The Center for Land Use Interpretation

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.