Drive 2007 - Day 05 - Drives - Beneath the Waves

Drive 2007 - Day 05

article and photographs by Ben Lincoln

I spent the fifth day of this trip almost entirely playing tourist (specifically, film geek tourist).

Starting out early, I headed into the middle of downtown Los Angeles to visit The Bradbury Building. The Bradbury is an office building constructed in the late 19th century, and has been either lovingly preserved or lovingly restored. For me at least, it's easy to forget that 120 years ago Americans really did build things like this, because foolish people with questionable taste tore most of them down before I was born^[1].

As I was just getting into photography with a DSLR at the time, my photos don't do this building justice. They don't even timidly put on the sheriff's badge before fleeing town as soon as the outlaws show up. This is compounded by the fact that - unbeknownst to me - the zoom lens that had come with my (secondhand) D70 was in the process of falling apart. I only had two zoom lenses at the time, with the other being a 70-210 that (especially on a camera with a DX-sized sensor) was not nearly wide-angle enough for this day's purposes. LA has a reputation for being a bit of a dangerous place^[2], so I didn't want to lug around my small suitcase full of prime lenses, but the result was that after a few photos I wasn't able to use my DSLR at all and had to revert to my older Nikon point-and-shoot.

The Bradbury, Downtown Los Angeles

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I wish I'd been a better photographer in 2007, because these pictures don't do the location justice. The skeltal elevator system is the most recognizable feature of this building, but the attention to detail everywhere is amazing, especially considering it's an office building.

Date Shot: 2007-09-04
Camera Body: Nikon D70 (Modified)
Lens: Sigma 20-200mm
Filters: LDP CC1
Date Processed: 2007-11-18
Version: 1.0

If these pictures look at all familiar, it's probably because The Bradbury featured very prominently in Blade Runner, cleverly made to appear as though it were a ruined slum apartment building.

I would highly recommend visiting this building if you're in the area. You can't go up past the first landing on the stairs (at least without being part of a tour), but even the view from the ground level is amazing.

Leaving The Bradbury, I walked to the old Angels Flight line. Angels Flight is an extremely short, small-scale railway in downtown Los Angeles, built around the turn of the 20th century. If I understand its purpose correctly, it was built as an alternative to an escalator, with the advantage being that a traditional escalator would need to be protected from the elements. It was not running during my visit, and does not appear to be running as of this writing (13 September 2009), but the track is still present in the middle of downtown.

Angels [sic] Flight, Downtown Los Angeles

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Angels Flight, mothballed.

Date Shot: 2007-09-04
Camera Body: Nikon D70 (Modified)
Lens: Sigma 20-200mm
Filters: LDP CC1
Date Processed: 2007-11-18
Version: 1.0

Every time I see its name, I feel compelled to insert an apostrophe (either "Angels' Flight" or "Angel's Flight"). I believe this oddity is due to it being named after the English translation of the "Angeles" in "Los Angeles" - that is, if it were located in New York, it might be called "New York Flight", not "New York's Flight". On the other hand, the whole reason "Flight" is in the name is because angels are usually depicted with wings, meaning that if it were located in New York it would be named something like "The New York Railavator", and so we're back to where we started, which is that there should be an apostrophe in one place or the other.

This was when I discovered that the lens I'd brought with me was falling apart, and this picture of Angels Flight was made by physically holding the front part of the lens together with the second (which was mated to my D70) long enough to get one shot.

I spent a few more hours meandering through downtown LA. Here are a few snapshots of the buildings:

Downtown Los Angeles

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Some random pictures of downtown LA.

Date Shot: 2007-09-04
Camera Body: Nikon CoolPix 775
Lens: Zoom Nikkor 5.8-17.4mm
Filters: None
Date Processed: 2007-11-18
Version: 1.0

Something that surprised me as a first-time visitor is that LA actually has very few true skyscrapers. The handful you see in films are all there is to the skyline. I imagine this is because horizontal space is not at a premium - everything is very spread out in the area as a whole.

My next destinations in downtown were some of the exterior filming locations used in Heat. Heat is one of my all-time favourite films, and part of the reason I decided to visit Los Angeles was that I've always felt that Michael Mann's love of this city shines through in virtually every frame. Whether it's a scene in a nice part of downtown or a dangerous slum, Mann's direction makes it feel like a special and memorable place.

The main resource I used to determine the exact locations in question is this guide to Heat filming locations at Seeing-Stars.com. It is incredibly extensive, and helpfully provides not only addresses and maps, but also indicates the personal danger level of visiting each of them (which can be considerable for some of the area). This page (at Movie-Locations.com) is much less detailed, but provides a good backup.

