For both budgetary and practical reasons, Hollywood has to be innovative in how they shoot movies and TV shows. It's common practice to have actual building fronts used for wide shots to establish the location of the action, with a cut to interior sets that are filmed on a studio soundstage. When edited together, the transition between the real and the fake is seamless; it's all part of the magic of the moving image.

The original series Star Trek, ever budget-conscious, would sometimes resort to using buildings on the Paramount lot to stand in for where the episode's action was supposed to be taking place. These exteriors, normal office or production buildings, can be seen primarily in the second season episodes "Patterns of Force " and "Assignment: Earth." If, like us, you were wondering where they filmed these episodes, we thought it would be cool to jump back nearly 40 years to show where the original action took place and how it looked then, versus how it looks today.

Click here to see the Photo Gallery.

In the Nazi-themed classic "Patterns of Force," much of the action centers around what used to be called the Directors' Building and the Producers' Building. These two structures are next to each other in what is called Producer's Park, which is named for the plethora of production offices in the surrounding area. The buildings, in keeping with the naming scheme for the majority of buildings on the Paramount lot, are now named after two legendary Hollywood personalities: Ernst Lubitsch (the legendary "To Be or Not to Be" director who was, for a short time in the mid '30s, head of production for Paramount) and B.P. Schulberg (producer and head of Paramount in the '30s).

Several scenes in "Patterns" show the cast entering and exiting the Ekosian headquarter buildings. John Gill's fated broadcast was to come from the old Director's Building (Schulberg), while the Ekosian Nazi headquarters is located in the Producers' Building (Lubitsch).

Producer's Park is now just that, a quiet park-like setting located right behind the Administration Building. Back then in the '60s, however, that Park was still a parking lot, as the famed Bronson Gate entrance to the studio was just around the corner off of nearby Marathon Street. (The Bronson Gate is the original Paramount Pictures gate made famous by Norma Desmond in "Sunset Boulevard," where she proclaims that she is ready, Mr. DeMille, for her close up.)

In "Assignment: Earth," the story's main action centers around the city of New York and the McKinley Rocket Base (actually the Kennedy Space Center in Florida) prior to a rocket launch (using footage from a Saturn V launch). Both places are represented by combining stock footage with episode footage. In the episode's climax at the Rocket Base, the footage merely switches between the NASA stock, interior stage sets and the studio exteriors. From the viewer's point of view, the only aspect that stops the scene from being a seamless transition is all the NASA footage; it obviously comes from a different source.

The rest of the action, however, is wonderfully conceived and the sleight-of-hand works just fine. When we take a look behind the scenes, as Kirk and Spock beam in and try to stop Gary Seven from sabotaging the rocket launch, the close-ups of the NASA exteriors are in reality just behind the Marlene Dietrich Building, currently home to the Media Relations department and just opposite the studio Commissary.

That's not all! To get extra mileage out of this building, a false front was added on to the northwest corner of the building to make it look like the opening to the New York City office where Gary and Roberta Lincoln were based. In our photo comparison, you can see Roberta walk through this false front, along with the building as it appears today. So, with some of the Rocket Base shots filmed behind the building on the southeastern side, and the New York building scenes at the northeastern front, you have two entirely different locations on screen, but in reality the exact same building!

Things have certainly changed in the nearly 40 years since Star Trek. The lot has evolved — Desilu merged with Paramount — and yet you can still feel, despite the modernization, that the lot retains its magic, mystique and history. By walking around the Paramount lot today, you may recognize places like the ones described above, and a whole lot more. So if you ever visit the studio, keep an eye out for those places you may remember from a favorite TV show or movie, especially Star Trek.