Famous Film Locations

Lord Manhammer

DIS Veteran
Joined
Aug 22, 2015
I'm a part of a Facebook group which features film tourists going to famous locations where things were filmed and posting a still from the movie and what it looks like today. It's a really fun group which made me wonder if anyone here has ever done that. I'll post one of my favourites below, Chippewa Square in Savannah GA where they filmed the park bench scenes in Forrest Gump. If you are in the square and look over your shoulder, you can see the church and steeple where the feather flew down. Really cool. I took the photo in 2013.
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One of my favorite movies of all time, Animal House, was filled in my home town and at the University of Oregon. I love the fact that the U of O has an entire webpage and even a map to help people see many of the most famous scenes of the movie. For those of us that grew up in Eugene I had a blast scouting out the various locations, and now its all on a map.

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Next trip to Charleston SC we plan on going down to Beaufort, SC where they filmed many other scenes from Forrest Gump; like the Viet Nam scenes and the shrimping boat scenes. There's a church there where they film him singing with a gospel choir also in that area.

I watched several movies' being filmed in both Chicago and out in Vegas. Also, went to the cemetery in New Orleans where they filmed a scene in Easy Rider.
 


We visited the Heartland ranch (from the TV show Heartland). DD16 was a huge fan of the show at the time. We flew into Alberta (Canada) and drove approximately two hours to get to the town where it's filmed. An employee at one of the stores gave us directions on a post-it note to the actual ranch - with no street names, just lines on a post-it. We found it somehow and took lots of pictures of the ranch, cars, etc. (signs posted saying not to go there). Its was quite the adventure!

If you haven't watched Heartland, I highly recommend it.

On another note...

If you eat at Lacroix in the Rittenhouse Hotel in Philadelphia, you'll find paintings on the walls with the names of the characters in Trading Places (Ophelia, etc.). The paintings don't reference the movie in any way (I think "Ophelia" is a painting of a boat, for example). Not sure what came first, the paintings or the movie, but it's fun to wonder. I think the writer used the paintings to inspire the character names, but that's just my theory.
 
I don't remember any particular ones out in the world, but I have taken the Warner Bros. sudio tour a couple of times, so, I mean, tons. The tour guide had brought us a specific way where the water tower was visible and said we might recongize a pretty famous scene from that perspective. I was the only one in the group who knew - Blazing Saddles! I walked in the footsteps of greatness.
 
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I don't remember any particular ones out in the world, but I ahve taken teh Warner Bros. sudio tour a couple of times, so, I mean, tons. The tour guide had brought us a specific way where the water tower was visible and said we might recongize a pretty famous scene from that perspective. I was the only one in the group who knew - Blazing Saddles! I walked in the footsteps of greatness.
What in the wide wide world of sports is going on here?!
 
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Living in the San Francisco Bay Area, there are obviously many well known locations used in filming. I do live near Berkeley, California, which had a lot of locations for The Graduate. They weren't given permission to film on the University of California campus, but they did get permission from the city and a lot of that includes parts of the campus in the background.
 
I've heard a lot of people go on Hitchcock tours of San Francisco, even though he rarely filmed on location. I think some shots were made in San Francisco and then projected into a background. He tended to recreate areas on soundstages.
 
I've been to the Cliffs of Moher in Ireland a few times and the cliffs have appeared in movies such as Princess Bride and Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. The cliffs are touristy but they're beautiful and totally worth seeing.

A bit more obscure but parts of the movie The Witness were filmed in Lancaster, PA and the majority of the extras were local Mennonite people due to Amish people not being allowed to be filmed. One of the scenes was filmed close to Franklin & Marshall college. As an added bonus a few of the professors at the college played extras in the film.
 
A bit more obscure but parts of the movie The Witness were filmed in Lancaster, PA and the majority of the extras were local Mennonite people due to Amish people not being allowed to be filmed. One of the scenes was filmed close to Franklin & Marshall college. As an added bonus a few of the professors at the college played extras in the film.

Depends on the order. I've heard some Amish (in very large families) even use computers where they work since they often have too few jobs on their farms now.

Specifically serving as extras for a movie might be something they don't allow, but I've heard of Amish posing for photos or knowingly being allowed to be caught on video when asked respectfully.
 
Depends on the order. I've heard some Amish (in very large families) even use computers where they work since they often have too few jobs on their farms now.

Specifically serving as extras for a movie might be something they don't allow, but I've heard of Amish posing for photos or knowingly being allowed to be caught on video when asked respectfully.
For filming of the Witness specifically, the local Amish communities did now allow their members to be extras in the film. All of the Amish people seen in the movie are Mennonites.
 
We visited Oxford, England this summer and went into the Divinity School building which has been in many movies but is most notably known as being the infirmary in Harry Potter. I just recently saw Wonka and about 2/3 of the way through I said to my daughter this looks like it was filmed in Oxford too. One of final scenes of the movie prominently features the big domed library in the one of its squares. We have run up the Rocky Steps in Philly and also stayed at the El Tovar on the rim of the Grand Canyon where a scene from National Lampoons Vacation was filmed where Clark was trying to get a check cashed at the check in desk. It's cool to see the places you have traveled in movies.
 

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