scenes like the “No More” scene in the auditorioum (the only one where I could pick myself out. I saw Jim Belushi a lot, never saw Rae Dawn Chong though.
They filmed the taxi scene from “Thirteen Going on Thirty” a few blocks from where I used to live. I got to see Jennifer Garner running down Fourth Avenue flapping her arms like a loon.
Years back, *Nash Bridges * shot a scene at the shop I was working at. About 6+ hours on location translated to roughly four seconds on air.
The ratio of setup, lighting, camera aiming, talent finding their marks, etc. time to footage that’s shot to what’s actually in the final production is insane. Recall they shot about five “takes” in that 6+ hours, again, only to use about four seconds.
Forgot to add that a former co-worker of mine lived on the block where they shot *Sister Act. * For a couple months, he was griping about all the Hollywood garbage they trucked in to make the area around the church look extra-seedy. In reality, it was a perfectly decent neighborhood with the usual amount of litter blowing around, but nothing like they protrayed it.