DIVERSIONS : Lights! Camera! Action! : Tours Offer a Look at What Goes On Behind the Scenes at the Area’s Film and TV Studios

We had been on the Paramount Pictures tour barely one minute when “Ghost” producer Howard W. Koch sauntered by.

A few seconds later, Diane Keaton also passed us, before disappearing into an office building.

And as we made our way to the New York Street exterior set, we saw Michael J. Fox as he checked out shots for the “Brooklyn Bridge” episode he would be directing.

OK, so such celebrity sightings aren’t guaranteed, but if you take a local studio tour, what is certain is that you’ll get a behind-the-scenes look at film and TV making, along with a short course in Film History 101.

The first studio to give a more personal tour was Warner Bros. in Burbank, where a two-hour VIP Tour provides an unstaged look at whatever happens to be going on around the 108-acre main lot.

After a short talk, guests watch a compilation of classic film clips. Then it’s off to the back lot--in this case, New York Street--for an explanation of the false fronts used in filming the exterior sets. Guests are usually permitted to explore a sound stage and occasionally see filming.

On the “Life Goes On” set, the tour guide points out two stairways “that go absolutely nowhere,” a lone locker-filled high school corridor and a classroom that has doubled as a library and city hall.

In the studio mill, guests see the set construction, tin, sheet metal and welding departments. A standout in the fixtures department, with its lamps and wall sconces of every description, is a 1,500-pound $75,000 crystal chandelier made in Czechoslovakia for a “My Fair Lady” ballroom scene and soon to appear in the Catwoman’s lair in “Batman II.”

The transportation department affords up-close-and-personal views of vintage cars, tanks, a carriage used by Jack Warner when he rode in parades.

This day the tour concluded on the set of “Murphy Brown” for a camera run-through with stand-ins.

The Warner Bros. Studios, 4000 Warner Blvd., Burbank. Mon.-Fri., 10 a.m. and 2 p.m., with additional tours during summer and some holidays. Admission: $24. No children under age 10. Lunch in the commissary available at extra charge. Reservations required . Call (818) 954-1744.

The Paramount Pictures tour, modeled after Warner Bros., is also unstaged, with tour guides adapting each two-hour excursion to accommodate guests’ interests.

Visitors are not allowed on the sets of “Star Trek: The Next Generation” or “The Arsenio Hall Show,” but they are usually allowed on the top-rated “Cheers” sound stage.

On this particular day, “Cheers” director James Burrows supervises camera blocking with stand-ins, while co-star John Ratzenberger, who plays Cliff, stands nearby chatting.

(Tour tidbits: The bar is a working bar, though for filming purposes it serves only near-beer, lemonade and iced tea. And the stool used by the character Norm (George Wendt) is valued at $30,000.)

The studio prop department is a pack rat’s delight, with its shelves filled with everything from statuary to cookie tins to jewelry boxes. Other treasures include a stuffed bear used in an “I Love Lucy” camping episode, the pivotal scissors from the feature “Dead Again,” the bloodied, boiled bunny from “Fatal Attraction” (actually, a pump in a sock, valued at $10,000) and an issue of Playboy--in Braille.

Guests can catch glimpses of the set construction department, “Star Trek” shuttle craft and the plane from the TV show “Wings.”

Paramount Pictures Tour, 860 N. Gower St., Hollywood. Mon.-Fri., 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. Admission: $10. No reservations; first come, first served. Call: (213) 956-5575.

The 90-minute KCET Studios tour is less glitz, more technical. The city’s oldest motion picture-television studio in continuous use (since 1912), the lot first played host to the Lubin Manufacturing Co., which specialized in making short features about local tourist attractions, like ostrich and alligator farms.

In the walk-in-closet-sized museum, visitors view a pictorial history of the studio, where silent slapsticks and such talkies as “Hurricane” and “Friendly Persuasion” were filmed before KCET moved here in 1970.

One of the two sound stages--now used for “Life and Times”--is a lesson in TV lighting, with overhead suspended lights, system of ropes and pulleys, color gels and border lights that can change a $7,000 fiberglass curtain, eggshell-colored, into any hue desired.

Don’t miss the monitor-filled video control suite. Here’s where a show’s director calls the camera shots and an engineer creates graphics just by pushing a button. The visual effects are stored in computers, as are the movies aired by KCET.

Other stops include the audio control suite laden with recording and playing devices and a console of hundreds of knobs to regulate sound quality, a tiny news studio, the on-air tape operations room and the master control and color control rooms.

Available on request is a trip to the editorial room to learn more about the editing process.

KCET Studios Tour, 4401 Sunset Blvd., Hollywood. Tuesday and Thursday at 10 a.m. or 10:30 a.m. Free. Reservations required. (213) 667-9242.

No studio tour would be complete without Universal Studios Hollywood, the high-tech granddaddy of studio tours.

The studio, which rightfully calls itself a theme park, seems to have taken a page from the other studios’ scripts: Last year it revamped its tram tour, making it less structured and more personalized. There’s also greater access to the back lot and, depending on the day’s shooting schedule, more opportunity to observe production.

Attractions include the “E.T.’s Adventure” ride, a tribute to Lucille Ball and demonstrations of special effects, sound effects, stunts and animal actors.

For big spenders, there is a truly personalized VIP Tour, which includes a commissary lunch, at $105 each for one to five people. The cost is lower for groups.

Universal Studios Hollywood, 100 Universal City Plaza, Universal City. Daily. $24.50 for adults; $19 for children and seniors; state residents receive a $7 discount through May 10. For hours, call: (818) 777-3750.