It's been a while since our last post, so let me catch you up. The past week has been extraordinarily busy with all 3 of us hard at work on our own projects creating publicity packets, cutting reels, brainstorming pitches for new projects and learning about the finance side of projects works. Unlike many other industries, this one has no set path and no predictable outcome day in and day out. It's why it's exciting and also why it's terrifying and can keep you working until all hours. But, if you love it like we do, it's all worth it.
While making sure we have plenty to do, Liz also makes sure we get the most out of our time out here, so a few days ago she had us drop everything and go on our second scavenger hunt of the summer at a studio, this time the Warner Bros. Studio. We might have stressed out a little bit worrying that we wouldn't get things done in time, but let's face it, with Elizabeth being the Batman fan she is, it was hard to push off this impromptu visit.
Our self-guided tour of WB was nothing short of awesome. We visited the site of many different famous TV and film shooting locations all over the lot and took pictures (as per Liz's scavenger hunt) with many different backdrops and the famous water tower (the one where the Animaniacs used to pop out of on Sunday mornings). We also visited Central Perk, the Ellen Degeneres Show office and the Legendary office (the company that shoots Batman) so that Elizabeth could fulfill her inner comic geek.
After all of this we tagged along different VIP tours (keeping our distance) and trailed off at times to sneak on to soundstages. In particular we snuck around the set of Shameless and saw the swamp area and building used for Merlott's in TrueBlood.
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| Wrote the Harry Potter Screenplays |
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| Merlott's from TrueBlood |
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| all the soundstages (so many!) |
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| Shameless |
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| Shameless set |
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| Trying desperately to keep her cool |
In addition to all of this we visited the chill-inducing Warner Bros. museum where the original costumes, props, and prominent set pieces from some of their most well-known shows and films are on display. We saw the new Batman costume from the upcoming film (which yes we all have tickets to already to see in Imax) and all the costumes from Friends (including the girl repelling bracelet), the Departed, and the Oscars that WB has won for its numerous films. There may have been some tears. We also went to the second floor of the museum devoted to Harry Potter. We each got sorted by the original Sorting Hat from the films (I'm in Slytherin, Elizabeth is in Hufflepuff, Annie was identified as a Weasley and was put in Gryffindor) and saw all the different beautiful props and costumes from the film. It's actually so impressive the time and effort that must go into the design of all of those and it is shocking that a lot of what we might think is CGI in the movies is actually just fantastic prop design.
Unfortunately the security was pretty tight and photos weren't allowed there.
Finally we found the hidden bungalow colony where celebrities have their offices and stalked around to find different famous parking spaces (because we're cool like that) and found Steve Carrell and Sarah Silverman.
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| <Pretty Little Liars shoot> |
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| we kind of wish we were this cool |
The coolest thing we saw by far though, especially if you are either of my sisters, was a shoot in progress of Pretty Little Liars that we were somehow allowed into (Note: if you walk around like you're supposed to be there while looking at your phone like you're reading an important email, you can get pretty much anywhere in this town). We watched the shoot for a while and may or may not have seem some stars (truthfully none of us watch the show, so who knows).
After a good 3 hours of walking around and stalking random tours to find cool things, we decided to head back to the Min. It's pretty awesome getting to see first hand how things work both on the development side from working for Liz and on the production side through these visits. Getting that kind of well-rounded view is pretty much priceless.
--Jesse
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