One of the things that I really wanted to do while in LA was a studio tour. I love movies and TV, I love the magic and everything behind the scenes. I’m not really a crazy celebrity fan – I’m all about the magic behind the camera and the history throughout the years.
I looked at the various studio tour options – Paramount Pictures, Warner Bros, and Sony. There’s also a backlot tour at Universal Studios (which is included in the park admission) and already planned on doing that “ride” while we were at the park.
Unfortunately, the websites really didn’t give you much information about what you would see on the tour, so I did a bit of research to find reviews from people that have been on the tours. Most reviews only discussed the items seen on the particular tour, but a few did have a comparison that helped to figure out the difference.
After a bit of research I discovered that the Paramount Pictures tour included the former Desilu Studios – which included a bit of history about Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz. After finding that, I was sold on which tour I wanted to do! Huge Lucy fan!!!
After deciding on Paramount Pictures, we had to decide if we wanted to do the basic tour or the VIP tour. The VIP tour included lunch, which we weren’t particularly interested in – it seemed like an added expense for the tour fee and a waste of studio tour time. Most of the VIP tours included lunch for the morning tour, or a long snack for the afternoon tour, so no getting around that.
The VIP tour for Paramount included the archives building, the lighting / grips building, and the sign building. To be honest the lighting / grips part wasn’t that exciting – we went into one of the warehouses and received some information from our tour guide on the different lighting used on the sets. They had multiple lights setup, starting with some older lights to recent lights that are used for filming today. It is interesting to think how the lighting can change the mood, or transform the set from day to night. Lighting plays an important part in the filming magic, but seeing the lights and the warehouse where they are stored wasn’t the most exciting.
The sign department and archive building were very interesting. In the sign department there were a few people in the office working and they were so friendly (actually everyone around the studio was very friendly) and they were open to answering questions or discussing past and present projects.
They had a number of signs laid out on the table for us to look at and well as signs hanging around the room. We also got to see the massive printers used to produce the signs.
In the archive building, we started with the archived film vault. There was a huge, temperature controlled room laid out like a library. The shelves were filled with the source materials. We walked down a couple of the rows, getting a chance to read some of the boxes – The Godfather, White Christmas, Rosemary’s Baby, and Grease were some of the ones that come to mind.
After the archive room, we went upstairs where they had several props from TV and movies on display. It wasn’t a huge display, but there were some interesting things to look at – such as a motion capture suit used in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, costumes from Rocketman and Grease, and props used in the movie Nebraska.
After the props room, we ventured down a hallway lined with offices. Outside the offices were display shelves with more props for us to look at – including props from Star Trek. Inside the offices people were working, but they all took a moment to say hello and offered us a chance to ask questions. The tour guide explained their job duties while we got to peer into their offices. Most offices were filled with props related to their job role.
At the end of the hall is the jewellery archiver. Her office was filled with jewels from movies and her job was to catalog the movie that used the jewellery! Crazy…
As I mentioned I wasn’t too interested in the lunch on offer during the tour, but they did have the lunch setup in a practical set on the backlot. The set that we ate in was the set used for the cafe/diner in Glee. We didn’t watch Glee, but it was fun to have lunch on a set in the middle of the New York backlot.
During the tour we also got to see the famous Paramount Pictures gates, the backlot (including walking into a couple of the “buildings”), the Grace and Frankie sound stage, the Dr Phil sound stage, and the large area that can be filled with water for scenes. As we rode around on the cart through the studio we also got to peak into other open sound stages and see the star trailers (This Is Us was filming while we were there…).
At the end of the tour we got to see the old Desilu area, including Lucy Park, the Lucille Ball building, and the outside of her office/dressing room (super awesome for a fan like me!).
Overall the studio tour was a lot of fun…so much fun in fact, we decided to book the Warner Bros. Studio Tour for the following morning.
We both enjoyed different parts of each tour, but I think the Warner Bros tour was slightly better because it included several filming locations and sets for shows that we actually watched – Friends and The Big Bang Theory vs Dr Phil and Grace and Frankie.
I’m glad we did both tours and plan to do the deluxe tour at Warner Bros Studios next time, as well as the Sony tour…The good thing about any of the tours is that the sound stages you visit are likely to change based on the shows that are currently in production/filming, which is a good reason to visit again.