Do you pride yourself in identifying the real filming locations of cities/ countries standing in as somewhere else?

[T & P]

Undoubtedly it is as useless a life skill as they come, but I always feel quite smug when I am watching something and I accurately state that the street scenes that are supposedly set in, say, an Eastern European city were in fact filmed in an Italian or Spanish film. Or even better, when I can tell just by the look of a London street whether it is in N, E, W or S, in particular when the film or series pretends to be set in the wrong quarter of the city.

Any other smug twats like me?

 

[Pickman's model]

Just a modest pride

 

[weltweit]

I am no good at identifying places where films have been made. But there are things that I am quite expert at.

One of my youthful fascinations were motorbikes. I owned three and was often around hundreds more. Plus I knew a bit about engine configurations and exhaust pipes.

What I am getting around to is that show me a motorbike and I will likely as not know what it will sound like.

In films they often dub in sounds afterwards and where motorbikes are concerned they often add the wrong engine sound to the particular motorbike. So you get a Harley Davidson (a V twin four stroke engine) sounding like a GS1000S with a 4 into 1 exhaust and four cylinders.

It isn't just that they get it wrong, it is that they seen to assume that no one will notice!

It is just laziness.

I know only motorbike engines, but if they are so cavalier with motorbikes and their sounds it always make me wonder in what other aspects they make the most basic mistakes?

 

[ouirdeaux]

Like any sort of pedantry, it can be enjoyable and irritating at the same time.

 

[SpookyFrank]

There's a tower block in the first shot of that Ian Curtis biopic that's supposed to be in Macclesfield. It's really in Nottingham. Or it was, they've since torn it down.

The tower blocks in the opening credits of Only Fools and Horses are in Acton, not Peckham. My dad used to live in one of them.

 

[platinumsage]

Countries and cities are quite easy. It's only when you can identify stately homes, churches etc than you can truly be proud.

Although why the producers of The Crown thought Winchester Cathedral could pass for both St Paul's Cathedral and Westminster Abbey is a mystery given their budget.

 

[hitmouse]

If I went to the centre of the city where I lived, and somehow it had been magically replaced by the centre of Budapest or Venice or somewhere, it'd probably still take me a good 5-10 minutes to work it out. I recently watched a series where I knew part of it had been filmed on a street I know quite well, and I still couldn't spot it.

 

[T & P]

I am no good at identifying places where films have been made. But there are things that I am quite expert at.

One of my youthful fascinations were motorbikes. I owned three and was often around hundreds more. Plus I knew a bit about engine configurations and exhaust pipes.

What I am getting around to is that show me a motorbike and I will likely as not know what it will sound like.

In films they often dub in sounds afterwards and where motorbikes are concerned they often add the wrong engine sound to the particular motorbike. So you get a Harley Davidson (a V twin four stroke engine) sounding like a GS1000S with a 4 into 1 exhaust and four cylinders.

It isn't just that they get it wrong, it is that they seen to assume that no one will notice!

It is just laziness.

I know only motorbike engines, but if they are so cavalier with motorbikes and their sounds it always make me wonder what other aspects do they make basic mistakes.

I’m very similar to you regarding commercial aircraft. I am forever pointing out to my OH the discrepancies in films showing footage of a narrowbody passenger plane taking off as seen from the outside, followed by interior shots showing a widebody model. Extra points (and extra eye rolling by my long suffering partner) when I point out continuity or factual errors having an Airbus plane passing as a Boeing or viceversa.

 

[ATOMIC SUPLEX]

.

 

[8ball]

I used to enjoy pointing out that the weirdly generic American city in The Matrix was actually Sydney, but I think everyone knows that by now.

A mate of mine made a film set in a Muslim theocracy and it looked super-convincing.

It was Southampton.

And I like to point out that Wayne Manor in The Dark Knight was actually Wollaton Hall, less than 2 miles from my house.

 

[ouirdeaux]

[edited because my comment lost whatever sense it had had by being out of sequence]

 

[Ax^]

aside from tons of american shows were you just go


thats canada ehh

 

[ska invita]

Like any sort of pedantry, it can be enjoyable and irritating at the same time.

Just irritating imo
Likewise continuity bores.... I've never noticed a continuity error in my life... Seems a depressing way to view a film.

Also try my best not to learn actors names... Just breaks the suspension of disbelief

 

[8ball]

I noticed yesterday that a production company is filming a Robyn Hood TV series in the Toronto area and trying to pass it off as Nottingham.

Coincidentally, another production company is doing the exact same thing in Nottingham.

Edit: for any spelling geeks out there - they both involve a female lead

 

[8ball]

Just irritating imo
Likewise continuity bores.... I've never noticed a continuity error in my life... Seems a depressing way to view a film.

Also try my best not to learn actors names... Just breaks the suspension of disbelief

If you get a little into learning the production process, nothing major, just like watching “making of” extras etc, you start noticing more things.

I don’t think I ever did til I started reviewing films for a local film festival.

