An Old Idea Revived: Anytown, U.S.A., on Warner’s Back Lot

Jon Gilbert walked through downtown Washington, D.C. Or was it Chicago? Maybe Manhattan?

In fact, it could be all three--and probably will be, before long. The new “downtown” set on the Warner Bros. Studios lot in Burbank, which opened last month, is expected to get heavy use from some of television’s most popular one-hour dramas, such as NBC’s “The West Wing.”

“We can make this set look like any downtown in the United States,” said Gilbert, president of Warner Bros. Studios Facilities. “We expect it to be in use 15 to 20 years from now.”

In an era of location filming, extravagant sound stages and amazing digital special effects--when even the gales and downpours depicted in “The Perfect Storm” can be shot inside a sound stage--the idea of an outdoor set may seem hopelessly old-fashioned.

For a time, it was. The contemporary downtown plaza is Warner Bros. first permanent exterior set built in almost 20 years.

After a back lot dry spell, Warner executives and others in the industry said, outdoor sets are in high demand, thanks to the surging popularity of hourlong television dramas such as NBC’s “ER” and “The West Wing,” and the WB network’s “Jack & Jill” and “Gilmore Girls,” which are all filmed on WB’s 110-acre main lot.

For these shows, the kind of location shooting favored by theatrical filmmakers is usually too expensive. Yet they can’t get that gritty urban feel in a sound stage.

So they use sets to create the illusion of a real environment--something Hollywood has been doing since the dawn of movie-making.

From a distance, the studio’s new downtown set--built to full scale, although some other sets aren’t--appears to have real brick and granite buildings. But a closer inspection reveals plastic and stucco treated with special paint to look like brick and marble. Steel frames and wooden rafters support the facades.

The set includes a contemporary downtown plaza--a dark high-rise with a smoked-glass atrium, a faux marble municipal headquarters with a glass revolving door, a beige administrative building and an office complex with an outdoor cafe below.

The features didn’t come about by chance. Earlier this year, Gilbert and other studio executives met with art directors and production managers who suggested that the downtown set include action-oriented features, such as the revolving door and stairs in front of the municipal building.

Rick Jewell, associate dean of USC’s School of Cinema-Television, said he gets nostalgic for movies filmed during the 1930s and ‘40s, when most scenes were shot on exterior sites. “Personally, I love back lots,” he said. “But it’s a little surprising to me that Warner Bros. built a new one.”

At Warner Bros., Gilbert oversees all production, post-production and studio operation services--including 35 sound stages, seven dubbing stages and 179 traditional and 35 digital editing rooms.

A 10-year Warner Bros. veteran, Gilbert said the frantic pace of TV production also factors into the decision to use the controlled environment of a set, rather than chancing the delays and detours that inevitably arise during location shooting.

A one-hour drama generally shoots 22 episodes a year, with each show taking seven or eight days to complete.

“They work on a very tight schedule,” he said. “They can’t afford to slip a day or two behind.”

Many studio executives credited “ER,” hugely popular since it began airing in September 1994, with reviving demand for back lots.

Once used mostly for movie productions, exterior sets fell out of vogue in the mid-’70s, when hand-held cameras replaced big clunky ones and allowed crews to film around the world. At the same time, digital technology advanced and movie budgets ballooned.

Fortunately for the local economy, many TV production crews still rely on the back lots and sound stages at Los Angeles studios such as Warner Bros., Universal and Paramount. Even Fox TV’s cult series “The X-Files” relocated two years ago to Los Angeles from Vancouver, in part because the show’s stars wanted to be closer to their California homes.

“Knock on wood, TV shows are staying here,” said Stephen Katz, second vice chairman of ECO2000, an industry think tank of entertainment professionals.

Although the “ER” staff travels to Chicago, where the show is set, two or three times a year for genuine cityscape shots, most filming is done at Warner Bros. The studio has a special outdoor set with a hospital and ambulance entrance and elevated train platform (with Chicago Cubs billboards).

But like other dramas shooting on the Warner Bros. lot, “ER” expressed a need for a generic downtown, Gilbert said.

It is the blandness--and, therefore, versatility--of the new Warner Bros. back lot that will ensure its survival in decades to come, studio executives said. Indeed, one of the highest compliments Warner Bros. received was from someone who said the set resembled the downtown near the University of Iowa in Iowa City.

“The more generic,” Gilbert said, “the better.”

Nine Exterior Sets to Choose From

Warner executives declined to discuss the price of the new back lot, which was built in four months on an outdoor storage area.

Warner Bros. has nine exterior sets on its main lot, many dating to the 1920s and ‘30s. The ones that get the most use tend to be the generic ones, such as Midwest Street, New York Street, Brownstone Street and Hennesy Street, which resembles 1920s New York tenements.

The Laramie Street set--one of the last western towns on a Hollywood lot, complete with a jailhouse, saloon, hotel, bank and church--gets less activity.

Instead, the Western back lot often plays host to special events by groups such as the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. Commercials and music videos also film there.

With the growing use of digital technology to produce virtual stages and other special effects, USC’s Jewell questioned whether back lots would be needed 20 years from now. Eventually, he said, technology could make TV filming cheaper.

But Gilbert said he is not concerned. “You may be able to lay in a background digitally,” he said, “but you have to have action going on, and for that, back lots are useful.”