The production was divided into shoots in the Nashville and Los Angeles areas. Near Nashville, they created the fictional Crowley Corners, an idyllic small American town. In Los Angeles, they wanted to show off the California dream—the beaches of Malibu and Santa Monica, the glitz of Beverly Hills, a stadium concert at the Forum.
“We wanted to have some beautiful photography in this movie and really let the locations set the action up,” says Chelsom. “In the first act, it rushes, rushes, rushes, there’s no chance to stop and breathe because that’s the nature of Miley’s life as Hannah and Miley Stewart in L.A. It is frenetic, crazy. Then you get to Tennessee and the pulse completely changes, the style of photography changes and you have this expanse. You can see the horizon, the sky and the landscape. It all opens up.”
For the cast members, taking the characters out of the studio and on to location made all the difference in terms of getting into their roles and understanding the story.
“This movie takes ‘Hannah Montana’ to another level, a different scale,” says Jason Earles, who co-stars as Miley’s brother in the film and the TV show. “Obviously us being out in the real world in beautiful locations with thousands of extras is not something that you can accomplish on a sound stage when you’re shooting a sitcom. The film is grand in scope, but it all comes back to this real place: family and friendships and relationships we’ve created and stayed true to.”
Numerous locations in and around Nashville were used in the film, including the Hermitage Hotel, Maury Airport, Franklin High School, Vanderbilt University, Rutledge Falls, Smiley Hollow, Leiper’s Fork and the Belks Department Store in Cool Springs.
One of the main locations, Grandma Ruby’s farm, was on a 200-acre ranch south of Nashville, just a few miles from the Cyrus family farm. When filmmakers first scouted the location that became Ruby’s farm, the main house was empty and in disrepair, needing both construction and decor. Production designer Caroline Hanania transformed the nearly 100-year-old house into a warm, inviting home in the beautiful Tennessee countryside. Margo Martindale, who plays Ruby, said the details inspired and informed her performance.
“When I first saw this house it was empty and Caroline had just put up some vintage wallpaper,” says Martindale. “When I arrive days later to film, stepping into Ruby’s house was like stepping into my grandmother’s house. Beautifully done, every little detail, even the cabinets the camera never sees. There’s a sewing room all set up, a room where I pot plants. All I had to do was walk around this house and I knew everything about my character.”
Cast and crew also shot in the nearby town of Columbia, Tennessee, where the Stewart’s fictional hometown of Crowley Corners was re-created on the city’s historic town square. With Columbia’s courthouse serving as Crowley Corners’ town hall, one of the film’s most elaborate slapstick sequences takes place as Miley dashes between her dinner with the mayor, dressed as Hannah Montana, and a date she has with Lucas, dressed as Miley, in a romantic Italian restaurant down the street.
Columbia’s town square also serves as a backdrop to the sequence where Miley and her grandmother travel to town to sell Ruby’s watermelons, squashes and jams at the farmer’s market. When Miley spots Oswald, the British reporter she last saw in Los Angeles, and realizes he’s followed her to Crowley Corners, she decides to sabotage him. The extensive stunt-and-effects sequence that follows involves some devilish hot sauce, a 3-D architectural model, 700 pounds of cascading walnuts and an Irish jig.
Another key location in Tennessee was Smiley Hollow, a rustic corporate retreat and working farm located north of downtown Nashville. Nestled in the rolling hills of Goodlettsville, Smiley Hollow provided the perfect location to create the film’s exterior concert sequences as well as the supper club musical performances and dance numbers. Production designer Hanania and her crew worked for weeks to transform the retreat’s two key locations for the film. This included the retreat’s wooden meeting hall to serve as the Meadows Hall supper club where Robby Ray, Miley and Taylor Swift perform during an open mic fundraiser to save Crowley Meadows from a developer (Barry Bostwick).
Outside the Meadows Hall location was the tree-lined expanse of fields where Hanania and her team created the Crowley Meadows farm and site of the “Save the Meadows” fundraiser. Her team constructed a barn, waterwheel, concert stage, carnival booths and rides. More than 2,000 extras filled the Smiley Hollow location, where both Hannah Montana and Miley Stewart perform several of the film’s musical numbers, including “Rock Star,” “The Climb” and “You’ll Always Find Your Way Back Home.”
