Home alone, indeed

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 18/03/2012 (5266 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Big white trucks that signal Home Alone 5 is filming in Winnipeg have been spotted around the city. Many people assume all the filming action happens in our city’s unique heritage buildings and streets — as well as the houses where lucky-duck families get big bucks to move out during a film shoot.

But that’s only half the story.

For movies like Home Alone 5, which features bad guys, chases, ghosts and battles, things need to be altered so movie makers can do their tricks. After all, fight scenes can cause major wreckage to somebody’s home.

No problem. You just hire crews to build a two-storey “house double” at the 15,000-square-foot Manitoba Production Centre at 1350 Pacific Ave. Part of the second storey is actually on the ground in pods for easy filming. Who’s to know they’re not upstairs when filming is being done inside a room?

“It’s a great facility, perfect for us,” says co-executive producer Dennis Murphy, who took me on a private tour of the production centre.

Building such elaborate props is very expensive, he admits. “But there are many reasons (for doing it) — like the internal floor plan of the real house we’re using doesn’t fit the floor plan of the script. Also, when we shoot, we can make our tricks work, and screw things into the floor.”

The house-double also has “wild walls,” which can be pulled aside to allow easier filming. Plus, each room is extra wide to allow for cameras along the walls. The antique staircase — a match to the real one in the house in The Gates — seems to be getting special attention. Rumour is, it’s the scene of a fight with the bad guys.

ABC Family Channel and FOX TV Studios officially announced filming of Home Alone 5 last week. Directed by Peter Hewitt, it stars Christian Martyn as 10-year-old California kid Finn Baxter. His mom gets a management job in snowy Maine, where the family, including his majorly p-o’d 16-year-old sister (actress Jodelle Ferland), move into a haunted house. Malcolm McDowell, Debi Mazar and Eddie Steeples play the thieves who target the house. Ed Asner also appears in the movie.

“Except for the stunt doubles and my crew, the entire crew is from Canada — and 95 per cent from Winnipeg,” says Murphy. “(The crews building the sets) are fabulous, a Hollywood-level crew. They have a very strong work ethic, and get more work done in 12 hours than any group I’ve ever worked with. I’m the last guy here at night so I see what’s been done.”

Brian Smith is in charge of the crews that have built most of the sets for the movies that have come to Winnipeg. Says Guy Arnal of AAA Fort Garry Flooring, which supplied the flooring for the sets: “The film people are good customers. In 20 years here, they’re great to work for, and they always pay their bills!”

To pull together the movie sets, workmen have been rushing everywhere inside the gigantic MPC warehouse as well as at The Gates, where the real house, termed “the practical house,” is located. Among their many tasks: making snow blankets for the large lawns out of white cloth underlay and bleached, shredded newsprint. Lawns further in the distance get the white-out treatment by computer.

Murphy was as surprised as everyone else by the early melt and high temperatures. “I’ve been here all February and we didn’t lose the snow until the first week of March.” They need seven days of “snow” at the practical house in The Gates and about three days of Christmas shooting in The Exchange and the St. Charles Country Club, which stands in for the mountain lodge of a manufacturing baron in the movie. Once outdoor filming is done, crews go inside to film on the soundstage at the Manitoba Production Centre

While building the indoor massive mansion was very expensive, it has already been sold to another movie for future use, says Murphy. Now that’s recycling.