A little bit of Hollywood

Aloha! I thought I’d share some photos of a bit of Hollywood I’ve viewed recently.

Being a fan of movies growing up, I loved seeing the wonderful things that were used in a movie. This summer I was started working at a studio with over 100 years of movie-making history. Here are some images from the Studios at Paramount Pictures.

Let’s start with a photo of the Hollywood Sign (yes, it’s back there above Stages 30 & 31). Paramount is right in the middle of Hollywood so we see the sign everyday!

This next photo is of the Bronson Gate which was seen in the 1950s movie, Sunset Blvd. They say that touching the gate is lucky so I make sure to tap both sides when I walk through. This photo was taken when Transformers 4 was released so a Bumblebee statue graced the front of the studio for a week.

One of the interesting parts of the studio is called “B Tank”. When not in use, it serves as a parking lot. When in use, the entire section can be flooded with water to serve as a water set. The wall on the right is painted to look like the sky so filmmakers can shoot against that wall for sky shots. And of course, every studio has their own water tower. Adjacent to the water tower is a cafe, appropriately called, The Water Tower Cafe which serves fresh sushi as well as sandwiches and special dishes.

There is an area called “New York” where façades replicate the different boroughs of NYC. Here’s a shot without much action in the streets. The subway station gate is completely mobile so it can be removed.

Here is New York with a bit more action. Apparently they were filming a commercial and brought in a rather large prop . . .

For those of you who watch the show GLEE (yup, filmed here at Paramount), here is the diner where Rachel, Santana and Kurt work.

We were granted a tour of the Prop Warehouse where we got to see a bunch of different movie and TV show props up close. Here are a few photos I took.

This is Bumblebee – the front side this time. He is rather impressive and a 6-ft tall person would probably come just below his kneecaps! He takes up an entire corner of the warehouse and we took numerous photos with him 🙂

Tom Cruise drove this car in the movie, Jack Reacher. Tom did the car stunts himself and the car is in the same condition as when it left the film, meaning all ding’d up. The driver’s side door does not open and it’s missing some headlights, etc.

This warehouse also had life-sized buggy’s from GI JOE movie, one of the captain’s chairs from STAR TREK (remember Star Trek is a Paramount property) and more! But, let’s move on. . .

A couple weeks ago, we were granted a VIP Tour of the Archives – the department which houses copies of Paramount’s TV and film properties (now, this is where I geek out a bit since all of this stuff has so much history and for a film person, I was in heaven).

The first floor of the Archives houses rows upon rows of tape. Some of these are digital archival copies of an entire movie or show series.

Along the walls on the first and second floors were film canisters containing prints of some very famous movies . . .

All the Indiana Jones movies were here and we loved seeing the rusted ‘old school’ canister as seen on the top row, far left canister.

We then made our way into the temperature-controlled film vault (cue the angel choir) where the original negatives are housed (!!!!!!) – here are some you might know.

And for you Trekkies/Trekkers . . . sniff, Data . . .

Then we moved onto Costumes, Props and Jewelry. Yup, these were the ones the actors wore/used in the films.

Let’s start with Mr. Cary Grant in the 1955 movie, To Catch a Thief. The lady in the photo is 8-time Academy Award winning costume designer, Edith Head, who worked at Paramount for 43 years.

Tom Hanks’ attire for Saving Private Ryan

Tom Hanks’ hat and shoes from Forrest Gump

Christopher Walken’s Headless Horseman costume from Sleepy Hollow

Those cool gloves that Tom Cruise wore in MI: Ghost Protocol

 The jewelry worn by James Earl Jones and Eddie Murphy in Coming to America

These are from the 1923 and 1956 re-make version of Cecil B. DeMille’s Ten Commandments. The necklace is from his 1956 film, whereas the scarab is from his original 1923 version.

I hope you’ve enjoyed a little bit of Hollywood. I’ll end with a fun one that I was very excited about. This is me touching Optimus Prime of Transformers 4. I believe he was out to promote the DVD release of T4 so we saw him near our offices. (He also parks in the same parking garage I do.)

Hooray for Hollywood!