Warner Bros. and Walt Disney sit behind their own walls a few streets from the former NBC lot, each with its own gate and its own water tower.
What Burbank Media District looks like
The Media District runs along Burbank's southern edge, where three studio lots sit close together behind their own walls. faces Warner Boulevard. sits north on Buena Vista Street, and The Burbank Studios is on West Alameda Avenue between them. Glass and brick office towers for the studios and their tenants line the Ventura Freeway nearby, catching the sunset along the frontage road below.
At Warner Bros., Gate 4 opens onto Warner Boulevard beneath the studio's own water tower, which rises above the trees with the hills behind it. Stage 16, raised to 98 feet in 1937, has a barn shaped tan stucco front with a curved roofline and the WB shield mounted high on the wall. Backlot street sets sit behind the sound stage walls, out of view from the public street.
Walt Disney Studios' brick gate on Buena Vista Street has the company's name set into the brick, with its own six legged water tower rising above the trees behind it. The tank is painted white with the studio's name and a small Mickey Mouse figure. dates from 1940 and sits at a nearby corner. Its cream brick is banded in green below the roofline, with an oak tree in front.
The Burbank Studios sits on West Alameda Avenue, a plain concrete office and stage block marked Studio 2 at ground level. A lit sign reading Filming In Progress faces the street. FotoKem, a film and video post house, sits nearby on Alameda Avenue in a white walled office building.
Shot in Burbank Media District
Saving Mr. Banks used the Animation Building at Walt Disney Studios as the studio, filming the real building's own exterior. The building holds producers' offices today.
Saving Mr. Banks, 2013
The Animation Building
Played Walt Disney's studio in 1961
The exterior of the 1940 Animation Building was the primary location for Saving Mr. Banks. The film's interiors, Walt Disney's office among them, were built at another studio.
What Burbank Media District can double for
The Art Deco Historic District in Miami Beach, Florida
The 1940 Animation Building at Walt Disney Studios has a green painted band below its roofline that continues across the building's corner near the entrance. Kem Weber designed it in the Streamline Moderne style that Miami Beach's Art Deco Historic District used in the same years, with the same continuous horizontal band across a corner instead of stopping at the wall's edge. A tight shot on that corner could plausibly pass for one of those Ocean Drive blocks. The oak tree and plantings around the building are Southern California landscaping. Palm trees are the giveaway for South Florida, so keep the frame tight on the building's corner rather than going wide. Try searching streamline moderne green band corner now.
The Media District's own freeway view looks west along the Ventura Freeway at sunset, past office towers on the frontage road with the Warner Bros. shield mounted on one of them. Atlanta's Perimeter Center sits at a similar freeway interchange, where two mirrored glass towers known locally as the King and Queen catch the same kind of sunset light. A wide shot with any studio signage kept out of frame could plausibly be sold as that corridor instead. The King and Queen towers have a distinctive white open frame crown that nothing on the Ventura Freeway matches, so keep the tops of the buildings out of the shot in either direction. Try searching freeway office towers at sunset now.
