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Friday, Mar 29, 2024

Tour Expansion Targets Warner Bros. Fan Base

Warner Bros. Studios completed a $13 million upgrade to its studio tour this month that will give visitors an even more immersive experience into the process of film and television production. The tour of the Burbank studio will retain its small groups of up to 14 people and stops at the archive and picture car museum. New features include interactive displays, green screen technology, original sets and visits to support and production departments not on the tour previously. Danny Kahn, executive director of the tour, called it a celebration of the people behind the scenes in making movies and television shows. “To be able to walk into a production design office and see what they do and some of their work is really impressive,” Kahn said. The tour generates revenue for the studio but its value cannot be measured in just dollars and cents, Kahn maintained. “It’s nice to be able to have a place to bring fans onto the lot and into the shows they love in addition to introducing people to shows they may not have known about,” he said. “It is building and nurturing the fan base.” “The Big Bang Theory,” “The Ellen DeGeneres Show” and “Conan” are among the shows that film on the lot. About 300,000 visitors took the tour last year, a substantial number more than the 6,000 when it started in 1973. Warner Bros. also operates a tour at its Leavesden studio complex outside London where the “Harry Potter” movies were filmed. Unlike the tour at nearby Universal Studios, in which trams carrying 100 people traverse a fixed route of backlot sets and special effects demonstrations, the Warner Bros. tour, with a price of $62 for visitors 8 years and older, has a more intimate feel and changes soundstage visits depending on shooting schedules. The updated tour uses a new fleet of carts to take visitors around that maintain the same capacity but are roomier, Kahn said. A key addition to the tour is “Stage 48: Script to Screen,” a 25,000-square-foot interactive display where visitors can design a Batmobile or costumes and get on a motion-capture stage to ride a broomstick from the “Harry Potter” films. Fans of the sitcom “Friends” can for the first time visit the set of the Central Perk CafĂ©. Another new feature is a forced perspective table used in “Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring” that creates the illusion that full-sized visitors are the size of hobbits. At an event on July 15, the day before Stage 48 opened to the public, performers involved with Warner Bros. productions were invited to check out the tour, including actor and director Clint Eastwood and Zach Snyder, director of “Man of Steel” and the upcoming “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.” Permit Increases Filming activity in Ventura County has seen an increase in the first half of 2015 compared to last year. Bill Bartels, the county’s film liaison, said that there have been about 70 more filming days so far this year than in the first two quarters of last year. A filming day is defined as a day in which a set is being prepped or taken down or there is filming taking place. For the fiscal year ending June 30, the county had about 1,875 filming days, Bartels said. “I think a lot of it is content demand,” Bartels said about the increase. “Those activity days include web shows.” Recent Ventura County productions include the new HBO series “Westworld,” which did location shoots in the Simi Valley area, and “True Detective,” which shoots much of its exteriors there. Santa Clarita also experienced an increase in production. The city estimated that on-location filming contributed $33.9 million to the local economy during the fiscal year that ended in June, a 1 percent increase over the previous fiscal year. The city processed 553 permits during the fiscal year, a 4 percent increase from the 531 permits processed in the 2013-14 fiscal year. The number of filming days increased by 5 percent, to 1,437. The figures do not include filming on soundstages not requiring a film permit. More than half of the production in the city was for various television series, including “NCIS,” “Criminal Minds,” the just-concluded cable series “Justified” and “Westworld” based at the Melody Ranch, one of the city’s many production ranches. Disneyland Expansion The Anaheim City Council voted July 7 to extend for 30 years a policy not to collect admission taxes for tickets sales to Walt Disney Co.’s Disneyland Resort. In exchange, Disney agreed to a $1 billion expansion of the theme park. The Burbank entertainment and media giant has until the end of 2017 to start construction for expansion at the park, which includes Disneyland and Disney California Adventure. The project will include new attractions, parking and other infrastructure improvements. Under the agreement, Disney must finish the upgrade within seven years. The current agreement between Disney and Anaheim to not collect an admission tax expires next June. Staff Reporter Mark R. Madler can be reached at (818) 316-3126 or [email protected]

Mark Madler
Mark Madler
Mark R. Madler covers aviation & aerospace, manufacturing, technology, automotive & transportation, media & entertainment and the Antelope Valley. He joined the company in February 2006. Madler previously worked as a reporter for the Burbank Leader. Before that, he was a reporter for the City News Bureau of Chicago and several daily newspapers in the suburban Chicago area. He has a bachelor’s of science degree in journalism from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

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