Our Visit to Wilmington for One Tree Hill Filming/Locations

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Ok, this is going to be a very long post. I know most of you have seen pictures of all the filming locations and probably have been to a lot of them and even have been extras. So I apologize some of this is old hat to you guys, but for us, this was our first time, we’re excited and as always, we want to share it with other fans! So click below to read the whole thing! It’s very picture-heavy so give it some time to load.

Unfortunately Heather and I could only go for one day. Heather has to work tomorrow morning so we left last night (Thursday 4-10-2008) and came back this evening (Friday). We didn’t get to the hotel until 11pm after we got lost a bit on the way to the hotel (Hampton Inn). We finally got settled in and found it to be a very nice hotel. Not quite as expensive as the Hilton and not downtown but we had a nice big room, free breakfast and free WIFI. Since this was a last minute trip we also had to share a King bed instead of our own since they had no more two bed rooms. Hey..we’re sisters, it’s ok. (”heading east” - left)

We were up before 7 and tried to get on the road as fast as we could. The filming was supposed to be 8-12 but it was already 8 by the time we left. And guess what? My car wouldn’t start! My battery was dead! We were shocked and had no idea what to do. Thankfully we found out they had a maintenance guy on staff with jumper cables. Whew! Anyway, we got to the cemetery (Bellview Cemetery) and they already had everything set up. We were anxious to see who was going to be in the scene since it listed 2 cast members and we know that Lucas and Peyton spend a lot of time visiting Keith and Peyton’s mom. We also figured there was a chance it was Dan. And lo and behold, after a few minutes we spotted Paul with a brown shirt and jeans on. (Hampton Inn Deluxe Room - right)

 

 

(see him there in the middle-left of the picture)

(you can see all the behind the scenes stuff. the table in the middle of the picture was the table with breakfast on it from what we could tell. i know, exciting stuff there)

So I don’t completely understand all “the rules” for what we can and can not post but just for the record, none of these were taken when they were actually filming. This next one is quite interesting though because you can see in the trees in the middle of the picture a crane holding a tombstone with the name Dan Scott on it. As we said earlier in our report, the scene was very simple and involved Dan standing at the end of a plot and watching his own tombstone being lowered. They did this several times. From what we could tell, he did not talk at all and didn’t really move either. Exciting stuff, huh??

Well, it wasn’t the most exciting scene ever but it was cool to see what all went into just a few second worth of the show. It is really a lot of work and a lot of people that go into to making this show we love. I definitely came out with a lot more respect for the crew. By 10:00 they were all heading out though so it was short-lived. We didn’t get to speak to anyone as we were across the street trying to stay out of the way. I hate I forgot my Dad’s bigger lens or I could have gotten closer. But there wasn’t a whole lot going on and what you’re seeing in these pictures is basically all we saw. I’m still a little confused why it says 2 cast members because I personally didn’t see anyone else. We thought maybe we saw James but we didn’t see him filming anything if that was in fact him. There were 6 other fans watching the filming and if you guys are reading this, let us know if you have more info! (cool trees next to the cemetery - left and right.)

So we headed downtown to catch some of the festival action and then did our filming locations tour. So here we go with that….

Clothes Over Bros was the first place besides the cemetery we went. And, honestly, we were shocked. We really didn’t realize that it stayed set up this way. All the clothes and everything was still in place. They had some blankets thrown over the couches but besides that, it looked like a real store that was just closed.

(on opposite corner with black awning)

(front view - the front door has Karen’s Cafe painted on the front on a piece of wood)

 

Next we headed to see the gym and where they film a lot of the outside school scenes where they’re walking down that corridor. You’ll recognize it in a second. This is actually called the Schwartz Center and is sitting beside something that has a maintenance garage in it. The parking lot is all for faculty and staff. It pretty much looks nothing like it does on TV except the columns are very recognizable. I was surprised to see it seemed so much smaller than it does on TV.

Next up was TRIC. This one was exciting for some reason. I wanted to go up and see if the whole club was up there and I assume it is. I’m sure if you’ve been an extra before you know where they film the club scenes…so fill me in! This one was a little surprising as well as TRIC is just part of a bigger building that is used for other business(es).

