Filmmakers Recycle Warehouses and Hangars Into New Sound Stages

In a cavernous Palmdale hangar where B-1 bombers were once assembled, filmmakers have re-created a Midwestern town and plunged it into millions of gallons of water for the motion picture “The Flood.”

The locale is a long way from the Paramount Pictures lot in Hollywood, but the movie’s producers say there is no way the mammoth production could fit in the studio’s sound stages.

Nor would there be room at any other studio in Hollywood, for that matter.

As the giddy growth of the entertainment industry roars ahead--fueled by a crush of big-budget movies, television shows, commercials, music videos and CD-ROMs--studios are suddenly faced with a problem: They’re running out of room.

“I’ve been doing this sort of thing for 20 years. Never have I found it so difficult to get a studio,” said Ted Kaye, vice president of videotape television at Walt Disney Co. Like every other studio, the Disney lot in Burbank is choked with production.

With nowhere left to film on studio lots, shows are being sent to outside facilities--and they are lining up to get in.

“This year, for the first time, it’s not about money, it’s can you physically find a place,” Kaye said. “Then you just close your eyes when they tell you what they’re going to charge you.”

In fact, the demand for stage space has become so intense that empty factories and warehouses from Lancaster to Long Beach are being converted to makeshift film studios at an unprecedented rate.

For example:

* An old tubing factory in Commerce has been used for the movies “Speed,” “Waterworld” and the upcoming “Volcano.”

* An old military weapons plant in Van Nuys is now the locale for Fox TV’s “Fire Co. 132.”

* On the industrial outskirts of downtown Los Angeles, old warehouses, furniture factories and printing plants have come alive with film work.

* A former postal facility next to Union Station is being used for the new CBS series “EZ Streets.” Less than a block away, another new series, “Mr. and Mrs. Smith,” is underway.

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The demand for space has been building for a few years, but it reached a peak last spring when the fall TV schedules were announced. With two new broadcast networks--UPN and WB--boosting production, an increase in original programming for cable networks such as HBO and Showtime, and an abundance of syndicated fare, the need for sound stages exploded.

“There are so many more kinds of productions now than 10 years ago,” said Herman David, president of Santa Clarita Studios, where Fox TV’s “Melrose Place” is filmed and parts of the volcano movie “Dante’s Peak” are underway. “Before, there was just TV, features and commercials. Now there’s music videos, CD-ROMs and interactive types of products.”

At the same time, the traditional motion picture business has been gobbling up studios--particularly the plethora of expensive “event” pictures, with huge indoor sets and special effects.

“Lost World,” Steven Spielberg’s sequel to “Jurassic Park,” is eating up six large sound stages at MCA’s Universal Studios in Universal City. On a giant stage at Sony Pictures Entertainment in Culver City a replica of Air Force One is being built for a Harrison Ford thriller. A few doors away, an alien world has been created for “Starship Troopers.” Five sound stages on the Warner Bros. lot in Burbank have been consumed by “Batman and Robin,” plus a gargantuan hangar in Long Beach that once housed the Spruce Goose.

“As these productions grow in terms of their technical needs, you need larger spaces,” said Howard Weitzman, MCA’s executive vice president of corporate operations.

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Even the proliferation of digital effects has heightened demand for sound stages, because the actors must be filmed on an indoor set. The live footage is then blended with the computer-generated images.

The result: “There isn’t a stage in town that isn’t booked,” said Lisa Rawlins, vice president of studio and production affairs at Warner Bros.

In the last several months, every studio facility has been overwhelmed with pleas for stage space. Steve Auer, general manager of the Sunset Gower Studios in Hollywood, recalled that a year ago he was actively seeking tenants. This year, he was deluged with requests.

“They’re all asking me, ‘Where can I go?’ I say, ‘I really can’t tell you, all my competitors are in the same boat. They’re all full.’ ”

Production companies used to reserve sound stages well in advance, and a handshake sealed the deal. No more. In May, Tom Treloggen, senior vice president of production at MTM Entertainment, found a sound stage in Culver City that he wanted for a new TV series, “The Pretender.”

The studio owner told Treloggen that the stage would go to whoever showed up with a check first. MTM wasted no time. It signed the contract, put its money down and moved in.

Certainly, no one in the entertainment industry is complaining--after all, it’s hard to weep when business is so good.

And the demand for sound stages has created opportunities for some.

One such individual is John Warren, who has turned his eight sound stages in Santa Clarita into specialized venues for made-for-TV movies--the “based on a true story” business, as he calls it.

These productions fled the Los Angeles area earlier in the decade. Now they are returning because of union concessions and a more cooperative regulatory climate. But TV movies typically use sound stages for only a few weeks, making it tough to get into the bigger studio facilities that are booked for months at a stretch.

As a result, many in the industry turn to Warren, who had the foresight to build permanent sets that can be used for the ubiquitous hospital and courtroom scenes. TV movies about the O.J. Simpson case, the Menendez murders and the Amy Fisher-Joey Buttafuco saga have been filmed there.

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The entertainment industry’s appetite for real estate has also injected a glimmer of life into the moribund aerospace industry by providing downsized defense contractors with some rental income on mothballed plants.

John Vandraiss, new business manager at Rockwell International in Palmdale, recalled getting a phone call from the producers of “The Flood” late last year, asking if he would consider renting them the aerospace concern’s old B-1 hangar. They wanted a very large facility for the set they hoped to build for a bank caper movie starring Morgan Freeman. The B-1 plant, big enough to swallow five football fields, dwarfs even the largest sound stage in Hollywood.

Why not? Vandraiss figured.

Paramount barely beat out two other productions that wanted the plant at the same time. Since then, Vandraiss has had calls from every major studio “and half the smaller ones.”

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Still, the tight market won’t last forever. Several studios have major expansions underway. Disney, Warner Bros., MCA/Universal, NBC and independent studios could collectively add dozens of sound stages over the next several years.

And there’s no guarantee that the fast pace of production will continue. The new TV networks might fail. The syndication market could tank.

If the would-be blockbusters now in production bomb next summer, studios might consider scaling back next year’s crop of movies.

Already, there are stirrings of a more conservative stance by studios. After a string of box office disappointments, Disney announced in June that it will halve its motion picture production. Last month, Paramount, saying that too many films were being made by Hollywood, vowed to reduce its output.

“This industry is up and down, feast or famine,” said Jim Thompson, whose real estate brokerage in Van Nuys, Real to Reel, rents out alternative production space. “Right now it’s feast, everyone is busy, and has been for the past eight months or so. But I don’t know if I’d advise someone to go out and try to buy stage space. You just never know.”