California Doubling: Difference between revisions

 

=== Live-Action TV ===

* ''[[Farscape]]'' filmed entirely in Australia, including Earth scenes that were supposed to be located on the Florida Space Coast. For all that the beaches are decidedly different, upper middle class tract housing can evidently be pretty similar in both places.

** Specifically: IASA's HQ shown in "Won't Get Fooled Again" was shot in and around Sydney Olympic Park, in Homebush (a 5min drive from the studio where seasons 2-4 were shot) - ANZ stadium doubles as a launch pad (CGI rocket stuck in the middle of it) and the distinct spiral building seen several times in the background is actually part of the car park near the Acer Arena. The gardens in the "Look At The Princess" trilogy were actually the Japanese gardens in Auburn. The beach in "Scratch & Sniff" was in Maroubra. The dock often seen in Crichton's dream sequences was actually right outside the industrial park in Homebush where seasons 2-4 were shot. The old gun emplacement at Middle Head doubled for several alien military encampments and ancient ruins.

 

=== Live Action TV ===

* 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.

* ''[[Doctor Quinn Medicine Woman]]'' substituted Southern California for the Colorado mountains... poorly. Especially with such sights as the cast climbing the gentle, rolling slopes of Pike's Peak, lush with the dry brown grass of summer.

* ''[[The Drew Carey Show]]'' was set in [[Cleveland Rocks|Cleveland, Ohio]], but filmed in Burbank, California.

* ''[[Firefly]]'' takes advantage of this phenomenon, as the show has a Western feel to it, so it is entirely appropriate for every outlying backwoods planet to look like Old West California.

** Despite the fact that it had a comparatively higher budget than the TV series, the movie sequel to it, ''[[Serenity]]'', nonetheless has a planet that, CGI aside, is represented by a local high school campus. The chase scene around the Companion Training House seems to have been similarly filmed in local woods, with the rest of the landscape around it having been filled in with CGI and basically all of the other settings being either soundstages, the Universal lot, or CGI.

* Particularly ridiculous in ''[[Little House on the Prairie (TV series)|Little House On the Prairie]]'' which is set in Minnesota, a state not exactly known for its mountains or its long stretches of lush green summery weather.

* The "Korean" setting of ''[[M*A*S*H (television)|Mash]]'' is actually a section of Malibu Creek State Park in California, which was then the "Fox Ranch". Other scenes were shot in Griffith Park.

* ''[[Monk]]'' is set in San Francisco and filmed in Culver City. There are buses with the word CULVER written in five-foot-high orange letters that went through the end of the [[Cult]] episode. One episode has Monk wander his way to the train station after three nights of sleep deprivation. The station used for the shot was clearly the LA Union Station, leading the audience to wonder just how far Monk had wandered off.

** So I guess that would be California doubling for...California.

* ''[[NCIS]]'' is set in Washington DC and filmed in California. When they had to go to Arizona in an episode they were still in California, surrounded by the unmistakable rock formations near Simi Valley.

* ''[[The Office]]'' had one episode taking place in Winnipeg, but shot in California. In fact, while they have occasionally filmed exteriors for the U.S. version at real Scranton, Pennsylvania locations, most of the show is filmed near L.A.

* ''[[Roswell]]'' heavily featured [[Kirk's Rock]] for the wilderness scenes, while the town itself was actually Covina, CA.

* ''[[Silk Stalkings]]'' was set in Palm Beach, Florida, but filmed mostly in San Diego. See also [[The Mountains of Illinois]].

=== Real Life ===

* California has doubled for '''the moon''': certain rocks there contain the same minerals as the moon, and the astronauts did some training in Death Valley.

* [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/02/wisconsin-protests-fox-news-sacramento_n_830314.html O'Reilly used video from Sacramento], discussing last winter's protests in Wisconsin. ("Subtropical Wisconsin" in January.)

** Likewise, FNC also used footage of protests in Athens in a report on similar protests in ''Moscow''. An item on the equally fair and balanced (!) Russia Today Channel helpfully pointed out that the street signs in the report were in the Greek alphabet, not Cyrillic.

** Maybe the movie was filmed with German money. ''The Machinist'' was set in LA, but filmed in Barcelona, because it was made with Spanish money.

*** This, by the way, is why the film's title is in Spanish on [[IMDb]]

* In ''[[Maverick (film)|Maverick]]'', the climactic poker game is set on a riverboat steaming the Mississippi River south of St. Louis. Anyone familiar with the area knows that the exterior scenes of the riverboat were shot somewhere very, very different from the Mississippi River south of St. Louis (probably on a river in the Pacific Northwest).

** Not to mention the bizarre detour through [[wikipedia:Yosemite|Yosemite National Park]]. Seriously, the scene takes place right under Half Dome.

** Helsinki, Finland also has a reputation as standing in for Moscow in many American films, such as [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082979/ Reds] and [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0085615/ Gorky Park].

*** Sort of averted in ''[[Red Heat]]'' - Budapest (another one!) played Moscow for most of the movie, but the footage behind the [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sf_3QeDwDS0 opening (contains nudity and violence; credits start at 4:39)] and [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8oYAuJlS-vM closing credits (from the 4:21 mark)] really was shot there.

** The producers of ''Fiddler on the Roof'' scouted locations across Eastern Europe but finally settled on Yugoslavia (largely because they couldn't get permission to film in other countries.)

** ''[[The Kite Runner]]'' filmed in Kashgar, China for Afghanistan; ''The Power of One'' filmed in Zimbabwe for South Africa (this was before the fall of apartheid); Thailand has been used for Burma, Cambodia and Vietnam; Malaysia was used for Thailand in ''Anna and the King''. And movies set in Tibet have been filmed in the mountains of Argentina and Morocco.

* ''[[For Richer or Poorer]]'' was the first in a growing number of Baltimore Doubling. Notably outrageous though as the much of the movie takes place in Lancaster PA, which is not that far from where the film was actually shot.

* Parts of the Czech Republic and Poland often double for parts of Austria or Germany. They stick up German language street and shop signs.

** 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.

* ''[[Cold Mountain]]'', set in the South during the [[American Civil War]] was mostly shot in Romania.

* [[Steven Spielberg]]'s ''[[Munich]]'', scenes set in Tel Aviv, Beirut, Cyprus, Athens and Rome where filmed at Malta, and scenes set in London, Rome, Paris, New York City and a German airport were filmed in Budapest.

* Practically any movie set in the Middle East is filmed in Morocco for political and security reasons.

* Virginia has done its of doubling as well, both for itself and for other parts of the Eastern US:

** Hogwarts is meant to be located in Scotland, but the series was filmed almost entirely in England. Hogwarts environs were sometimes filmed on location in Scotland and sometimes not. The Forbidden Forest and the Black Lake are located within short distances of each other in-universe, but they were filmed in Buckinghamshire and Highland respectively.

* Whereas ''Boogeyman'' was set in the US but filmed in New Zealand, the sequels were set in the US and filmed in Bulgaria.

* 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.