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After a drive down Hollywood Blvd. and a nice jaunt on the freeway, Brad Pitt's character heads to his trailer in the Valley, next to the Van Nuys Drive-In. The theatre was demolished long ago so it had to be recreated from scratch. The marquee was built full size in Saugus, the screen tower is a miniature built to 1/24 scale.
In the film, the drive-in we see is a mix of real footage and shots of the model. The production shot at the Paramount Drive-Ins at 7770 Rosecrans Ave. in Paramount on October 24, 2018.
The crew built a replica of the sign at the Saugus Speedway in Santa Clarita. Thanks to Ovidi D. on Twitter for posting this photo of the men getting the letters up on the sign. The post also included some shots of the real Van Nuys Drive-In. Thanks to Donavan S. Moye for spotting the post.
The scale model of the Van Nuys. The photo from Sony Pictures Entertainment appears with Katie Rife's fine February 2020 article "Oscar-nominated production designer Barbara Ling on putting the Once..." for the site AV Club. Ms. Ling discusses the shooting:
"No CGI, no digital. The only thing that you could call a slight special effect is that we really wanted a drive-in, and all the beautiful murals at the L.A. drive-ins are gone. Now they’re just a giant parking lot with five screens. And we really wanted to do the Van Nuys Drive-In, because it had one of the greatest murals. So I said to Quentin, I can do the marquee and the drive-in itself [full sized], but to build that mural—they’re like 350 feet long by 250 feet high! So for that one shot, I said we could do it in miniature, which means 1:24 scale. And that’s not a teeny thing, it’s about 20 feet by 40 feet. So we built it practically, but as a practical miniature, to be shot and then mixed in with the real shot. That was the one thing that just wouldn’t have worked full size, and we got a more beautiful scene by having it miniaturized. But that was still a set. It was just a smaller set."
The inside of the Van Nuys model. Cars at several different scales were
used for the shot. The model was built by the effects house New Deal
Studios. Photo: Sony Pictures Entertainment - AV Club
Another view of the model from Sony Pictures. This one appears with the January 2020 Hollywood Reporter story "How 'Once Upon a Time in Hollywood Production Design Explored a Bygone Era"
by Tyler Coates. Thanks to Joe Pinney for spotting the article. In the
article Barbara Ling comments on the shot coming into the drive-in:
"When you do a 24-scale miniature, the screen is about 10 feet high. It's big — it's not really miniature. But to me, it's a great beauty, that fabulous marquee. I knew I had to build it in three-dimension because we wanted the car right next to it. So when the camera comes up over the mural in Van Nuys, that's actually a miniature. And then the camera moves and we [are in] another location, behind the old drive-in, this kind of dilapidated factory [where Cliff's trailer sits]. That was one of the few pieces that used VFX, because it just would have been a monumental build. Financially, it just would have been prohibitive. We wanted to put Cliff in the realm of a drive-in. I love that whole environment for Cliff, putting him in such a different world from the [glamorous one] in which he serves as a stuntman."
Three more model shots are on the Facebook page Vintage Los Angeles as part of a post by Alison Martino. From the 70s view of the actual theatre, page through to the three photos of the drive-in model. Thanks to David Zornig for spotting the post.
The Van Nuys Drive-In in the film:
Brad
heading to his trailer adjacent to the drive-in.
A bit closer to the screen.
Panning up to the screen.
Getting ready to look over the top.
A peek over at the cars.
Panning up to the screen.
Getting ready to look over the top.
A peek over at the cars.
Head to the Van Nuys Drive-In page on the Los Angeles Theatres site for more photos of the theatre. It closed in 1996 but the screen tower with the mural had been gone since a 1983 remodel and tripexing.
The "Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood" pages:
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