Keep an eye out for lights, camera and action
-- which could be coming to a neighborhood near you. The feature film "Everybody Loves Whales" started filming in Alaska Thursday.
If you happened to be near Bootlegger's Cove Thursday, you couldn't help but stop and watch something which will become a pretty common sight over the next 10 weeks.
Jack Nelson heard some commotion outside his home at about 2 a.m. Thursday.
“Sort of exciting, because it's usually just dead around here,” Nelson said.
There were rumors that the Downtown Anchorage neighborhood would have visitors -- but Nelson wasn't expecting to wake up to a movie set outside.
“Wham: they told me they was going to make a movie and I thought to myself, ‘Is all that stuff going to go in that little house?’” Nelson said.
On Day 1 on the set of "Everybody Loves Whales," the crew is making itself right at home.
Jeff Congdon let his daughter Bret ditch school, so she could see the production crew take over the family home for herself.
“I think that some people that drive by are really, really shocked -- they're like, ‘Hey, there's a movie in the neighborhood,’” Bret Congdon said.
Set designers repainted the Congdons’ house and brought in tropical plants to make the home look like it's in California.
“They say they will change everything that we would like back to original, although we think we're going to keep the door,” Jeff Congdon said.
The producers are getting tax credits from the State of Alaska, and part of the deal is that scenes like this can’t be shot in Hollywood.
“I think by the time we end in November, everybody has seen us at least three or four times -- whenever you see those big trucks, it's ‘Everybody Loves Whales,’” said film publicist David Linck.
The stars and special effects will come later, when filmmakers try to recreate the real-life 1988 event in Barrow it’s based on, in which a pair of whales got stuck in sea ice and captured the world's attention.
The crew says this one-day shoot is nothing special: just a few cuts depicting a family at home, watching the whale rescue unfold on TV. But for the neighbors, it's quite a scene.
Actor Ted Danson was reportedly on set briefly Thursday morning. Other stars to keep an eye out for include Drew Barrymore and John Krasinski.
The film is a multi-million-dollar production, and studio officials say Alaskans make up between half and two-thirds of its staff. The crew is hiring caterers, booking hotel rooms and using all of the other services that a visitor might need for a 10-week stay.
If you happen to see anyone famous, or you find the crew filming in your neighborhood, snap a picture and upload it to KTUU.com’s “Everybody Loves Whales” online gallery, which you can find under User-Submitted Photos on the home page’s News section.
Also, if you were a part of the original whale rescue in 1988, we'd love to see any pictures of that as well.
Contact Ted Land at tland@ktuu.com
