Discussion Main / CaliforniaDoubling

I think we should add more subsets such as "Atlanta Doubling", "North Carolina Doubling", "New York Doubling", "UK Doubling", etc.

How many doublings does a country need to make it into a list? I'm asking for a Europe...

Isn't this just Trivia? Even if its lampshaded in some way, its really not a story trope, its more of a production thing.

There are a slew of examples (particularly in the California Doubling section), which are merely `TV Show X is set in New York but it's actually filmed at Y Studios in Hollywood'. Surely those examples don't count? The whole idea of the topic is to highlight where real-life locations are dressed up (often badly), to look like somewhere they're clearly not. Some serious culling needs to happen.

The Matrix is not a solid example of the trope. For thematic reasons the cities shown in the matrix are generic cities — world cities, McCities anywhere in the modern west. Sydney wasn't used to double for anywhere but because it (mostly) looks like any modern city. The underlying idea (probably) is that the Matrix is a bit rubbery around the edges and all cities seen through the green filter are much more alike than they are in reality. Move this example to discussion.

• In The Matrix movies, a number of the scenes had landmarks, like the AWA Tower or the Sydney Harbour Bridge, that you are infinitely more likely to find in the Australian city of Sydney (where it was filmed) than any American city (where the majority of the actors' accents are from).
  • The Matrix is all-but-explicitly set in Chicago. A reference to "Balbo Drive" gives it away - Chicago is the only major city in the world with a street named Balbo.
  • The Matrix is purposefully set in an ambiguous metropolis that bears no relation to any real city. Of course, they had to film the movie somewhere and use some basic points of reference, hence the Sydney, Chicago and other recognizable scenes. One look at the city skyline in the Matrix Reloaded, shown clearly in its entirety during the highway chase scene, reveals the absurdity and the generic nature of the location.

Moved all of this here because it just seems a bit much for the example from Firefly

It is acknowledged and explained away by the fact that all of these planets have been terraformed rather poorly. Additionally, the show occasionally subverts this trope with brief but surprisingly good CGI substitution, as in the episode "Serenity, Part 1," where we at one point see Inara piloting her shuttle from a more urbanized portion of the planet back to Serenity - a scene where every single shot of the city is completely computer-generated. The "floating island" mansions and the water they floated above in the episode "Trash" were also CGI, as well as much of the snowy landscape in "The Message" (though the scenes at the end in the snow were apparently done mostly with instant mashed potato mix flakes, due to requiring the actors in the scene to interact with it).