Backlot

A backlot is an area behind or adjoining a movie studio containing permanent exterior buildings for outdoor scenes in filmmaking or television productions, or space for temporary set construction.

Mel Brooks' Blazing Saddles offers a rare look into the Warner Bros. backlot, with scenes spilling off the Laramie Street set into various stages and eventually out of Gate 3 onto Olive Avenue in Burbank, California.

The primitive special effects technology of the era made it difficult to remove clear signs that a film had been shot in California, such as chaparral-covered hills at the horizon line.

The mediocre box office performance of the 1967 film Camelot was blamed in part on this issue, which in turn marked the end of large-scale backlot production in Southern California.

[2] By the early 1970s, the industry had transitioned to location shooting for the majority of outdoor scenes, and backlots were widely viewed as an obsolete, unwanted capital expenditure and a tax burden on studios.