The first of the two major locations is the building which was used as the bank exterior immediately prior to the climactic shootout of the film. You may also notice it (the brushed metal geometric sculptures are a dead giveaway) in Ridley Scott's Black Rain (posing as part of a Japanese city), and David Fincher's Fight Club. This building is at 444 S. Flower Street (the intersection of 5th and Flower). The interior used for the bank during the robbery is a different location which I didn't visit.

Next up were the streets where the shootout itself was filmed, which really is right outside, on and around 5th between Flower and Figueroa. I ran into a bit of a challenge here, which is that it's very easy to end up on an elevated sidewalk with no obvious way down to the streets in question. Unfortunately, I don't remember the specifics of how I got down to relate them here, so if you encounter the same situation, you can do what I did and ask someone for directions. Everyone I ran into in LA was very friendly and helpful.

Heat Shooting Locations, Downtown Los Angeles

Bank 1

Bank 2

Streets 1

Streets 2

Streets 3

A few snapshots of the building whose exterior appeared as the bank during the climactic robbery in Heat, as well as the streets where the subsequent shootout was filmed. If you watch closely in Black Rain and Fight Club, you will see the "bank" exterior make another appearance.

Date Shot: 2007-09-04
Camera Body: Nikon CoolPix 775
Lens: Zoom Nikkor 5.8-17.4mm
Filters: None
Date Processed: 2007-11-18
Version: 1.0

Lastly, I made a trip to the Second Street Tunnel (between Figueroa and Hill Streets^[3]). This is a nondescript (although fairly long) tunnel which would be utterly unremarkable except that it is instantly recognizable in Blade Runner and The Terminator, and is therefore awesome.

Second Street Tunnel, Downtown Los Angeles

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A few snapshots of the tunnel that appeared in Blade Runner, The Terminator, Transformers, and about a million other films.

Date Shot: 2007-09-04
Camera Body: Nikon CoolPix 775
Lens: Zoom Nikkor 5.8-17.4mm
Filters: None
Date Processed: 2007-11-18
Version: 1.0

One of the other main reasons I'd come to LA was to drop by for a visit with my friend Amy Hennig. Everyone who came here from my other website already knows who Amy is, of course - she directed three of the Legacy of Kain games (Soul Reaver, Soul Reaver 2, and Defiance). Amy had moved on from Crystal Dynamics/Eidos (now a part of Square-Enix) to Naughty Dog, and had brought designer/man-of-many-talents^[4] Richard LeMarchand (also formerly of Crystal Dynamics) with her. Together they were working on Uncharted: Drake's Fortune for the Playstation 3, and I got a sneak preview. Originally when I thought I'd have all of this online in the fall of 2007 (ha ha, no, really) I was really excited to let everyone know just how amazing the game looked. Of course, in 2009 everyone already knows how good it looks and what an outstanding game it turned out to be. So much so that they made a sequel (Uncharted 2: Among Thieves), which somehow manages to look even more stunning and succeed even more as a game then the first one. Then and now, I'm blown away by the bright and lifelike colours the team at Naughty Dog was able to create for the island jungle that the game takes place in. It would have been welcome at any time, but was especially so given the trend towards washed-out desert palettes by other game makers.

While watching Amy play through a short section of the game, I received an answer to a longstanding (if trivial) question: can she just make games, or can she play them too? The answer is the latter, as evidenced by her unbroken and lightning-quick sequence of run-and-gun one-hit/one-kill headshots.

In addition to getting a chance to know Amy and Richard better (I had met both of them in person originally back in 2002), Amy had arranged something extra-special and unprecedented: the three of us were going to lunch with Michael Bell. You may or may not recognize Michael's name, but I can virtually guarantee that you will recognize his voice. Michael is an actor (now primarily known for his voice work, although he's appeared in numerous on-screen roles as well) with an astounding number of appearances in media. Near the bottom of this page you can download an mp3 for reference.

Everyone who came here from my other website knows him as the voice of Raziel, but essentially anyone who is roughly my age will have heard him as the voice of legions of animated characters in the television cartoons of our childhoods. From The Transformers, Voltron, and G.I. Joe to Robotix and The Centurions, Michael Bell provided the voice of at least one character (and usually several) in virtually every animated series of that era.

This presented a huge dilemma for me. Watching cartoons was one of the main ways that my friends and I spent our time back in elementary school. I heard Michael Bell's voice more frequently as a child than anyone outside of my own family. It's permanently etched into my memory, along with the voices of Peter Cullen, Frank Welker, and (the sadly deceased) Chris Latta. Of course, the reverse is not true, and I was very wary of boring him to death or yammering on about things he's heard a thousand times for the last two decades. I tried to keep the questions coming, treating the situation as a quasi-interview, and of course with many decades of experience he is full of great stories. In addition, because he's a voice actor, all of his stories of other people are told with him believably playing the parts of each participant.

