Film Studios Offer A Glimpse Inside Hollywood

When the tour guide issued a stern warning against taking pictures of any celebrities we should run across, I knew I was in the right place.

A warm and sunny February morning in California.

A movie studio lot steeped in history and swarming with the creative minds behind Best Picture nominees Zero Dark Thirty and Django Unchained (not to mention heaps of other classic films).

And the chance to stumble across actors - okay, let's be honest: movie stars.

Yes please, count me in.

It was a Thursday morning and I was one of the two dozen people gathered in the lobby of Sony Pictures Studios.

It's the company whose cavernous Culver City buildings have housed the sets of hundreds of films from The Dark Knight Rises to Lawrence of Arabia and The Wizard Of Oz.

A tour at Sony or any one of the other big studios in Los Angeles is a chance for the public to get a glimpse behind the scenes of Hollywood.

The tours are available year-round, but with awards season in full swing and Los Angeles aflutter about Sunday's Academy Awards, it seemed the perfect time to check one out.

First opened in 1914 and owned by a number of companies over the years, the present-day Sony studios are ancient by Hollywood standards.

As we embarked on the two-hour walking tour through replicas of New York City and Anywhere USA, our guide peppered us with facts.

Some were the curious tidbits good for future cocktail party banter.

For example, all those extra noises in films, from footsteps to ice cubes clinking in a glass, are added after filming by sound geniuses known as Foley artists.

Other facts were the kind best kept to ourselves - as in exactly how a Foley artist replicates the sound of two people kissing.

The tour group was awed at the display cases containing the company's 12 Best Picture Oscars - even after learning that each gold-plated statue costs just \$500 to make.

And I was not the only one impressed that crews can make a narrow strip of lawn into a convincing replica of Central Park.

It didn't take long to get swept up into the studio lot's lore, imagining a young Elizabeth Taylor and Judy Garland tripping down the steps of their on-set school house.

At the centre of it all loomed the largest set in the US, in all its art deco-style glory.

At 42,000sq ft, it was big enough to house both the Emerald City and Munchkinland.

"You really get caught up in it," said Anna Harley, who took the tour with her partner, Will Horner-Glister.

The London couple had made the tour part of their three-month holiday travelling down the US West Coast.

"Even when you think you won't get that excited about celebrity stuff, you do," she added.

They had liked the tour so much that they'd already hatched plans to visit some of the other studios sprinkled throughout the Los Angeles area before returning to the UK.

We never ran into anyone famous that morning at Sony, but it was a brush with Hollywood all the same.