Location scouts are smitten with Griffith Park, whose diverse range of settings ("It's got forests, caves, back roads, the carousel — it's got everything," says one location scout) and convenient access from studios in Burbank and Hollywood kept it bustling with production crews for a staggering 322 days in 2014, says the LA Times, analyzing permit information for on-location shooting from Film LA, the nonprofit that handles film permits throughout the city. This isn't anything new for the park, which has been used as a backdrop since the early days of film in Los Angeles (see, for instance, the history of its Bronson Caves, aka the Batcave).
First runner-up, with 232 production days in 2014, was Downtown's Herald-Examiner building. Designed by Hearst Castle architect Julia Morgan, the exterior of the building is gorgeous, but it's actually the inside that gets the heavy usage. The former newspaper offices now hold sets and spaces that can stand in for a police station, a bar, a hotel lobby, a hospital, a jail, and much more. The HE building jumped up one space this year; in 2013, it was the city's third most-popular filming location.
In a distant third comes the area underneath the Sixth Street Viaduct, which was occupied for 86 days of production last year. This spot was famously used to film shots of The Dark Knight Rises (not in 2014, of course), but will be changing radically in the next few years as the city demolishes the ailing old bridge and replaces it with a sleek new one.
Other much-desired filming locations last year included the LA Times building in the Civic Center, the ever-popular Millennium Biltmore Hotel, LAX, and Broadway's Los Angeles Theatre.
· Griffith Park tops list of most popular L.A.-area filming sites [LAT]
· Journey Into the Griffith Park Quarry That Became the Batcave [Curbed LA]
· Inside Downtown's Chameleon-Like Herald-Examiner Building [Curbed LA]
· See the Swoopy New Sixth Street Bridge in Giant Model Form [Curbed LA]
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