Well I remember last time that I had some on set picks of "Hancock" you guys really seemed to like them so this weekend I was on Set of the new Fast and the furious movie and heres a sneak peek.

This scene takes place on a beach during some sort of beach party. Look at the intense lighting, the had huge lights on top of the cliff in peoples backyards. Even though Vin Diesel stars in the movie and he was on set, I did not see him. Watching them film this scene was actually really funny. As the camera crane does a pans of the two drivers revving their engines the flag goes down and the race begins...well sort of. The drivers only drove about ten feet and the director yelled cut. Im assuming the next shot will be of the two drivers racing on a different road, but in the final product no one will notice... except us. Enjoy!

(NOTE: Some of the pictures are kinda blurry because cameras werent allowed so I had to take most of these as I was walking.)

Cool pics, although I just realised they've made a "street" version of the Volvo C30 - which is probably one of the ugliest cars ever.

Cool! Where were these taken?

Wow, it must be soo cool to be able to see an real movie set and actually see them filming!

In all honesty, with some of the same interactions with movie sets I've seen here in Texas, filming is largely uneventful, overcrowded, and makes you look at the number of trucks, equipment, and people just standing around and scratch your head at the overall underuse and overstaffed-ness of everything.

Still, this is very cool. I like watching TV productions film more (namely Prison Break) because they have to move much quicker and with fewer people on a tighter budget, which is fun to watch and be around as the switch from local location to local location.

These were taken pretty close to my house on a beach called White Point, but its also known as Royal Palms. They've been shooting this movie in different locations around my area for several months now.




It really is, Its pretty normal here in southern california but atoms right. Most of the time you can sit on sets for hours and see nothing. But watching them film FF4 was really cool to see how the cars accelerate really fast and only go ten -twenty feet before the director yells cut, then they stop. Its funny how fake films are.

Yeah, I don't like the sheer level of waste on big productions - it just goes against everything I believe in as an indie! I've recently been hitting investors with an attractive package from LA (names attached, etc) with a cash budget of $11M - at least $3M of that is sheer greed or waste (I'm not paying an unheard-of director $400k, I'm not paying an unheard-of scriptwriter $400k either - unless they're names that will help attract finance to the project, that's just waste in my eyes). Similarly, why employ *fifteen* drivers for what's mostly a static shoot? They're not on the screen so I don't want to pay them plus catering and board if twelve of them sleep the whole day.

Call me callous, but this attitude of waste is unhelpful. Don't get me wrong, spend the money on-screen, pay people well to do their jobs, but for a mostly studio shoot with a couple of EXT shots, why pay two complete 4-man camera crews when they'll slow down the shoot (by blocking sitelines so you get 2 average shots instead of one great one) and drive up catering costs by spending the whole day drinking tea and whining? And that fat budget is deterring investors - they look at the backsheets and just turn it away.

I guess a lot comes from "teamster"/over-unionisation attitudes. I'm very liberal at heart, but there's such an attitude of greed and laziness on big shoots, which is why I think indie shooting is much more exciting. Spend all your cash on the screen, have enough good people around, pay them well. Keep the pace up, don't waste money, have a big party afterwards

</rant>

I never saw the third film, but I liked the first one and the second one was OK. You people in the L.A. area are so lucky. When they film a movie here in florida, it never goes north of west palm beach which is an hour and a half away. I live in a fairly small town and 65% of the population is over 60 years old so nothing cool ever happens here.

Yep, UNIONS are the death of the industry. No wonder strikes occur, and studios like to film out of the country.

FF4 is filming right now in LA. They shut down my buddies street in Burbank 2 weeks ago. He was not happy.

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A movie was filmed at my school recently. It was called "Farlanders" and it stars John Krasinski, Jim Gaffigan, and Maggie Gyllenhaal. Our school was standing in for a college campus, just as it did in "College Road Trip" (filmed this summer) for Georgetown. Except "College Road Trip" sucked. Hopefully this comedy, directed by Sam Mendes, will turn out a little better.
Watching them do outdoor shooting for a little while, I was amazed by how remarkably controlled every aspect of the environment was. There was an anti-war demonstration in the film, and all the protesters pumped their fists and waved their arms in the same pattern every take. They didn't make any noise, crowd effects would be added in post as to not mess up the audio track, one PA told me. The extras walked the same pattern and stopped at the same points every take. I guess I knew everything was this rehearsed, but to see it in person was pretty impressive. What I also found was interesting was that a large and powerful light was actually dollied along with the actors as a fill light because the sun was shining harshly on their other side. Just an interesting experience I guess. I also met and talked to one of the producers, Edward Saxon, which was an interesting experience.

Anyone else want this to be titled "Too Fast Too Fourious"?

-Matt

p.s. I agree with the crazy amounts of nothing that occur during a day on a film set. Both me and er-no were on-set for V for Vendetta and Children of Men. LOTS of waiting around.

I don't think Hollywood has always been this way. Back around 1980, My sister, her daughter and I took a trip to Cali so her daughter could attend a hearing clinic at USC. While my niece waa getting her hearing tested at the clinic with my sister, I was spending the day exploring L.A. and watching movies! Got a ticket for jay-walking,and my sister-in-law's brother, who was a Driver Captain at the time, took me to the Burbank Studios and some others where he worked for tv shows. Got to see some filming of "Fantasy Island," "The Love Boat," and a police squad scene from "The Star Chamber." It seemed that they always had just enough people to film the scenes. My brother-in-law (his name is Dave Thomas, just like the SCTV guy), said they were always watching out for wasteful spending on television shoots. He said he had worked on both "The Dukes of Hazzard" and the spin-off "Enos",and they always had about 10 General Lee's and Hazzard County cop cars on portable parking lots out on location for stunt cars, as one would break an axle, one would tear out a transmission, etc. But the shoots were always done on an economical basis, but not so on movie shoots.

Was wondering if you could tell me what date these pics were taken on? Would be much appreciated!

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