So here continues my report on my day At Warner Brothers Studios. Again most of this is behind the cutout to save space for people who don’t want to see my attempts at photography.

The Backlot is where the tram portion of the tour started. Most people when they think of backlots think of facades. Where there is a front and a side to a fake building, but nothing more.

This backlot set is a facade set. There is nothing behind these buildings and the buildings have no depth. I think if you look closely through the windows you might be able to see the 2×4 studs that make up the facades. This set was being used for an episode of “Cold Case” which is set in Philadelphia, but it could easily be redressed to appear as almost any American city.

Facades are just one type of fake building used on the Warner Brothers backlot.

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The buildings on this street are examples of shell buildings on the backlot. Here the building have some depth, but only enough to sell the illusion that there is a functional building beyond the windows. With a shell building you might have ten to twenty feet of space beyond the face of the building. It’s not enough to film inside of, but a set can be dressed as a shop, or home, or almost anything and when you look through the windows you have the illusion it is a working building of that type. There were a lot of shell type buildings on the lot.

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The buildings on this street are practicals. These are full sized buildings with four sides and foundations and fully functional buildings. This street was meant to be a street in a town almost anywhere in the United States and as you can see it sells that illusion very well.

I said these were functional buildings and they are, but the interiors are not used for filming. (Those sets are constructed on sound-stages.) Rather these buildings house production offices used by the studio. A very efficient use of space. So inside the buildings are the offices and workers that bring you TV and film.

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This photo is out of focus. (We were in motion when I tried to snap it.) But you can still see clearly the sign indicating that this is the offices for the writers of the TV show, The Mentalist.

If the street was going to be used for a film or TV show, they would remove the sign and dress the buildings and street in whatever they needed, but the building itself remains a productive part of the studio.

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We did get to visit a lot of sound-stages as well, but cameras were not allowed there. There’s quite a bit of the tours where no cameras at all are allowed.

After the backlot and the history there, (oh by the way we got to see a little bit of a film crew in action. Gary Marshall was shooting on the backlot while we were there) we were treated to lunch.

I knew we were going to get lunch as part of our big tour package and frankly I expected basic cafeteria food. I thought they would plunk us down in the same dining facility used by most of the staff and extras. (There are seven dining facilities on the lot. Each with a different look and style so they can be used as locations for filming.) We were not dropped into a bland cafeteria, we were treated to the high-end restaurant on the lot. It was the snazziest place I have ever lunched in. As we ordered off the menu (anything we liked but we would have to pay for alcoholic drinks) David pointed out which table was reserved for Clint Eastwood and which one was reserved for George Clooney. (Both men have production offices on the lot.) As we ate, Adam Sorkin and the head of the studio came in and had lunch just about 6 feet behind me.

more in Part 3