Next up was the river court. Heather was pretty excited to see that. We had seen it from Water Street on the other side of the river but we took the time to go over to see it in person. Something sort of cool though is that when we pulled up, several of what we’re pretty sure was the crew members were there at the court. When I saw them, some of them had stacks of papers with them and they were headed back to their vans. You can see them driving off here. I thought it was a little strange that they would go there since I’m guessing they know what the place looks like but I guess some things are easier to plan in person. Who knows.

(view from the parking lot.)

(walking up to it. The lights are in the middle of the picture. The basketball goals were not up)

(looking across the river into Downtown Wilmington)

(this is the view we normally don’t see. this is actually just some concrete in the field next to the NC Battleship. much, much less glamorous than you think.)

 

(view from standing on the court looking to the left down the river)’

(this is taken from Downtown)

(also taken from Downtown. You can see the big tree at the court in the middle of the picture and you can see the Battleship to the right there.)

OK, wow, this is getting long!! Next was Brooke’s house and the famous red door. People really live here and in fact, the pizza delivery guy came as soon as we took the picture.

 

OK, next is Nathan/Deb/Dan’s house. This house who has “real” owners was actually part of the Garden Tour for the NC Azalea Festival. You can see the girls dressed in their hoop skirts in the pictures. Someone please tell me their names (belles?) and the history on that if you know. We saw them all day all around the festival. Anyway, you could pay $20 a ticket to go tour the backyard gardens but this is really the only house we were interested in so we didn’t want to spend the money. Anyway, we got the front of it.

 

Peyton’s house was next. Honestly, this house was a lot smaller than I imagined. And the grass patch in the front is smaller too. Did the bushes change or something? I’m pretty sure Brooke and Peyton fought in that front lawn and it just didn’t seem big enough to do it right there.

Front of Peyton’s

Side of Peyton’s

(back of Peyton’s)

At this point we went to see Keith’s Body Shop but the camera flaked on me and I couldn’t get a picture. It looked like an absolutely normal body shop. Bigger building but smaller parking lot than I imagined.

Next was Karen and Lucas’s house. This house was WAY smaller and more rundown than I thought (don’t mean any disrespect to the family that lives there!!). Just saying it’s different than I thought. You can see Lucas’s bedroom door to the right side of the house.

(side of the house. that window would be Lucas’s room)

Next is the bridge from the opening. The bridge is actually downtown but a little hidden a few streets down. I imagined it out in the country somewhere but it’s right downtown with everything else.

(just a cool picture i took on the bridge)

And lastly we took some time to shop downtown. Glad we did too because we found CD Alley, Max’s record store, with the help of one of the vendors. It wasn’t listed on OTHFans.com’s map so I was happy to find that. It looked EXACTLY like it does on the show. That was the one filming location that I felt was the most authentic.

And lastly, here’s a general picture of Water and Market right downtown. CD Alley is a couple stores up the street there on the right. The boardwalk and river are right behind us.

 

I’d like to give a big thanks to OTHFans.com and their filming locations map. We’d have been lost without that!! Like I mentioned, the only thing that I think may have been missing was the record store. Also, we kept driving around looking for the church from Lucas and Lindsey’s wedding but we never did. If anyone has that info, I’d be curious to know where it was to see if we might have seen it and not realized it. Oh, and we were curious about Nathan and Haley’s house from this season but didn’t see any info about that.

I really fell in love with Wilmington even on a such a short visit. Downtown is beautiful and very unique. I would love to be able to spend a few days just enjoying the city. I can see why many of them have houses there!

In closing, I’d just like to say if you EVER get a chance to do this, do it!! My advice is to plan on being there on a Saturday so you can do the studio tour which we did not get to do. I would also try to plan a day when they are filming (some good scenes where people are actually talking and there is more than one person LOL) and see if you can be an extra. I wish we could have seen or met one of the core cast members but it just didn’t happen.

If you have gotten this far, give yourself a pat on the back! Whew! I think blogging this took longer than the actual trip!

 

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