Holy historic landmark, Batman! It’s Bronson Canyon! Along with Griffith Observatory, Bronson Canyon is an iconic and much filmed feature of Griffith Park. For Hollywood, particularly low budget productions, Bronson Canyon is an ideal filming location given its proximity to studios while maintaining a rugged terrain. It’s been a favorite of westerns and science fiction for it’s rocky, deserted, alien landscape…
Category: Places of Interest
Department of the Interior Museum
Along with assorted administrative offices, the Department of the Interior (DOI) building in Washington DC houses a museum. As a result of a recent renovation effort, only part of the museum is open, but the little that is there focuses on the DOI in print, art, and—most importantly to us—film. With sweeping vistas and alien terrain to oversee, it is little…
Los Angeles County Arboretum
Los Angeles has many popular filming locations, but few can be the backdrop for a tropical island or jungle wilderness. One rare convenient location for Hollywood is the Los Angeles Arboretum, whose palm fringed pools and prehistoric forrest has been the settings for shoots from Fantasy Island to Jurassic Park. The LA Arboretum finds some of its original landscaping in…
Salton Sea
Few locations so perfectly meld eerie and picturesque as the Salton Sea. Once a thriving beach escape, the Salton Sea was a historic lake bed that, through a fluke of engineering enjoyed a second life in the 50s. The lake has fluctuated between desert and lake for thousands of years depending on water flow replenishing the basin. In the interest of…
Salvation Mountain
Between the Salton Sea and Slab City, in the heart of the Colorado Desert, California, is the life’s work of one man that has drawn visitors and inspired a striking scene in the 2007 film “Into The Wild.” Salvation Mountain is an art installation that was continuously maintain by its creator, Leonard Knight, until he was committed to a nursing…