California Doubling: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
[[File:
{{quote|''"They really should change the name of Toronto to Fake New York For Use In Movies Only."''|'''James "[[Kibo]]" Parry'''}}
Any exotic foreign locale in a TV series is, due to budget or danger to the cast, likely to actually be somewhere in [[California]], such as [[Kirk's Rock]]. For British sci-fi shows, it's "Quarry Doubling"
One of the most famous examples of this is in ''[[Star Trek]]'' (and all subsequent series), in which every planet they land on looks exactly like the [[Kirk's Rock|deserts of southern California]] or the redwood forests of Northern California, or the mountains of California (assuming it isn't a studio cyclorama instead). Oh, and from time to time the script might call for a beach. Any ideas?
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This can have a very odd effect the first time one ''visits'' southern California. Upon seeing for the first time those scrub-covered hills and twisty roads, one gets a truly unearthly sense of deja vu. Have I been here before, you ask yourself? Then you realize that you have... on TV! For those who live in southern California, it is amusing to point out places one recognizes from TV shows. The most used location is Griffith Park, whose scrabble mountains can be seen in nearly every 1950's "jungle" movie, and ''[[MASH]]''.
This can lead to [[The Mountains of Illinois]] when the setting is full of [[Critical Research Failure
Contrast with [[Canada Does Not Exist]], where the shooting location actually affects the storyline.
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=== Film ===
* Too many to mention have been filmed in Griffith Park, especially 1950's jungle movies. Just keep an eye out for Griffith Mountain.
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* Funny how Culver City, California looks a lot like [[Hogan's Heroes|Nazi Germany]] and [[The Andy Griffith Show|Mayberry, North Carolina]] at the same time.
* Both ''[[Matlock]]'' and ''[[Profiler]]'' were set in or around Atlanta, GA. Were it not for establishing shots, dialogue references, and the opening credits of 'Matlock', no Atlantan would know this.
* ''[[24|Twenty Four]]: Redemption'' features several African jungle scenes set in what are clearly eucalyptus
* ''[[Alias (TV series)|Alias]]'' did this practically every episode. So often in fact, a DVD featurette was called "From Burbank [home of a number of studios in LA] to Barcelona".
* ''[[Angel]]'' had a few episodes supposedly set in places like Rome and U.K. For the U.K. one, they went to a forested area of northern California but were still disappointed at how little it looked like the English countryside. Minutes before they were to film, however, a fog bank rolled in and gave the setting a much more UK feel.
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* Seemingly averted by ''[[The Middle]]''. They seem to have found a neighborhood of ranch houses which could plausibly be in Indiana, and have shown similar discretion in finding other locations. They have also been able to make those exteriors seem like winter or autumn when need be (largely by limiting the scope of the shots), and the footage shown in the background when they're driving also looks like Indiana.
** However, in "The Concert", during the third season, one plot thread takes place by the side of a road, where the surrounding landscape looks a lot more typical of California than central Indiana.
* Inverted in the HBO miniseries version of ''[[Mildred Pierce]]'', where New York doubles as [[The Great Depression|Depression-Era]] California. Fortunately many LA buildings were modeled on ones in NY, and there's even some California-style bungalows built so CA-based actors could feel at
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* ...and the distinctive curved City Hall buildings that appear in Toronto's flag appear time and again as futuristic government, military, or corporate buildings in a host of different science fiction films.
* The movie ''Don't Say A Word'' was filmed in an abandoned subway station in Toronto filling in for a [[New York City]] station. The station (Lower Bay) has filled in for NYC and Chicago stations so many times that the Toronto Transit Commission asked that the movie set be donated to them, giving them a selling point for future location shoots.
* In ''Score! A Hockey Musical'', the establishing shot of the Brampton Blades' home arena is actually a shot of the Port Credit Arena in Mississauga, Ontario (which makes this a case of
* ''[[The Boondock Saints]]'': Both films were made in Toronto, with the exception of overhead establishing shots in Boston. The CN Tower can be seen, as well as a Toronto Dominion bank.
* ''[[Kick-Ass (film)|Kick-Ass]]'' had Hamilton double for New York. Badly (as many instances of Canadian road signs, flags and trademarks still appear often).
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* In the [[Doctor Who]] [[Made for TV Movie]], Vancouver plays [[San Francisco]], but they might as well have acknowledged they were in Vancouver for all the difference it would have made. It only seems like San Francisco in that there's a [[Friendly Local Chinatown]] and a guy almost went to a costume party dressed as [[Oscar Wilde]] (but then the Doctor [[Sticky Fingers|stole his costume]]). In the [[Chase Scene]], there aren't even any hills to speak of.
* This trope is [[Lampshaded]] in [[Studio 60 On the Sunset Strip]] when Danny says they can't afford to make a movie without a bond and Matt responds "We make some budget cuts, we shoot in Vancouver." (Danny refuses, because "Vancouver doesn't look like anything. It doesn't even look like Vancouver. It looks like Boston, California.")
* ''[[Pretty Little Liars]]'' has the rare distinction of getting two entries in this trope (see also
=== Tabletop Games ===
* Explicitly acknowledged and lampshaded in ''[[The Dresden Files]]'' RPG. The GM's section describes what the makers call "The Vancouver Method" of city
{{quote|'''Harry:''' I don't buy it. [[Lampshade Hanging|They couldn't do a TV show based around Chicago in Vancouver.]]
