I Wish I Was Rachel Green

I woke up this morning to my roommate, Lauren, on the phone with her mom.  She was talking about being charged $100 from the hotel.  She got off the phone and I asked what was going on.  

Side note:  Last night as we checked in, we all had to give our debit/credit card information for incidentals throughout the week.  Nothing would be charged; it was on file just in case.  This was standard procedure so well all went ahead and did it without question.  End side note.  

She explained to me that the hotel had charged $100 to her debit card and she was confused as to why because she hadn't spent a cent since we had checked in.  "That sucks for her," I thought.  Cue text message from Chase mobile, telling me that I had recently gone below my $10 limit on my account.  Wonderful.  I felt my ears get really hot and my heart started to pound faster as I felt the wrath of Judy seep into my system.  Oh no they didn't.  That was my money.  Do you know the amount of hours I've had to work in the dishroom at Jeff dining hall to accumulate that money?  I called mom to get me psyched up enough to go down to the lobby and rip the manager apart.  And rip I did, in a gentle and calm fashion, so I guess I kinda teared instead.  Technically our cards weren't charged, they were authorized, which means that money is frozen and we can't touch it anyway.  I called over Superman, aka Roger Cooper, who gave the hotel permission to take all of our cards off file.  What a way to start the morning.

The day got so much better.  We left for Warner Brothers' Studios around 9:30 and hung around in their gift shop for a while as we waited for our VIP Tour to start.  We were taken into a mini auditorium and watched a 10 minute video about the history of Warner Bros.  It gave me chills through the entire thing.  I realize that sounds cheesy, but there's nothing like a clip reel of hundreds of different actors and movies and cartoons all put to music to inspire you.  Inspire it did.  We were then taken on the trams around Hennesey Street, Midwest Avenue, and many more.  Basically these "roads" contain lots of exterior sets (houses, courthouses, churches, apartment buildings, etc.) where hundreds of movies have done their filming.

Remember this Spiderman scene?

This is where it was filmed!

Also....

       Remember this clip from Friends?

This is where it was filmed!

We went into "The Lot" which is just a bunch of huge buildings housing sets for different television shows and also storage for other huge props.  An example:

The real live Mystery Machine!

We then went through another building with a massive amount of props from different movies.  Set designers and prop people come to this building and rent out props for their movies.  Some cost up to a quarter of a million dollars just to rent out for a couple of days!

We then went to maybe my favorite place out of the whole day.

 

<--- Central Perk, Friends set

     

       Central Perk, AAHHH --->

After we left Central Perk, our cameras had to be put away as we walked around the set of Pretty Little Liars and The Mentalist.  Everything looks so big on TV!  Sets are actually so tiny!  After touring the sets, we walked outside and were brought past a building with a flashing red light.  "Blinking lights mean there's production going on inside right now.  I would take you in there, but we don't want to disrupt The Big Bang Theory," says our tour guide.  WHY NOT?!  Just kidding, I knew why we couldn't go in but DANG wouldn't that have been sweet?

We then walked into the Warner Bros museum, a place that houses lots of costumes that actors and actresses have worn in pretty recent movies.  Again, we didn't have our cameras, but the first floor had a costume of Gracie Hart from Miss Congeniality, along with her real badge and ID.  Matrix suits.  Kate Hudson's bathing suit, green tank top, and jean shorts, topped off with her palm tree necklace from Fool's Gold.  And tons of others.  Upstairs was Harry Potter sanctuary, with dementor costumes, the Weasley brothers outfits, the real life petrified Hermione Granger from the second movie, mirror in hand, and so many more.  All actual stuff from the movies!  It was so cool.

After that, we went to CBS studios and toured the set and control rooms of their fairly new talk show, The Talk (this was recently made fun of on SNL; it was pretty funny).  The producer and gaffer of the show talked to us about the ins and outs of LA, and how to be a good little production assistant.  It was insightful!

Set

Whatta switch board.

After that, we got on the bus to come back to the hotel.  Lauren and I are sitting on our beds watching Raising Helen and waiting for dinner in a few minutes.  At dinner, we'll be meeting with 7 different OU alum who all work in different studios, on different sets.  Modern Family is one of them!  We'll get the chance to talk with them and ask them questions about their jobs and how they went from a college graduate to a successful producer/writer/director in LA.  Should be great.