Welcome to the Museum’s Western Film Screening Room – Commercials
The Alabama Hills are home to more than movies: And why not – the Alabamas and the Eastern Sierra landscape provide one of the largest natural movie sets in the world offering magnificent Sierra peaks to expansive sand dunes. When western productions fell out of favor in the late 1980’s – advertisers seeking dramatic landscapes were attracted to the 47 square mile stretch of the Sierra foothills, their studded rust-colored rocks, rugged terrain and long shadows.
In the past 40 Plus years over 1000 commercials have been filmed. Crews from all over the World have come to shoot TV commercials in the area. The diversity speaks for itself – Our Alabama’s have starred in commercials promoting chewing gum, aspirin, ATV’s, soft drinks, liquor, phone services, delivery companies, lotteries and numerous automobile companies.
A representation of them is provided in this screening room.
The video links listed below work directly by clicking on them, but if you “Right” click on the video and select “copy video url” and paste this into your browser.
This first video below is a film about an ambitious project ( $250,000 ) to create an advertisement for Dewar’s 12 year old scotch whiskey in the stunning Alabama Hills near Lone Pine California. John Jessup, the creative director, came back to Lone Pine in 2014, and ended up creating “Showdown in Lone Pine,” a short documentary on Lone Pine community and passion for film making. (second video)