Zac signed up for a new movie, The Death and Life for Charlie St. Cloud, after he dropped out of Footloose back in March/April. The movie is a supernatural romantic drama based on Ben Sherwood’s novel of the same name and will be directed by Burr Steers and distributed by Universal in 2010.
The film recently started filming in Vancouver. Official shooting dates are from 31 July through 22 October 2009 (based on production lists from various Canadian guilds).
So far only a few cast members have been announced:
USA Today has a new article about HSM3 in today’s edition (7 July 2008). Additionally, a second report with Corbin Blue also has a few tidbits.
Here’s what we learn in the article – WARNING Spoilers:
45-day shooting schedule; it might have been tight and long days but they succeeded
Production values went up but are still in line with the previous look-and-feel of high school
Budget is bigger for HSM3 compared to the previous two (the article say they don’t know how much; IMDb says it’s $33 mil which seems realistic)
The finale is a big dance-and-song number on the football field – it’s the graduation scene
The movie includes a over-the-top number for Sharpay. It’s a dream sequence, in which she envisions herself and twin brother Ryan (Grabeel) as superstars. The song for it is I Want It All. In that number Troy plays a crazed fan at a movie premiere for Sharpay and is dressed in a T-shirt with Sharpay’s image silk-screened on the front and has a big red heart tattoo on his bicep with an “SE” (for Sharpay Evans) in its center. The number has 4 minutes screentime and took 3 days to shoot.
Troy and Chad have a big musical number The Boys Are Back. The number is in the junkyard where their characters spent a lot of their childhood pretending to be pirates and ninjas. It’s a whole fantasy about them being kids again. For the flashback scenes, child actors were cast to play young Chad and Troy — with the junior Chad donning a wig resembling Bleu’s trademark locks.
I still have to do some catching up on “M&OW” but thought I’ll post at least the new stuff so I won’t get further behind.
There is a new article in The Providence (7 July 2008) with James Tupper which has a reasonable part about Me and Orson Welles. Here are the relevant sections:
I’m sorry, I haven’t been updating in the last few weeks – nothing really major happened but a lot of small tidbits became available. I’ll start with a round up on HSM3 and will follow on the other two projects a bit later.
The most obvious news: filming started yesterday, 3 May 2008 in SLC. Disney has already started their marketing despite the fact that the cameras just started rolling. They’ve already released the first poster (left – big version in the gallery). We also got to see and hear the entire main cast (minus Lucas), director, writer and producers in a press conference on Friday, 2 May 2008 to announce the start of production. They didn’t give away much about the movie itself, most talk was about how excited everyone was to be back, blah blah. The best online video of the press conference can be found on Utah’s Fox site (Part one is here, part two you find in the sidebar of the same page). Their video is basically straight through without any edits or cuts.
One of the owners of “The London Swing Cats” posted on the Swing Junction message board (on 1 April & 7 April 2008) that they are looking for dance extras for Me and Orson Welles to film on 11 April 2008. Based on this it seems likely that Zac is at least until then in the UK (no info is available if it might be even longer – nobody knows at the moment when Me and Orson Welles will wrap filming).
Obviously it doesn’t state if Zac will be there but considering that he is in almost all the scenes in the book I would assume he is. Based on this info, it looks like we will see Zac dancing two classic dances from the 1930’s. I’m looking forward to see that.
The Croydon Guardian posted an article on Friday, 4 April 2008, that Me and Orson Welles was filming all day in the Crystal Palace Park. Filming should wrap soon though.
Film makers find Crystal Palace Park to be the perfect setting
By Cara Lee
Crystal Palace Park was transformed into a bustling film set today, much to the excitement of the park’s users and nearby residents.
After speculation mounted about what was happening in the park, it was revealed the historic site was being used to shoot scenes for Me and Orson Welles, which stars A-listers Clare Danes, Ben Chapman and Zac Efron.
A spokesman for CinemaNX, the company making the film, confirmed filming was being carried out around the steps leading up to the site of the old Crystal Palace, which was bombarded with members of the crew and cast, including Zac Efron and Zoe Kazan who play the lead roles. A facade of New York’s Mercury Theatre was set up there for the scene.
He said the crew will only be at the site today.
The film, directed by Richard Linklater, is a coming-of-age romantic comedy set in the 1930s about a teenager, played by Zac Efron, who is cast in the Mercury Theatre production of Julius Caesar, directed by a young Orson Welles.
A girl on Zefron.com has been an extra on the set of Me and Orson Welles on the 7th and 9th of March and posted on 10 March 2008 about her experience.
She was part of the theatre audience and talked about the filming of the Richard (Zac) and Orson (Welles) stage scene where Zac’s character plays the ukulele and sings as well as the curtain call and that they shot a lot of audience reaction shots.
Here is a composition of her posts:
I spent the 7th and 9th March on set at the Gaiety Theatre in the Isle of Man as an extra, a member of the theatre audience watching the 1937 performance of Julius Ceasar at the Mercury Theatre. Here’s a summary of what we got up to.
There are two more cast members for Me and Orson Welles.
First, according to the production database at the Hollywoodreporter, Zoe Kazan is also member of the cast. This looks like a promising casting – while not well known she has been staring in several movies with fantastic casts.
I’m wondering what she will play. I always thought that Imogen Poots would play Gretta but now I’m not so sure anymore. Considering that Zoe lives in NYC, I could imagine that she plays Gretta and Imogen has a part in the theatre/Orson Welles part of the movie. Or perhaps we get to see Caroline after all. We’ll see.
Additionally, Matthew Cottle has been seen on set dressed in period clothes so I guess it’s save to assume that he’ll be in there as well; his role is not known yet either.
IoM Today published an article on 6 March 2008 about “Me and Orson Welles” based on the press conference I’ve been posting about the other day. Mostly a recap of the video; it doesn’t contain a lot of new info but it confirms that filming will take place in PineWood (only) after they wrap in IoM and then move on to NYC. And they have the big stage play this Sunday with 570 extras in the audience. It does have some interesting information about how the Gaiety theatre works well as double for the Mercury.
Zac Efron – what’s all the fuss about?
By ANGELA GREGORY
UNLESS you’re a girl under the age of 17, or a parent, it’s entirely possible you had no idea who Zac Efron or what High School Musical was until the past couple of weeks.
There was a short press conference on Sunday, 2 March 2008 in the Sefton Hotel on the Isle of Man with the Me and Orson Welles director and producers Richard Linklater, Ann Carli and Marc Samuelson. They talk about how IoM managed to get the production onto the island and how the Gaiety Theatre is a really good location for it.
IoM Today has a very brief article about it here and the link to the original video is here. In the article there are also press pics with the producers and Zac but they are not really ‘relevant’ for the movie, so you have to get them directly there. For your convenience (and people who have problems with embedded Windows Media Player) here is the video of the press conference as YouTube video:
13 August 2009
0 Comments