Michael Bay, if you're reading this, I would ask two things of you regarding the third Transformers live-action film: the first would be to make it more serious^[5], like the one in 2007 was. The second would be to cast Michael Bell in it. When the original animated series was released on DVD (briefly) in the early 2000s, I picked it up, and watching it I was surprised to discover that virtually the entire supporting cast is played by either Michael Bell or Chris Latta (again, sadly passed away or I would campaign for his inclusion as well).

[ There used to be a photo of me with Amy Hennig, Richard LeMarchand, and Michael Bell here, but then I remembered that Amy isn't fond of having her photo posted online (probably because it enables her many Legacy of Kain-fan stalkers, who are still trying to obtain the rest of the story from her almost a decade later), and so I'd been a huge jerk by having it posted here for several years. ]

Michael was kind enough to give me a signed Soul Reaver 2 Crew t-shirt, although I don't have a photo online yet.

After saying goodbye to everyone, I made another trip to the Hollywood Hills after dark in order to shoot an HDR panorama of the city skyline.

Downtown Los Angeles Skyline 2

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This is a very wide (7-shot) HDR panorama that I did of the LA skyline at night from somewhere in the Hollywood Hills.

Date Shot: 2007-09-04
Camera Body: Nikon D70 (Modified)
Lens: Nikon Series E 28mm
Filters: Standard Set
Date Processed: 2007-09-22
Version: 1.0

Unlike many people from the Northwest, I really enjoyed my time in LA. Even the driving was interesting. Los Angeles-area drivers love to drive fast, but they're not pushy about it as long as you stay out of the left lane. They also have a tendency to perform a fascinating bit of flocking behaviour any time a crazy driver slows down quickly for no reason, or some other obstacle appears. It really is like watching a school of fish or flock of birds as - without slowing down - a formation of fast-moving cars will break just before and reform just after whatever it was that got in their way, in a perfectly fluid manner. I saw this over and over on the freeways of the area, but nowhere else in my travels.

Date: 4 September 2007
Starting Mileage: 63855
Ending Mileage: Unknown, see Drive 2007 - Day 06
Distance Travelled (Day): Unknown, see Drive 2007 - Day 06
Distance Travelled (Trip): 1501+ miles
Gallons of Fuel Purchased (Day): 7.1
Gallons of Fuel Purchased (Trip): 48

There's no map image for today because I didn't want to go to the trouble of setting up my laptop in my car, then transferring it to my trunk every time I parked, then getting it back out afterward repeatedly while I was in LA. If you look at a map of this area, it's pretty easy to follow along.

Audio File
File	Size	Author
Michael Bell Voice Sample	1 MiB	Eidos Interactive
An example of Michael Bell's voice acting, from Soul Reaver. ©1999 Eidos Interactive.

Footnotes

1.	The Seattle Art Museum has an elevator facade from the similarly-amazing but unsimilarly-demolished Chicago Stock Exchange building whose placard blames "urban renewal of the 1970s", as if to rub salt into the wound by drawing attention to the fact that what we got in return for tearing down these timeless masterpieces of architecture was usually the most uninspired and forgettable of skyscrapers.
2.	While I'm sure there are some parts of LA that are dangerous, I felt very safe in all of the areas that I visited during my trip.
3.	You may have noticed that at least in downtown, the City of Los Angeles has confusingly not made a distinction in naming between roadways that run east-west versus north-south. Allegedly the practice of calling one a "street" and the other an "avenue" originated in Manhattan, but to my knowledge LA is the only city I've been in which doesn't follow this convention.
4.	In addition to his career in the videogame industry, Richard has a degree in physics and is also a photographer. here's his profile over at Flickr, if you'd like to take a look.
5.	At least, as serious as you can make a film whose premise is that giant intelligent robots have traveled from deep space to the Earth in order to alternate between being awesome giant robots and awesome vehicles while making every attempt to blow each other up in the most stupendous ways possible. The first one (in 2007) was great. It was the ultimate Michael Bay film, edging out Armageddon because rampaging giant robots are hard to beat. The second was a very mixed bag. Some of it was very well-done, and some of the humour was genuinely funny. But at the same time, it almost felt like a parody of itself, and seriously, the transformation (ha ha) of Jetfire into a comic relief character was an atrocity that should have been prosecuted by the Hague. Jetfire (AKA Skyfire) was the best Transformer ever (other than Optimus Prime, Soundwave, Shockwave, Wheeljack, Megatron, Starscream, Prowl, Ironhide, Jazz, Omega Supreme, Sideswipe, Sunstreaker, the Insecticons, Bumblebee, Blaster, Mirage, Rodimus Prime, Cliffjumper, Hound, Thundercracker, and Skywarp, obviously), and deserved better.