Tour of Orange County, on Movie Screens

Health and nutrition company Nikken spared few expenses when it built its $33.8-million headquarters in Irvine in 1999.

The 213,000-square-foot structure was a testament to the high-flying days of a booming economy and included a three-story, curved rotunda made of glass and aluminum.

The building provided Nikken with a comfortable, stylish place in which to do business, plus an unexpected perk: It soon became a favorite filming location for Hollywood studios.

The building served as a trendy, upscale gym in the 2004 movie “Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story,” and as the FBI’s Las Vegas headquarters in the soon-to-be-released “Miss Congeniality II.” It has been used in several other movies, television programs and commercials, and a Cher music video.

Nikken’s headquarters, near the Irvine Spectrum, is among the most popular filming locations in Orange County. The company charges studios production fees and often requires that its merchandise, including nutritional supplements and skin-care products, be included in scenes.

“At the end of the day, it’s really cool. Because once the film is in the can, Nikken is a piece of history,” said Al Chavez, facilities manager for Nikken.

In part because of its proximity to Hollywood, Orange County is a favorite filming spot for the entertainment industry. In the fiscal year 2003-04, the industry logged more than 750 filming days in Orange County, making commercials, television programs and movies.

Other popular filming spots in Orange County are the Old County Courthouse in Santa Ana, which was passed off as part of Harvard University in the movie “Legally Blonde,” and the historic downtown plaza in Orange. Illusions are sometimes enhanced by concealing palm trees with fir branches to project an East Coast ambience.

Movie studios spend more than $335 million a year in Orange County, for items such as lodging, meals and building materials, according to county film commissioner Janice Arrington.

Some public officials are skeptical about numbers like that, but they welcome film crews in their cities.

“I’m sure there’s some financial gain from doing this, but more important is the excitement and enthusiasm it generates. It’s a civic pride thing,” said Orange Councilman Steve Ambriz. “In Orange our heart and soul is the downtown area. So seeing the plaza in a movie is terrific. When ‘That Thing You Do!’ [1996, starring Tom Hanks] was filmed in Orange, we had people coming from all over to see it.”

The Orange plaza was also used in “The Man Who Wasn’t There,” “First Daughter” and “Surviving Christmas.” The city’s downtown district, surrounding the traffic circle at Chapman Avenue and Glassell Street, is more than 100 years old, with rows of shops and restaurants, many built of brick.

“It has the look of an all-American kind of town. It can serve as the Midwest, the East Coast,” Arrington said.

Paul Brinkman Jr., a location manager for Paramount Pictures, who has brought the television drama “JAG” to both the Nikken building and the giant blimp hangars at the closed Tustin Marine base, said he liked the look of old Tustin. “It’s a great-looking old town. [And] some of the houses in Orange and Tustin are just spectacular,” he said.

Studios cover the cost of police and firefighters’ services, and pay cities or property owners for the right to film.

For “Ocean’s Eleven,” UC Irvine provided the setting for a computer company that was burglarized in a plot to shut down electricity in Las Vegas. The university received $44,000 for the two-night shoot -- the money went to a scholarship program -- and three of its film students were given jobs as production assistants, Arrington said.

MTV’s “Laguna Beach: The Real Orange County” is in its second season of filming. The company spent about $150,000 on hotel rooms in Dana Point and Laguna Beach during filming last season, Arrington said.

Orange County’s location credits pale by comparison to Los Angeles County, where there were more than 44,000 production days in 2004, according to the local Entertainment Industry Development Corp.

Even the Fox television program “The O.C.” is filmed primarily in Los Angeles County, although Orange County benefits from the marketing, Arrington said.

“It’s giving us a nice aura about our county. It’s bringing in tourists. It’s making us look like a popular place to live and work,” she said.