 

[scifisam]

Oh hell yeah. It doesn't help that I live somewhere there's a fair amount of filming and have holidayed a couple of times in LA. I have to hold back from saying "that's Venice Beach! We stayed in a house on that street!" or "that's the kid's playpark down the road from here!"

 

[ouirdeaux]

Toronto is an amazing place, because you can have it stand in for anything from a metropolis to a rural town, if you pick the right bits and keep the CN Tower out of shot. Someone more nerdy than I can probably reel off a list of films ostensibly set in other locations that were filmed there.

 

[SpookyFrank]

The village where my grandparents lived was used for an episode of Doctor Who way back in the 70's. To this day there's a dalek stood outside the village pub to commemorate this.

This village was also a billet for the septic 101st airborne in the run up to D-day. The opening episode of Band of Brothers is set there, but was filmed somewhere else.

 

[farmerbarleymow]

Any other smug twats like me?

No.

Reminds me of my parents who used to do a running commentary while anything was on telly, about who had been in so and so. Tedious and annoying.

 

[SpookyFrank]

And I like to point out that Wayne Manor in The Dark Knight was actually Wollaton Hall, less than 2 miles from my house.

The people who run the place also like to point this out. Even the wheelie bins have bat symbols spray painted on them.

 

[8ball]

I was a bit thrown by Source Code.
If they mentioned the location in the film I didn’t notice it but it makes Chicago look way more like a modern European city than it did in the cop shows of my youth.

 

[T & P]

As a next level of film location nerdiness, I was also quite pleased to realise and tell others that whereas some footage of Marvel’s Moon Knight was undoubtedly filmed on location in London, the main characters were never there.

So when you see Oscar Isaac’s character and his wife riding a Vespa in Vauxhall, you only the riders always from the back (and therefore unidentifiable) on those scenes irrefutably showing a scooter with two people travelling on London streets. But whenever the shot changes to show their faces, the background is fuzzy and clearly shopped.

In other words, none of the main characters spent a minute filming in London. Even though the production team did film in London using stand-in actors.

 

[ouirdeaux]

No.

Reminds me of my parents who used to do a running commentary while anything was on telly, about who had been in so and so. Tedious and annoying.

That's a logical contradiction.

 

[Magnus McGinty]

Undoubtedly it is as useless a life skill as they come, but I always feel quite smug when I am watching something and I accurately state that the street scenes that are supposedly set in, say, an Eastern European city were in fact filmed in an Italian or Spanish film. Or even better, when I can tell just by the look of a London street whether it is in N, E, W or S, in particular when the film or series pretends to be set in the wrong quarter of the city.

Any other smug twats like me?

My mother gets obsessed with where stuff is filmed. I let the suspension of disbelief continue unless it's obvious that I recognise somewhere. Which is rare.

 

[T & P]

Just irritating imo
Likewise continuity bores.... I've never noticed a continuity error in my life... Seems a depressing way to view a film.

Also try my best not to learn actors names... Just breaks the suspension of disbelief

You’d absolutely hate a movie night round at mine, I fear

 

[SpookyFrank]

As a next level of film location nerdiness, I was also quite pleased to realise and tell others that whereas some footage of Marvel’s Moon Knight was undoubtedly filmed on location in London, the main characters were never there.

So when you see Oscar Isaac’s character and his wife riding a Vespa in Vauxhall, you only the riders always from the back (and therefore unidentifiable) on those scenes irrefutably showing a scooter with two people travelling on London streets. But whenever the shot changes to show their faces, the background is fuzzy and clearly shopped.

In other words, none of the main characters spent a minute filming in London. Even though the production team did film in London using stand-in actors.

My dad's mate is Martin Clunes for all the bits of Doc Martin that Martin Clunes can't be bothered to film.

 

[weltweit]

..
So when you see Oscar Isaac’s character and his wife riding a Vespa in Vauxhall, you only the riders always from the back (and therefore unidentifiable) on those scenes irrefutably showing a scooter with two people travelling on London streets. But whenever the shot changes to show their faces, the background is fuzzy and clearly shopped.

But did the Vespa's sound right?

Single cylinder two stroke

 

[T & P]

Toronto is an amazing place, because you can have it stand in for anything from a metropolis to a rural town, if you pick the right bits and keep the CN Tower out of shot. Someone more nerdy than I can probably reel off a list of films ostensibly set in other locations that were filmed there.

Undoubtedly it looks amazing as a stock skyscraper-laden North American city, but I thought the main draw of it (and other Canadian locations) being used as US places was Canada’s much more advantageous tax rates and overall location filming costs?

 

[Magnus McGinty]

Likewise continuity bores.... I've never noticed a continuity error in my life... Seems a depressing way to view a film.

An editor's nightmare. Why have clocks. Or even night and day?

 

[tim]

I remember sitting in a cinema in central Liverpool watching "Letter from Brezhnev" getting irritated about the route taken from one place to another being totally illogical. I also felt slightly smug and rather surprised at recognising the location (a building, at the end of an obscure platform at Rimini station) in a short scene from Fellini's "I vitelloni". The oddest thing was that 50+ years on it hadn't changed at all; no doubt it has been redeveloped since I was last there.