'''Billy:''' You'd be surprised. }}
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** The first two live action ''[[Chronicles of Narnia]]'' films were filmed in predominately Czech Republic and Poland, with some work being done in Slovenia and New Zealand as well.
** Nearly all scenes of ''Eurotrip'' were filmed in or near Prague. No scene was set in the Czech Republic itself, though Slovakia, which was unified with it as Czechoslovakia until 1993, is featured.
* [[Spaghetti Western
** Seeing typical [[Misplaced Vegetation|Mediterranean vegetation]] on typical [[wikipedia:Karst|karst]] rocks in what is supposed to be wild west or Mexico is quite amusing (''"Wait a minute! This could actually be that hill where we use to go to weekend trips."'')
** The same location was used as well in ''[[Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade]]'' and the [[The Young Indiana Jones|prequel TV series]], standing for Greece, the Hatay republic (now in Turkey), Egypt and Mexico. The Mexican episode was later recut and released as a TV movie with additional scenes in the American SW that were ''really'' filmed in the American SW, and it is quite amusing to see how the vegetation and terrain suddenly change as soon as the main character crosses the frontier. [[Grass Is Greener]] here indeed...
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* The two German-produced ''[[The Three Investigators]]'' movies, ''The Three Investigators and the Secret of Skeleton Island'' and ''The Three Investigators and the Secret of Terror Castle'', had California be played by South Africa. This trope was partially averted in the first movie, however, most of which is indeed set in or off the coast of South Africa.
* Although the 1983 film ''The Lords Of Discipline'', about elite military cadets and racism in their ranks, is set in the Southern US, most of the film was shot in England.
* ''Away We Go'' depicts a sort of road trip across the United States, but was almost wholly filmed in
* ''[[A Knight's Tale]]'' had the Czech Republic double for France and London.
* ''[[The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (film)|The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen]]'' was partly filmed in the Czech Republic.
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=== Live Action TV ===
* In ''[[The Tomorrow People]]'': "Worlds Away", on arriving for the first time on an alien planet, one character warns the others, "This isn't just some wood in Surrey," which is [[Lampshade Hanging]] by the
* As the new series of ''[[Doctor Who]]'' is being produced by BBC Wales, Cardiff has
** Ironically, in the third episode, Victorian Cardiff was California Doubled by Swansea, a smaller city nearby - this was due to Cardiff being heavily bombed in [[World War II]], so not many Victorian buildings survived.
** In ''The Vampires Of Venice'', the titular [[City of Canals]] was doubled by the Croatian city of Trogir.
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* [[The BBC]] have been using Ireland for the UK in a couple of productions recently, clearly for the tax breaks.
** Dublin, which has neither skyscrapers nor (surviving) Tudor buildings, has pretended to be New York for the recent film version of ''The Honeymooners'' and 16th century England for numerous episodes of ''[[The Tudors]]''. In films Dublin has also doubled for Liverpool (''Educating Rita'' and ''An Awfully Big Adventure''), London (''Peaches'') and Boston (''Far and Away'').
* "St. Louis, Missouri" in the ''[[Supernatural (TV series)|Supernatural]]'' episode "Skin" looks very Canadian, with pine trees along the highway that is supposedly outside St. Louis (which does have some pine trees, but the deciduous trees dominate them, since their numbers are far more vast). Also, with "Home," Kansas isn't nearly that leafy, and Cape Girardeau is not the racist small town that "Route 666" would have you
* ''Sharpe's Rifles'' had Ukraine doubling as Spain. In fact pretty much all the Sharpe series were filmed in either Ukraine or Turkey. Presumably labour is cheaper there.
** That's actually pretty much true. In a mostly unknown 'making of' documentary for the series, they talk about the awesome Ukranian stunt men who are cheap, plentiful and absolutely insane. Given that the core cast is actually pretty small (6 riflemen, 2 wives, Wellington, Hogan plus a handful of speaking villains du joure) and that any part of the Europen countryside (where all the battles are fought) looks so similar it makes no odds, it makes a LOT more sense to move the production to the stuntmen, rather than transporting and accommodating 200+ psychopathic men and horses to wherever they were needed.
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* ''[[The Good Wife]]'' is set in Chicago and filmed in New York. It's hid pretty well by the fact that much of the filming is in done the outer boroughs. The writers clearly didn't do much research regarding Chicago geography, but that's a whole other trope.
** They did find out the executions of Death Row prisoners are often carried out in Indiana, though, because Terre Haute, IN has a Federal execution chamber, and so Death Penalty appeals lawyers pleading cases in Illinois are often from Indiana. That was a nice touch of Doing the Research.
* Due to the major German television broadcasters producing most of their stuff in Cologne, there is certainly much
* The pilot episode of ''[[Justified]]'' was shot in Western Pennsylvania, doubling for Kentucky. Subsequent episodes have the more common Southern California doubling, though this was averted for one episode that actually took place in Southern California.
* Season 2 of ''[[Leverage]]'' is set in Boston and filmed in Portland, Oregon. (Season 1 averts the trope for the most part, being set and filmed in Los Angeles.)
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