The Most Unconvincing Film Locations Of All Time

Star Trek The Motion Picture: In Space, no one should see the studio rafters.

 

In fairness this portion of the scene (Kirk going after Spock before he enters the inner chamber of V'ger...phrasing!) is only in the Special Longer Version, not the theatrical cut.

 

That is the Anheuser-Busch's Van Nuys Budweiser factory, also made famous for the "beer factor line" shots in the opening credits to Laverne & Shirley. My guess at the time was that Paramount knew about the place and had J.J. Abrams take a look at the place, and I think he felt it looked "industrial" enough to pass for an engine room. They did modify the room quite a bit for the film, so it's not all 2013 Van Nuys factory.

The worst mistakes I can remember were the Mission: Impossible TV episodes that took place somewhere "behind the Iron Curtain" but were in reality shot on the Paramount lot on Melrose in Hollywood. Inevitably in the background, you could see the tops of palm trees in the distance...and trust me, there are no palm trees in East Germany or Yugoslavia or Czechoslovakia or Russia.

Yeah, I was at Modern Videofilm when we mastered these shots for Paramount, and they were just too cheap to finish the VFX for those shots. Nowadays, had it been me, I would have blown up the shot or found pieces of other scene to matte around it just to limp by. Hell, fuzzy black would be better than seeing the 2x4's and all that stuff. I was appalled that Paramount let that go, but at the time, they kept saying that it was ABC's decision as to whether to cough up enough money for the new material. They didn't, so it aired that way.

I'm working on a 1970s film that has a lot of shots of Hollywood in that period, and they do that standard deal where one moment the car is obviously in Beverly Hills, then in mid-conversation they're in the Sunset Strip, then they stop and the guy gets out somewhere in West LA and then immediately winds up at the beach. Each of these in real life is at least 5-10 miles apart. I'm reminded of the TV series 24, where Jack Bauer worked out of the CTU building in West LA. The problem is, episodes required him to instantly hop in the car and drive to the Valley (30-40 minutes at the least) or downtown (another 45 minutes) or god forbid, Long Beach (an hour at best). In the show, each one took maybe 5 minutes... even though the story was supposed to be taking place in "real time." Lotta cheats involved there, but that's the usual filmmaking smoke & mirrors.

 

Yes, there were definitely no palm trees near prisoner-of-war camps in Germany. But they did exist in Culver City, where the 40 Acres movie lot was located. Here's a better shot...



That could well be the famous Columbia Pictures water tower in the distance, which is still there. I'm still not buying the fake snow on the ground.

 

Don't want this thread drifting too far off topic, but this classic pic is always worth posting:



TV sets used on other shows

 

Yes, I’m aware of the details about the specific location, and I understand the reasoning for choosing that site. I guess what I’m saying is that it’s all wrong for the aesthetic of the film, particularly regarding the supposed state-of-the-art mystique of the Enterprise. When I saw that scene it took me right out of my involvement in the movie. I remember thinking, “What the hell?” It suddenly became obvious that this was a present period set, and completely disconnected from the rest of the film.

I’d say for TV shows like that, for that time, it was a fairly minor issue. I’ve been watching some of those Mission Impossible episodes recently, and I’d assume anyone viewing them at the time wouldn’t be distracted by such a minor diversion. Unless, of course, one lives in the Los Angeles area. Ever since I’ve spent a brief time there, I always enjoy trying to play the “Guess Where That Was Shot” game.

 

Yeah it kind of kills the Kubrick perfectionist thing. FMJ looks nothing like southeast Asia to me.
Not a fan of EWS but I remember thinking that London wasn't that convincing as New York

 

Speaking of Mission: Impossible, they revived the show in 1988 and shot two series in Australia. One episode was supposedly set in London, but was clearly shot in Brisbane. Everything was wrong: the architecture, the light. They had this one red double decker bus they'd hired that would appear in exterior shots every so often, but this totally failed in making it any more convincing.

 

There is a dramatic telling of the Def Leppard story. They hail from Sheffield which is about 200 miles north of London. In an early scene we see the M25 circular highway that goes around London.

1) it wasn't built when the scene is supposed to take place.
2) it doesn't have Sheffield as an exit.
3) it is in completely the wrong part of the country

 

The moon from Nude On The Moon

 

Which mountains I see two.

 

Which is unusual for Kubrick. Still, one has to wonder if this was somehow symbolic of something other than laziness.

 

She mooned as well?

 

Well to be fair, that sequence was unfinished and never meant to be seen.

 

It always helps to have a beer room on a ship. I guess this looked more convincing to anyone who hasn’t been in a brewery.

 

Kevin Smith's Mallrats is supposed to be set in NJ. However the mall they actually filmed at was in Minnesota which clearly looks nothing like exurban NJ.

 

Narnia

 

Fellini's Casanova set in a rough sea of what looks like a bunch of Hefty trash bags undulating. (See the Trivia section in IMDB).

 

So I was about to point out this is from the first film where a brewery is used. Turns out I'm hilariously wrong!

Star Trek: Into Darkness - Filming Locations (part 2)

The earlier engine room scenes are in a much more fitting location:

 

Stalag 17's barren California hills don't quite work as a substitute for Germany to me. Ditto for the Golden State in 1938's The Dawn Patrol standing in for the Western Front in northern France and the same for the WW1 scenes of Chaplin's The Great Dictator.

 

If we can mention TV shows, I will throw Ozark out there. My family and I have been to the Lake of the Ozarks over the years more times than I can count, and the show Ozark looks almost nothing like it (I believe they film it in Georgia). I still like the show a lot, but I always chuckle a little at how it looks nothing like the real Ozarks.

 

But don’t you think that was the intention?

 

I once saw a Steven Segal movie on TV (don't ask me which one) which was supposedly set in Chicago, but there's a car chase scene through Chicago's streets with numerous palm trees visible.