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If you were at the Autry on Wednesday afternoon you probably noticed a few cameras and somebody yelling, “Cut!”

Of course, that’s not unusual here in the home of Hollywood. Any day on any street in this

On location for the "Karaoke Man" movie (Photo by Tessie Borden)

town, you might see the tell-tale white equipment trailers, the light screens, the bored actors sitting off to the side waiting for their cue. A Los Angeles Times map this week showed just a sampling of 21 scheduled shoots — commercials, feature films and TV shows. And lately, the Autry’s been getting more than its share of all that screen time.

Wednesday’s crew worked on Karaoke Man, an independent romantic comedy starring Brian Dietzen, of NCIS fame on CBS, and James Denton, of ABC’s Desperate Housewives.

“It’s a love story about a guy who falls in love with someone who’s great at music,” said Dietzen,

Brian Dietzen stars as Louis in "Karaoke Man" (Photo by Tessie Borden)

whose character, Louis, can only shed his social inhibitions on a karaoke stage. “He’s not so sure he can do it.”

Last week, a crew from HBO’s Big Love filmed in the Autry’s lobby and Montgomery gallery. I’m told they even incorporated the Home Lands: How Women Made the West exhibition into the story line. And in January, ABC’s Grey’s Anatomy filmed in the theatre.

I’m also watching out for the Autry in an episode of HBO’s True Blood that filmed in May in which Alex Skarsgård, as enforcer Eric Northman, and Denis O’Hare, as vampire king Russell Edgington, make a scene in front of Thomas Moran’s Mountain of the Holy Cross, one of the Autry’s most significant paintings. It shows a snowy cross on the side of a mountain, so you can guess a vampire might have a problem with that. It is scheduled to air Aug. 29.

In those productions, the Autry pretty much stars as itself or something similar, and that is quite unusual. The Times praised NCIS: Los Angeles, a spinoff of Dietzen’s show, which as the name suggests, makes a point of filming locally — and not blocking out the L.A. landmarks.

“We spend a lot of time re-creating other cities and places around the world, and it’s very rare that we get the opportunity to shoot Los Angeles for Los Angeles,’’ Shane Brennan, creator and

Technical adjustments on the set of "Karaoke Man" (Photo by Tessie Borden)

executive producer, told the newspaper. “When you spend your career saying, ‘You’ve got to frame your shot so there are no palm trees,’ it’s very refreshing when we can say, ‘’Bring on the palm trees.’ “

But Jeff Kloss, producer of Karaoke Man, had a different aim — and budget.

“The exterior of the Autry, with the landscaping and these lamposts, it gives it a kind of grand look,” Kloss said. “At the same time, it’s not so specific that you can’t use it for a bunch of different options. Today we’re using it as the exterior for a bus depot, of all things. It looks kind of like old Los Angeles, but it’s a modern building.”

Kloss, who has used the Autry before as a filming location, said that when filming scouts look at a place, they think beyond what the building was designed for and also keep in mind the varieto of scenes it could accommodate.

Dietzen said most of the shooting for his other show is in a soundstage, especially since his character, Jimmy Palmer, mostly performs autopsies in a morgue.

“We make it out once a week for the crime scenes and that sort of thing,” he said. For him, this kind of production is “different, because we can’t control any of the sound here.”

Annnd . . . cut. On the set of "Karaoke Man" (Photo by Tessie Borden)

Some of the background elements, too, are beyond the director’s control.

“We have the signs up,” he said. “But if people do walk by and you’re in the shot, you know, you might be in the movie.”

Wednesday’s filming included some opening and closing scenes. Louis, a comic book artist, arrives in a new town to stay with a family friend. Shy and socially awkward, he gets dragged by his coworkers to a karaoke bar one evening, where he falls hard for a girl he sees onstage. With the help of some liquid courage, he takes the stage himself and sings her a song. She invites him back again to sing another night, but he can only do it in costume, as Karaoke Man.

“It allows him to put on a mask and sing and not be shy,” he said. “It’s an alter-ego.”

By the end of the movie, Louis is running from the bar to the bus depot, to try to catch the girl before she leaves town. He’s on foot, he steals a guy’s bike, it breaks down, he keeps running.

“It just so happens that I’m in my boxers by the time I actually get to her,” Dietzen said. “You’ll have to see the movie to find out why.”