Paul Bass Photos
Crew prepares to start shooting scene.
The star pooch.
Wooster Square became Brooklyn Wednesday as a film crew took over a block of Chapel Street.
The crew, nearly 40 strong, emerged from eight rental trucks wielding sound carts, cameras, booms, dozens of red safety cones, vests, and endless paper cups of coffee. They thronged the closed-off block of Chapel between DePalma Court and Wooster Street to film an exterior shot for an upcoming Christmas-themed flick.
The movie, being produced by Mar Vista Entertainment and My Old House, LLC Productions, is tentatively called “Untitled Christmas Project” as its producers shop it around. Christine Luby was on scene as the director. The busy production crew was under constraints not to allow the press to interview actors or crew until a formal release is sent out in coming weeks. None of the people involved or details of the film were to be publicly discussed.
The set-up on Chapel.
One of the producers did inform me that the film is a contemporary feel-good Xmas movie set in a fictional New England town.
He and 35 to 70 colleagues at a time have been having a hoot in Connecticut, he said, filming for the past three weeks in Hartford, New Milford, and Danbury.
On Wednesday New Haven was set to make its contribution as a location, not representative of Connecticut, but masquerading as an exterior residence in Brooklyn, N.Y.
The scene being filmed featured a sequence where a brother and sister pull up in front of a Brooklyn residence to pick up a sibling.
For that perhaps two-minute sequence of cinema legerdemain, the crews spent upwards of three hours at 556 Chapel St. and its stalwart, long-stooped sister brownstones that face Wooster Square. The buildings date from about 1870. They provided a façade so perfect, “there was no need for Brooklyn” itself, said the producer.
With four NHPD cruisers helping out, parking was not permitted during the shoot on both sides of Chapel. Except for the actual minutes of the cameras rolling, through traffic was permitted in both directions.
That’s why the nervous producers and their colleagues could frequently be heard calling out, “Live road!,” and urging each other to put on the lime green safety vests.
They, along with hand-warmers, a lifetime’s supply of batteries and other stuff lay in a box beneath the historical sign marking that French troops had encamped in this very area, just as the film crew was doing, but back in 1781 on their way to help George Washington in Yorktown win the Revolutionary War.
Director Christine Luby at work.
Crew members reported having appreciated pizza from Sally’s. They were also apparently under strict orders to partake of Frank Pepe’s Pizzeria Napoletano; Modern was added to their list as well.
One of the producers, a cigar aficionado, confessed that more than once he had been to the Owl on College Street to enjoy his cheroot in the public way.
It was also a fine morning for business for the Kaiyden Coffee Shop on Chapel a half-block west. The barista set up large decanters; the crew came in and out to recaffeinate and have a moment of warmth against the wind.
“How we doin’?” came the call as the grips and gaffers set up equipment. “Locked and ready!” came the reply, as the props guys and gals attended to details in the area where the specific scene itself was to unfold: the façade, steep steps, and parking area right in front of the townhouse at 556 Chapel.
Call me a New Havener for far too long, but it took me a moment to realize that the man unscrewing the license plate and putting on another was there not to ready a get-away-vehicle or to steal. In the service of authenticity, he was swapping out a Connecticut license plate on a red Subaru Forrester, loaded with the cinema family’s luggage, for a New York plate. This was, after all, Brooklyn.
“Get out of the road,” someone in charge called out. “Please! The safety vest doesn’t make you immortal.”
As we all backed up nearer to the low iron fencing bordering the square, I noticed only one onlooker and asked him what he thought of the proceedings.
The onlooker, Sam Belton, not long retired, was an electrical tech for 30 years at Sikorsky in Stratford, helping to build the original Black Hawk helicopters. He too had a fine appreciation for what seemed like miles of cable, the muff-covered microphones sticking up out of the sound carts, and the other gear being readied amid the hubbub.
“Everyone knows their part,” he said. “It’ll work, old building, same era, good architecture.”
“Last touches,” someone now yelled. “Make up, guys.”
And another small crew scurried across Chapel to apply those touches to the actors.
The director, an Australian woman, who was holding a tall cup from Kaiyden’s, offered that the local brew did the job on a cold day. But she said it was no comparison to how they do it Down Under. She then crossed the street, following the make-up crew, and gave the actors final instructions.
Allan Appel Photo
Sam Belton looks on.
No one had called out the stereotyped “Action,” and I confess that disappointed a little. Instead I heard, “Skidaddle. Let’s start with two wides, one wider. Let’s get ready to begin.”
The cameras rolled as a car pulled up to the townhouse. Two actors and their dog appeared at the top of the steps. One was very pregnant. They came down the steps. They had a discussion. One opened the back of the Subaru and stashed in some more luggage. Another gave the dog instructions, and they got into the car
And that was it for New Haven’s Brooklyn moment. We’ll all have to see the movie when it comes out to be sure.
Next stop for the crew: filming a scene in a house tomorrow in North Haven.
We need to make our generous tax breaks conditional on directors shouting, "Action!", not "Skedaddle". Where are our legislators on this matter of great importance?