SHOOTING STARS: Olsen twins' project visits Las Vegas

They've spent a "Holiday in the Sun," held a joint "Passport to Paris" and figured out the secret to "Winning London."

This week, the Olsen Twins, Mary-Kate and Ashley, hit Glitter City.

At 15, they're too young to gamble.

But they're not too young to visit a buffet and gaze at the lights of the Fremont Street Experience.

Their latest video venture, tentatively titled "The Road Trip" tracks the former "Full House" twins from Los Angeles to the recently concluded Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, where they arrive late, assuring comic complications. (The comic complications will, we presume, be a whole lot more wholesome than the ones in 2000's raunchy "Road Trip" featuring Tom Green, "Rat Race's" Breckin Meyer and "American Pie's" Seann William Scott.)

Today and Tuesday, this "Road Trip" calls for driving shots (from a bus; the Olsen Twins are still too young to drive) and scenes at other Vegas sights, according to location manager Dave Berthiaume.

A wedding chapel and a motel may figure in the two-day shoot, he adds, but specific locations weren't set by press time.

Tuesday night, however, the Olsen Twins have a date with the Fremont Street Experience.

During the shoot, they also may have a date with disgruntled members of Stagehands Local 720, who plan to set up informational picket lines at two "Road Trip" locations: this morning at the Fremont Hotel and Tuesday morning at the Graceland Wedding Chapel, according to Dennis Brook, Local 720's business representative.

"Our understanding is that it's all nonunion," Brook says of the "Road Trip" crew. And the union contends that out-of-state, nonunion crew members are performing jobs Local 720 members should be doing.

Because Nevada's a right-to-work state, nonunion crews are perfectly legal; that's why the picket lines are informational only, Brook says.

But Local 720's parent union, the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, has sanctioned a strike against "Road Trip" and has asked "that no local union provide any local services" to the production, he adds.

The Fremont Street Experience also serves as a backdrop for a still photography shoot funded by Corbis Photography, one of the world's largest image banks. (Fittingly, it's owned by the man with one of the world's largest bank accounts, Bill Gates.)

In addition to shots at the Fremont Street Experience Wednesday and Thursday nights, two photographers -- Las Vegas-based Rick Becker-Leckrone and New York-based Dennis Galante -- will focus their lenses on several other Vegas locations, from the familiar to the offbeat.

Among the settings: the Castaways casino and some Strip sites. The latter locales include the Glass Pool Inn's penthouse, which Becker-Leckrone describes as "a '70s masterpiece" that will provide the setting for "a hip lounge martini bar" shot, explains producer Scott Libolt of Los Angeles-based PBNJ Productions.

All the photos fit into a "lifestyle" category, says Libolt, and may wind up illustrating travel brochures and other materials.

"It's hard to predict where they'll end up," he notes.

Models from three Las Vegas-based agencies -- Lenz, Lange and Netvision Talent -- will be featured in the shots, according to Libolt.

Also in the realm of still photography, Southern Nevada serves as the scenic backdrop for a road test to be featured in an upcoming issue of Truck Trend magazine, a bimonthly published by Motor Trend.

Four different high-performance trucks will be featured, according to Truck Trend editor Mark Williams.

They're "high-powered, high-energy vehicles," he says, noting that the Las Vegas setting provides "a lot of power, a lot of energy -- and a lot of bright light."

In addition to the Vegas lights, however, the magazine's photographers will capture the trucks in action on desert roads -- Red Rock Canyon and Hoover Dam being possible destinations -- and the Bragg-Smith Advanced Driving School track in Pahrump.

The road test will last through Wednesday or Thursday, Williams notes, and will be featured in the magazine's July-August issue, which is scheduled to hit newsstands in early June.

Meanwhile, back at the Fremont Street Experience, the pilot for a syndicated magazine-style TV show, "Open Channels," will shoot under the lights Tuesday, according to Chuck Noll of Phoenix-based Show Me Oz Productions.

The production is expected to spend three days in Las Vegas, he says.

Rounding out this week's location calendar: an exercise infomercial from Solutions Inc., expected to shoot Saturday and Sunday at Hills Park in Summerlin; and a corporate video for a pharmaceutical company's national sales meeting, shooting on the Strip starting Friday.

And, of course, MTV's "The Real World," which continues through June at the Palms, along with a variety of other locations in and around Las Vegas, whenever the lucky seven cast members emerge from their 28th-floor cocoon.

Carol Cling's Shooting Stars column appears Mondays.

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