A Day at Warner Brothers Studio

I live within the vicinity of Los Angeles, which means I live close to lots of studios, theme parks, and studio theme parks. Today, I've taken advantage of this and decided to take another tour besides the one at Universal. Don't get me wrong, that's a good tour (The King Kong bit in particular is really fun, for those who've never been) but it's nice to see another working studio with other hit shows we know and see what they have to offer to tourists- or, people like me or my mom who are just curious about showbiz even though we live about an hour away from "Ellen" being taped.

Speaking of Ellen Degeneres, while we passed by her show stage our tour guide mentioned she's not filming the show for another month or so- she's currently working to revive her role as Dory for the sequel to Pixar's legendary film "Finding Nemo." Note to self: Remember to bring up that movie in a future blog. ;)

As for the actual tour, you're split into groups of 12 and get your own tram and tour guide. From there you ride around the movie lot and at times, walk around. This is the biggest difference between the WB tour and the Universal Studios one. At the park, the tour is more like a ride where you don't get off and are getting brief glimpses at Hollywood sets. At WB studios, you get to actually walk onto some of the sets (provided they aren't being used at the moment) and even get to see a MUSUEM right in the middle of the lot. BTW, that thing is two stories, and the Harry Potter stuff has an entire floor dedicated to it. Well then again it IS the studio's biggest moneymaker, aside from "Friends", that is...

My personal favorite highlights were passing by the Stage where they shoot "The Big Bang Theory" (Today they were rehearsing for episode 2 of the upcoming season) and some of the sets used for "Pretty Little Liars". Actually, at one point I tried to take a picture of the "front" of Rosewood High from the tour tram and ended up posing in front of the steps of the school. (The tour guide was really nice.) And like Universal, they have a collection of "picture cars" that we got to see. Unlike Universal, it's in a room within a soundstage that we got to step off our tram to see. They have the Mystery Inc. Bus, various models of the Batmobile- and the space capsule that carried Howard Wolowitz and the Russian Astronauts in BBT's season 5 finale. And yes, I took pictures. The museum mentioned above mostly had costumes from various shows and movies made by the studio, such as "Inception", "The Great Gatsby", "Friends", "Mike & Molly", and as mentioned earlier, Harry Potter. It was also cool to see some costumes used on BBT and PLL- though, one of the latter's costumes was apparently worn by a nice fellow on the show named Lucas, and that costume bears a striking resemblance to that of serial killer Jason from "Friday the 13th"- I'm only barely towards the end of season1 of that show on DVD thanks to Netflix; is there something I should know, viewers who are more caught up than I am on the show adaptation? I think I spoiled myself today.

Funny, he only shows up in 3-4 books in the original novels. He didn't seem like a killer either...

So, any downsides? Well, I didn't see the Warner Brothers (or sister) running around the lot with a security guard chasing after them, so that was a disappointment. :P They must have locked that water tower up tight after that show ended... Also, I'll admit that it would have been nice to see Kaley Cuoco and/or Jim Parsons walking around the set. Still, I'm debating whether or not one of the two blondes I saw around the studio was Kaley. Probably not, seeing how everyone's most likely at the rehearsal. But out tour guide did mention something about comedy shows like BBT shooting in front of a live studio audience and that it's possible to get tickets, so maybe I'll look into that.

So yeah, that was my day in Hollywood- or Burbank, rather. Still, Movie sets! Film History! Lunch at Bob's Big Boy afterwards!

Currently Reading: "Brave New World" by Aldous Huxley