I don't mean to be pedantic, but the tall redwood trees and topography they use for the show really looks out of place. You'd think they could at least film that part on location. We have tall Southern pines, Scotch pines, evergreens, cedars, and some mimosas. The landscape is very distinctive and can't be match elsewhere. Its very disappointing to see North California instead of Central Virginia. Still love the show.
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True, but it was in black and white (for most of its run) and was a sit com. North Carolina is not as lovely as Virginia. Especially in the Spring time.
share"True, but it was in black and white (for most of its run) and was a sit com. North Carolina is not as lovely as Virginia. Especially in the Spring time."
Are you thinking of The Andy Griffith Show? This is "The Waltons" message board :)
Virginia has some of the most beautiful country I've ever seen. I've often wondered why they didn't at least film some of the distant scenery shots of the rolling hills and mountains in the actual location, even if the rest of the rest of the show was filmed in So-Cal.
shareI agree. I lived in VA for just two years as a teen but it was beautiful and I think it would work Walton Mountain.
But I guess back in the 70s filming in VA for a TV series wasn't realistic was? That's just a guess. I mean it would be inconvenient for all the actors I would think.
Some of the aspects of location filming worth mentioning:
1. Filming for a movie is much more practical. They can arrange to film the movie during the season(s) when the weather will likely cooperate with the desired backdrop--winter, fall leaves, etc. All of the shooting on location can be done in a relatively short period of time, meaning all the actors and the much larger number of crew members do not need to be away from their homes for an extended period of time.
2. Filming numerous outdoor scenes with lead actors for a series requires a large number of people to essentially live away from their homes for most of the year--TV series take a long time to film their 22-24, or more episodes per year, especially hour-long dramas.
3. Had they chosen to film in Virginia for all exterior scenes, they would have had all sorts of weather difficulties that would have interrupted shooting--cold, snow, rainy seasons, really hot summers. Like most of the country, Virginia weather is not perfect for movie making (or TV production) year round. THIS is why the film industry moved to southern California about 100 years ago.
4. It goes far beyond the star characters traveling back and forth from California to Virginia. Remember, there are a lot of crew members necessary to film a TV show. It's not like the only people around while, say, John-boy talks to Jason on the front porch, are the director and one camera operator. There's no way a TV series budget could afford to pay all of them to keep flying across country on a weekly basis. Even if they could, most of the not-that-highly-paid crew members would shortly be seeking to find another series so they don't have the hassles of traveling like a traveling salesman and being away from their families so much.
For my money, they did their best to make us feel like we were seeing the Virginia of the 1930s. The mountain shots did not focus on giant redwoods or other California-type scenery.
Actually, I wasn't talking about shooting exterior shots there with the actors. I was speaking more along the lines of mountain "stock footage" when showing scenery only, like at the very beginning of an episode.
shareI felt like a boob for watching it during the 2nd run (early 80's) and thinking it was actually VA. I heard there ware some historical sights of the "real" Walton house in the area, though.
shareThis is the real house. The scenery of Virginia is hard to duplicate.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FgIIPV4vd9c
"Life is like a box of Krispy Kreme donuts".
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I know very little about Virginia, and I'm sure that's a failing, but of course as the OP said, the location shooting is...a Californian location. It doesn't match the flora of the real Central Virginia, as the OP stated. Also I presume that it rains and even occasionally snows in Virginia - which it hardly ever did on The Waltons. For me, the Southern California studio backlot shooting was so inauthentic-looking, and so identifiable as just one more lousy, overly-familiar So. CA location, that it killed most of the show's already weak "authenticity".
share...oh...and I would add to my whine above that So. CA makes a lousy location for almost anything other than So CA. It's just too identifiable to call it Oregon, Montana, Wyoming, Maine etc. It's also a cheap way out of filming in authentic locations. I was never fooled by fake "American West" locations filmed in So. CA, not even as a kid. I always thought, "How lazy and cheap and...boring! Same old places, mountains, deserts, rocks, oak prairie..."
One of the worst gaffes is trying to make So. CA look like a wet, forested region such as the Pacific Northwest. I've lived in the Westernmost part of the Pacific NW all my life, and remember being disappointed in TV and film producers trying to fob off So. CA for the NW. One of the worst offenders was Here Come the Brides, ostensibly about frontier Seattle, so sadly and obviously mostly filmed on a typical, "boring-cuz-we've seen it all before" California studio lot (I've even read that the "Seattle" set was later refurbished to contain the Walton's house and yard!).
Like Portland, Oregon and other western areas of the PNW, Seattle got and gets a lot of rain, and even sometimes, snow. And Seattle is an archetypal port town.
But Here Come the Brides NEVER showed any body of water that even slightly resembled Seattle's Puget Sound. Granted, they were filming on an arid set, with no water nearby. That's why they never (except maybe in three episodes) filmed from the town down toward the dock where Captain Clancy's ship was "docked", and when they did, the ship was always narrowly framed so as not to show the (non-existent) water in which it was supposed to be floating.
The set had a few small pine trees, but no Douglas Fir, spruce, cedar, or any other large trees native to the PNW. Sometimes the crew would wet-down the street, which at least made it look like it had been raining, but I can only recall one episode when it was raining (the one where Rainmaker Jack Albertson tried to cure Jeremy of his stutter), and only one that featured snow (the show's single Christmas episode). The rest of the time, as the theme song says, "the bluest sky you've ever seen" inaccurately predominate "Seattle's" horizons... and ditto with The Waltons for most of its episodes.
Ah! Those cheap, overly-accessible and cheap Southern California locations: the death of TV show authenticity.
Yes, living near the mountains they would see more snow and rain. Best chance of snow is in January. We don't get much snow at all in December. And sometimes as late as March. The mountains of Virginia and North Carolina appear similar in what is known as the "Blue Ridge". I was wishing they would at least show something that appears like the Blue Ridge.
"Life is like a box of Krispy Kreme donuts".
There is no practical, affordable solution to this problem. The center of television series production in the U.S. is Los Angeles. The southern California countryside is always going to be used to stand in for other regions. We can suspend our disbelief, or not watch.
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