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Chasing Liberty Picture 20
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Chasing Liberty Full Production Notes "Every family has a rebel... even the First Family."
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 Chapter 9: Recreating the White House AmbianceVarious locations in the English countryside stand in for portions of the White House, including the Stoke Park Club, previously employed by Hollywood as the setting for the chess game between James Bond and Goldfinger, as well as scenes from Tomorrow Never Dies and Bridget Jones's Diary. Here, amidst 350 acres of lush greenery, a Rose Garden press conference takes place while inside, the club's hallways and staircases double for White House interiors ` an effortless transformation considering that the estate's neoclassic mansion was constructed in 1790, two years before the White House.
Another English mansion, the Codicote House, built in the 1780s, provided additional interiors for a dining room and Anna's spacious bedroom, which required the crew to remove an existing window and attach a large black tent (known as "the black hole") to the back of the house so that nighttime footage could be accomplished during daylight hours. The camera focuses on a teenager dancing alone in her room then slowly pulls back to take in the grandness of the space and, ultimately, reveal the White House.
"People looking at the footage actually asked how we got access to the White House, which was a great compliment," says Parfitt.
Childs' dedication to detail inadvertently caught him up in heightened D.C. security while traveling through the capitol en route to Hollywood with source material about the Oval Office, histories of First Families and White House floor plans. "I had a suitcase full of what must have looked like the best way to sneak into the Oval Office under cover of night but was in fact completely innocent research for a romantic comedy," he relates with typical good humor. Singled out for a thorough search, he watched while airport security passed his luggage through multiple x-rays, leafed through each book and then interrogated him. "I tried to explain everything in a sort of blustery, Hugh Grant fashion," Childs admits. "Just a whisker short of a strip search, I managed to convince them that I was all right."
Working in concert with Childs' designs, the visual effects team, led by Emmy-nominated Special Effects Supervisor Simon Frame helped sustain the White House illusion and a number of other images throughout Anna's European sojourn. As Kosove acknowledges, "Pictures like this appear to have no special effects because there are no fireballs or explosions onscreen, but it actually involves a fair amount of effects work from recreating the White House ambiance to presenting a bungee jump in a rocky canyon."
The opening image, in which Anna is introduced relaxing in her bedroom, is a perfect example. As Frame explains, "It's a pull-out shot of the room. Anna is inside and from the décor it's clearly a teenage girl's bedroom. As the camera moves further out to reveal more of the room we see it's a bit larger than average ` in fact, it's huge. As the camera moves back from the window to reveal some of the building's outside columns we realize that it's likewise a huge building, and then when we ultimately pull out to frame the building finally identifies itself as the White House. We pan around to take in the whole structure and there's a fountain in the foreground, trees all around."
To complete the illusion, Frame downloaded the actual blueprint of the White House and built a digital replica. Additional textual reference provided by the art department, such as detail from the highly detailed area above the portico, enhanced his digital reproduction.
That shot is divided into three parts, as Simon elaborates: the live action of Moore, joined with the virtual White House already in Frame's computer and ultimately joined to a three-dimensional landscape pieced together from various tress and shrubs shot earlier. Turns out that the only tricky part of the composition is getting in and around the portion that actually exits ` the window frame. As Frame concludes, "I can't cheat that. It's reality."
Next Page: Full Production Notes for Chasing Liberty |
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Destination London 