Big Film Sunk Ships Sets Stand Out On
Land New Thematic CLUI Project Examines Film Locations
Titanic looms over Mexican soundstages
at new movie maquiladora.
CLUI photo by Melinda Stone
The west coast of Baja California, Mexico,
is the location of one of two remarkable movie sites uncovered
recently in The Center's new thematic film location research project.
A 600-foot long model of the Titanic has been built by the Twentieth
Century Fox Company for a film drama about the Titanic disaster,
due out this Fall (the nearly $200 million production is the most
expensive movie ever made). The 4/5ths-scale model of the famous
ocean-liner, complete with billowing smokestacks, lurches on a
massive hydraulic system, and rests in a newly built, eight acre,
18 million gallon pool, one of the largest open air tanks in the
world. The tank was built at the edge of the ocean, so that the
ship appears to be at sea in the film (open ocean locations are
dependent on the weather, and therefore unpredictable, something
that the director, James Cameron, perhaps learned while shooting
his 1989 film, The Abyss).
The tank is part of the new Baja Studios,
being built at what a year ago was the small fishing community
of Popotla, 25 miles south of Tijuana, Mexico. The site for the
new "movie maquiladora" was selected by Fox to take
advantage of lower Mexican labor rates, and the freedom from many
of the regulations and restrictions that complicate United States-based
production. The facility employs up to 2,000 people, and includes
three large sound stages within its restricted-entry perimeter.
One of these things is not like the other:
high and dry Waterworld supertanker model in aircraft scrap
yard at Mojave Airport.
CLUI photo
Another remarkable "faux bateau"
site is the model of the oil tanker Exxon Valdez, which rests
amongst the scrap of the airplane graveyard in Mojave, California.
It is left over from a major land-locked boat movie location,
used for the all-wet, $120 million-plus epic "Waterworld",
released in 1996, which until "Titanic", was the most
expensive movie ever made. The Mojave Airport location is a desert
site two hours north of Los Angeles, where many of the scenes
featuring the supertanker were shot, including the fiery sinking
of the ship.
The Mojave Airport is a popular film location
site, and has been used for the movies "Speed", "Diehard
II", and "Batman II". It is an unusual small airport,
with almost no passenger-related aviation. Instead, it is home
to the National Test Pilot School, and experimental aircraft design
companies, such as Scaled Composites, and military contractors
such as GE and Tracor. Many commercial airliners are stored here
when they are in need of serious repairs, or are between owners.
