In California's backcountry, seeking movie backdrops
Every year, thousands of film fans become location scouts of sorts as they search for scenes shot in the Alabama Hills, a badlands that has appeared in more than 700 movie and TV productions.
By Louis Sahagun
Photography and video by Mark Boster
Reporting from Lone Pine, Calif.

As howling winds tore through the eastern Sierra, Dan Gillespie and his wife Carol trudged along a narrow gravel path, their eyes alternating between photos they carried and the contours of a cove guarded by granite walls.

At one point, Carol held up a photograph of a campfire scene in "Django Unchained," which is set in the South just before the Civil War. She moved the photo to the left, then to the right. She squinted, then broke into a smile. Pointing to a nearby rock, she said that actor Jamie Foxx "stood right there."

The Gillespies and three other people on this outing were location scouts of sorts — and they had just found their prize.

Like thousands of other film buffs and historians who flock here every year, they found the location of a movie scene shot in the Alabama Hills, a high-desert badlands of gullies, canyons and outcroppings at the foot of Mt. Whitney that has appeared in more than 700 movie and television productions.


http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-movie-museum-20130429-dto,0,4821011.htmlstory

I was hiking around the movie and TV areas some years ago and found an old slightly wrecked fake boulder that was apparently rolled down the cliff onto some unsuspecting invading army or something. The thing was about two feet in diameter. Very crudly made, lots of sticks stapled together, wraped in some mesh, and coated with something like stucco. It's fun to find stuff like that. The finale battle from Gunga Din location is very interesting too. One other thing that stood out was the abrasive the surface of the granite. Those extras probably got ground up pretty good.

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Old Dude

Just make sure you don't find any live graboids.

I watched Django Unchained on Friday and realized their campsite is my favorite little spot to camp in the Alabama Hills. A while ago I was frustrated to find that spot taken over by a movie trailer when I pulled in late one night. Guess they were filming then - darn it, I would have loved to meet Christoph Waltz.

If you turkeys get a kick out of this article... then you should really look at
Steve Hall's Death Valley Star Wars exclusive. Really cool.

http://www.panamintcity.com/exclusives/starwars.html

May The Force Be With You

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