Oscars red-carpet setup: How it looks on Friday morning

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The red carpet is down and the bleachers are up, but the Oscar scene outside the Kodak Theatre is wrapped in plastic on Friday morning to protect against rain. Some areas are even double-wrapped. Notice that there’s plastic over the red carpet in addition to plastic tenting overhead.

A slight drizzle came down around 8 a.m., then stopped. Throughout the early hours, various TV crews did live shots. That reporter standing with a mike is Sam Rubin of KTLA, whom I joined at 7:45 a.m. for some kudos chitchat. Traffic is barred from these few blocks of Hollywood Boulevard where trucks, bleachers and fencing jam the scene, obscuring the towers of Grauman’s Chinese Theatre.

Compare these photos with how the area looked on Tuesday afternoon.

-- Tom O’Neil

Photos by Tom O’Neil for the Los Angeles Times