The lights might shine brightly on actors working in front of the cameras, but for most of us working behind the scenes, we often labor on a darkened sound stage. I was on the set of the 2 Fast 2 Furious movie directed by John Singelton when I did this watercolor. We were filming at Universal Studios. The set was built primarily for tricked-out sport cars mounted on a gimbal. The gimbal moved like a Transformer, tossing the cars (and its passengers) wildly [...]
Read MoreHollywood Backlots (Sketches of a Set Painter)
Oceans 12 was a Las Vegas heist movie staring some of the big names in Hollywood. The cast included Brad Pitt, Catherine Zeta-Jones, George Clooney, Andy Garcia, Don Cheadle, Bernie Mac and others. Oceans 12 was filmed in 2004. Oceans 12 on Stage Some of the sets were built on sound stages at Warner Bros. studios in Burbank, CA. This interior museum set was the largest of them all. The set was remarkable. There was intricate detail that would take [...]
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There are two CBS studios in Los Angeles. One is a television production facility on Melrose Ave. in West Hollywood near the famed ‘Farmer’s Market’. The CBS in this painting is ‘CBS Studio Center‘ located in Studio City. It’s also called ‘Studio Center’ or Radford Lot’. Although television shows are filmed here as well, you are likely to see a feature film being shot at this location. This lot is rather small compared to some of the majors, i.e., Universal, [...]
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Here’s a set from The Last Samurai movie staring Tom Cruise. I loved painting this set during lunchtime even though I didn’t work on it. Prepping a set like this can either be a set painter’s dream or nightmare. It’s a dream if he/she likes character aging. That is a technique of ‘making new things look old and old things look new‘. I heard that expression hundreds of times from tour guides whenever the tram passed the paint department at Universal Studios. [...]
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This is a gas station set on the backlot of Warner Bros. studios. You’ll see that it is a movie set because the second story is only a few feet deep. This painting reminds me of a time when gas stations were called service stations. That’s because the station personnel actually provided service. May I Serve You? It was unheard of when I was a child in the ’50s to pump one’s own gas. Whenever an automobile would pull up [...]
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