>At 03:44 PM 10/13/00 -0500, puttnut wrote:
>>I was watching American Movie Classics one time, and to fill in a couple
>>minutes they had a little clip on where movie studios get some of their
>>military vehicles. This guy was walking down a row of WW2 jeeps on one side
>>of him, and a row of HMMWV and M37 etc. on the other side. CCKW and others
>>in background. Not sure if this was a studio owner or private owner they
>>visited, but at least 50 military vehicles in the view. All looked restored
>>in good shape. They did not have the program listed in the TV guide.
>>
>>Scott
>
I work for a movie company in Vancouver. We're doing a number of
series in town, 'Dark Angel' and 'Freedom' among them, and the vehicles
used by these and other films/series in town come from a variety of
sources.
>
If you take 'Dark Angel' as an example, they've got a number of Hummers
from AM General (through GM, I believe) as 'product placement' units
to be used gratis throughout the production in the hopes that seeing the
things on TV will somehow spur the North American buying public
into purchasing them. In addition to the product placement ones (painted
black, but with all the civvy doo-dads instead of the military ones), the
company I work for has supplied an M998 painted flat black with
a surplus issue 4-man soft-top painted with black vinyl paint which
they likewise rented for the length of the production, in addition to
the standard U.S. Army/USMC camouflaged variety on a daily
basis when the scripts call for them.
Aside from the product placement vehicles and those picture vehicles
rented from local establishments, the production company will frequently
purchase vehicles outright for the duration of the production ("Dark
Angel" owns a Unimog 404) and/or create and heavily modify
purchased vehicles for certain episodes or scenes. Some of these
vehicles wind up in private hands courtesy of the production-end
wrap sales, where others are destroyed as part of the agreement
with the manufacturer of the automobile (i.e. the Dodge Vipers
used in "Viper"), or are destroyed due to being so heavily modified
as to be unfit for the road, or properties the production company
would be loathe to see in other outfits' productions down the road (i.e.,
the 'weirdies' built as hero cars for last year's FOX series
"Harsh Realm".)
In Vancouver there are three-four companies which supply military
vehicles to local productions, as well as a number of picture vehicle
outfits that merely act as a sort of broker for a list of clients with
specialty vehicles in the event a director is after a certain 'look', and/or
the film in question is a period piece requiring vehicles of a certain
vintage.
The M43 from 'Goldfinger' may well be languishing on some backlot
somewhere, but my bet is that it's fate was probably more along
lines of those Harsh Realm 'weirdies' I spoke of. Taking off
my HMV collector's cap for the moment - it's just not cost
effective to keep stuff up that doesn't rent. However, having
said that - evidently the faux-military vehicle from the
Jan-Michael Vincent flick "Damnation Alley" still shows up
in vacant lots from time-to-time in California, so you
never know.
Andy Hill
MVPA 9211
Vancouver, B.C.
(company owns probably some 60-plus
vehicles ranging everywhere from
CMP's to GPW's, M-series galore,
Mungas, a German M.A.N., bunch
of Land Rover 109's, Defender 110's
etc. - bunch of M35'S, bunch of
CUCV's, six HUMV's...yada yada..)
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Wed Nov 01 2000 - 21:37:43 PST