while actually occupying only a few acres of the backlot. At their peak, some backlots covered hundreds of acres around existing studios, and filmmakers rarely left the lot, as they would intercut the backlot shots with a handful of establishing shots filmed on location by a second unit. Demise Today many studio backlots are gone or nearly gone. There are several reasons for this. Los Angeles, like the rest of the United States, went through an economic boom after World War II. This caused real estate prices and property taxes linked to fair market value to rise dramatically (the latter problem was curtailed by the enactment of Proposition 13 in 1978). At the same time, during the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s (the period when Hollywood underwent the transition from the Golden Age to New Hollywood), global movie audiences were increasingly irritated by films which were supposedly set all over the world, but obviously had been filmed in 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. Audiences wanted to see actors in locations which were both exotic and authentic, not cheap Hollywood facsimiles. 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. 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. Many were razed and the land was either sold to developers or repurposed for theme parks (e.g., Universal Studios Hollywood) or office buildings (e.g., Century City). Since the late 1990s, the increased use of CGI and blue/green screen effects in big budget movies has accelerated the decline in the use of studio backlots, as more films are shot completely indoors. Though some studios like MGM and Fox sold vast tracts in the 1960s and 1970s, many historical sets continue to be demolished today, as there seems to be little interest in their preservation. See also Cinema History of cinema Sound stage Movie ranch Location shooting Filming location Digital backlot References External links "40 Acres" The Lost Backlot Studio of Movie & Television Fame "Columbia Ranch.net" A website about the former