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The Office. There are a few scenes where the Californian mountains are too obvious. Scranton is surrounded by the Appalachians, so there are mountains and hills, but they are not dry, dusty, brushy desert mountains.
Pretty much every outdoor shot on that show is very obviously in L.A., you don't even have to see mountains. I don't know if they originally ever intended to do outdoor shots at all, after all the classic sitcom format doesn't really ask for it, but they clearly just didn't even care. And really..it's about the humor of it, not realism...the whole show is crazy anyway.
It's different with drama where the atmosphere and scenery matter more as you want people to take things seriously. I believe with Dexter they went out to Miami to shoot some stuff early on so they'd have some shots of Miami landmarks with the characters seen to establish credibility..but after that it was shot all in Long Beach/L.A.. Long Beach has some Miami-looking areas and is far from the mountains and desert, so I think it actually worked pretty well.
People outside of NYC really think NYC’s land is 100% buildings.
I had an argument with a lady from Virginia who tried to argue with me that NYC has no houses with backyards.
For a second I thought perhaps this person is seriously uneducated but then I can’t blame her. The NYC media is strictly based on Manhattan and Northern Brooklyn.
With the ghetto images mostly focused in the South Bronx.
Location: Appalachian New York, Formerly Louisiana
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Originally Posted by Veritas Vincit
Pretty much every outdoor shot on that show is very obviously in L.A., you don't even have to see mountains. I don't know if they originally ever intended to do outdoor shots at all, after all the classic sitcom format doesn't really ask for it, but they clearly just didn't even care. And really..it's about the humor of it, not realism...the whole show is crazy anyway.
True, though buildings fall better under suspension of disbelief than terrain and biome.
Not necessarily movies but half of Texas nonsense merchandise (think keychains and such) show saguaros when saguaros clearly do not grow that far east by El Paso or even towards San Antonio. As an Arizonan that really grinds my gears. I’m sure if I dig deep enough I could find a TV show or movie referencing El Paso or New Mexico with saguaros in it. Or Vegas, or Palm Springs...
Honestly though, I do wish saguaros DID grow in Texas and New Mexico as well as southern Nevada. They're the coolest! Speaking of cacti (and your username), I recently bought a little prickly pear which I named "Captain Howdy." There were definitely lots of prickly pear where I lived throughout Texas.
My favorite is the one where they are doing a 5k or some sort of fun run and they are jogging past fences covered in Bougainvillea. I think it was filmed somewhere in the Valley. Not exactly native vegetarian for Scranton.
There are plenty of palm trees in Texas. Just go to Houston or anywhere else near the Gulf Coast. They're more the Florida type palms than the California palms though.
Yea but Arlen, where the show takes place, is portrayed to be much further north than the coast. When the characters DO go to the coast (like South Padre, Port Aransas etc.) they DO show palm trees. In episodes where they go further west, they show desert scenery. They do a pretty good job of showing the Texas landscape in animation. Also, having lived in northern Texas, the very few palms that are obviously non-native, don't look very healthy lol.
Not terribly out of place, though. When I was in LA a few years back I kept thinking on how similar it looks to Miami, aside from the brownness and mountains in the distant. Miami isn't as green (in terms of trees) as most of Florida. I wonder if its cuz of the natural setting or something else. The Everglades naturally don't have many trees.
New Orleans is often poorly portrayed. They may get the scenery correct by actually filming there, but the accents are either totally wrong (Gone With the Wind type Southern) or weirdly exaggerated (locals using French expressions).
Things set in the South are often poorly done accent-wise. Most people in the South don't have a Lower South/Old Money South/Plantation accent. A fake drawl is really easy to spot.
I'm pretty well at telling an upper south, deep south and western south (TX and OK) accent. Texans are often the most accurately done in movies but thats probably because there's a higher amount of actual Texans in the film industry.
That 70's Show. Takes place in Wisconsin. The scenes where they go to the cabin in the mountains... yeah. So I suppose the cabin could be in the rugged driftless region, but I am pretty sure it is supposed to be far northern Wisconsin. So... why is the backdrop a photo of the Rockies? What really gets me about this is that it's not even filmed in the wild. It is in a sound stage. So why is the background so wrong?
National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. The opening sequence. Unless they literally drove all the way to western Montana from Chicago to get a tree, that is definitely not ANYWHERE near Chicago, or Illinois even.
The Scary Stories movie. A new one! Takes place in Pennsylvania, in a town called Mill Valley. Valley being the keyword. But there is one long scene where they are standing and speaking in an open gravel area. You can see that the terrain around them for miles is flat, and the forestry is suspiciously not northeastern.
The Walking Dead. Too many areas in "Virginia" are obviously still Georgia. I am a tree and landscape nerd, I can't help but to notice.
Any work of fiction that puts mountains in Florida or Mississippi. :/
The Office. There are a few scenes where the Californian mountains are too obvious. Scranton is surrounded by the Appalachians, so there are mountains and hills, but they are not dry, dusty, brushy desert mountains.
Yea I remember that about Christmas Vacation. So many pine trees and not like what you'll see anywhere in Illinois. Even here in Minnesota you have to go pretty far north to see scenery like that.
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