We are constantly working on educating ourselves in the video production industry. A monumental part of that is cinematography. On November 11-13 I was able to attend an incredibly powerful cinematography workshop with Shane Hurlbut, ASC. Shane has become a great friend and mentor to us Hamil Bros! We met Shane back in 2014 on his Illumination Experience Tour stop in Dallas (Click here to read more about that).
FOX STUDIOS
Without further adieu, let’s get started! I flew into Burbank on November 10 and headed for my little AirBnB room. A little quaint room, but perfect for this trip. I strongly recommend you check out AirBnB for your housing solutions when you travel. This was an excellent experience and I will most definitely be doing that again! After I checked into my room, I got to meet up with a couple of good friends of mine in LA, Jason Honeycutt, an editor at FX, and Will Stewart, a fellow Director of Photography (DP) based in Greenville, SC. Jason took will and I on a personal tour of the Fox Studios Lot which was MINDBLOWING! It was so surreal to see all these places I’ve only heard about.
THE BAY OF EDITORS
Firstly, we took a walk around the editing bays where we happened upon an editor working the night shift cutting promotional materials for several FX shows. He was so kind and asked Will and myself what exactly we did. Inside the halls are BIG 10 ft tall posters of the shows that FX has produced: “The Shield”, “Sons of Anarchy” (my personal favorite FX show), “Rescue Me”, and so on. From there it was on to rest of the Lot where the sound stages are located.
THE SOUND STAGES
We visited most of the lot, but some places were actually in the middle of shoots so we had to work our way around them. I think one of the tarps outside a sound stage said “New Girl” so it was cool to know real productions were happening as we were talking around. We visited so many cool places like an on-site GIANT theater where they screen films. There was a row of Oscars for different films, two of which were for “The Sound of Music” and “The King and I.”
We got to briefly look inside a few of the sound stages which had these GIANT murials of blockbuster FOX films painted on the side. My personal favorite was the “Young Frankenstein” Building featuring a murial of Gene Wilder as the ever memorable Frederick von Frankenstein and Terri Garr as his assistant, Inga.
We got to step just inside one of the sound stages and take a few photos before we moved along with our tour. I was completely blown away by the 20 ft high ceilings, the endless supply of grip equipment, the false walls, wall flats, true film cameras, and all sorts of amazingness. Wow. It’s just stunning to see the reality of BIG shoots and everything they have. I’m still having a hard time taking it in, and as I’m writing this, that was 4 days ago! HA!
We had a fantastic time touring the FOX Studios Lot and as soon as we got our picture in front of the sign, we wrapped up, and took a trip to somewhere in LA (I’m not remotely familiar with anything in the state of California) and had some of the MOST AMAZING Japanese BBQ I’ve ever had in my entire life. It’s really a HUGE thanks to Jason for taking us around on our first night in LA.
Enjoy the rest of these photos!
Hamil Bros Studios is a high quality video production company based in Lubbock, TX. Their work spreads throughout West Texas, Eastern New Mexico, and beyond.