The farthest location in Tennessee was Rutledge Falls. After a two-hour drive, cast and crew then hiked to the remote waterfalls where Miley and Travis go for a picnic and swim. “There were a lot of unhappy faces on the crew when they realized how far they had to climb down the rocks with the equipment to get to the bottom where we were filming,” says Chelsom. “But when you look at the scene, I think they’d agree it was so worth it. It’s spectacularly gorgeous.”
Showing posts with label Nashville. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Nashville. Show all posts
Hannah Montana - great dance numbers, phenomenal music
When the idea for a feature film based on the series was discussed, returning Miley and her father to Tennessee seemed an ideal and natural extension of the characters’ storylines to the big screen.
“We wanted to open it up, get it outside and let it breathe,” says Gough about the “Hannah Montana” story. “As we developed the screenplay, we had a couple of rules up front. One was we were not going to use any of the sets on the television show. And secondly, we wanted it to be filmed in real places, actual locations: Nashville, Malibu, the Santa Monica Pier, Beverly Hills.”
Gough’s producing partner Millar adds: “Our goal as the producers was always to make a movie that would surprise people. I think people have an expectation based on the sitcom of a goofy, very broad comedy. But we wanted this movie to have incredible heart, vistas, landscapes, beautiful photography, great dance numbers, phenomenal music and a big scope. And this movie is all of that.”
Another change from the ensemble sitcom format was the film’s focus on Miley rather than on a group adventure or road movie with her series co-stars. Screenwriter Berendsen says: “One of the things that sets this movie apart from the show is that in a good part of the film Miley is on her own. This is about her character, it’s her adventure. It’s something she and her father have to go through together.”
As the film opens, Miley Stewart’s life is out of balance. Taken under the wing of a gung-ho and glamorous publicist, Vita (Vanessa Williams), Miley’s letting Hannah begin to dominate her life. When she keeps choosing Hannah over her commitments to family members—to say goodbye to Jackson as he leaves for college, to attend Lilly’s long-anticipated sweet-16 party or her grandmother’s birthday celebration—it is clear Miley’s beginning to forget why the Hannah Montana secret was created in the first place.
When Hannah Montana ends up in a paparazzi-captured fight with Tyra Banks over a pair of designer shoes, Miley’s father quietly takes control. Having attempted to reason with her to no avail, Robby Ray tricks Miley into thinking she’s going to New York as Hannah to perform when he’s really taking her from Los Angeles back home to Crowley Corners, Tennessee.
Miley’s double life becomes even more complicated when she returns to Crowley Corners. She discovers that a reporter (Peter Gunn) has somehow managed to track Hannah Montana to her hometown and is asking lots of questions of the locals. She also meets up with an old childhood friend, Travis Brody (Lucas Till), and soon finds herself in her first serious romance. When Miley tries to impress Travis by telling him about her friend Hannah Montana, she suddenly finds her alter ego enlisted in a concert fundraiser to help save her hometown’s pristine Crowley Meadows from developers. Once again, having taken on more than she can handle, Miley has to call on her best friend, Lilly, and ask her for help. When Lilly finally arrives in Crowley Corners pretending to be Hannah Montana, events really spin out of control.
“We wanted to open it up, get it outside and let it breathe,” says Gough about the “Hannah Montana” story. “As we developed the screenplay, we had a couple of rules up front. One was we were not going to use any of the sets on the television show. And secondly, we wanted it to be filmed in real places, actual locations: Nashville, Malibu, the Santa Monica Pier, Beverly Hills.”
Gough’s producing partner Millar adds: “Our goal as the producers was always to make a movie that would surprise people. I think people have an expectation based on the sitcom of a goofy, very broad comedy. But we wanted this movie to have incredible heart, vistas, landscapes, beautiful photography, great dance numbers, phenomenal music and a big scope. And this movie is all of that.”
Another change from the ensemble sitcom format was the film’s focus on Miley rather than on a group adventure or road movie with her series co-stars. Screenwriter Berendsen says: “One of the things that sets this movie apart from the show is that in a good part of the film Miley is on her own. This is about her character, it’s her adventure. It’s something she and her father have to go through together.”
As the film opens, Miley Stewart’s life is out of balance. Taken under the wing of a gung-ho and glamorous publicist, Vita (Vanessa Williams), Miley’s letting Hannah begin to dominate her life. When she keeps choosing Hannah over her commitments to family members—to say goodbye to Jackson as he leaves for college, to attend Lilly’s long-anticipated sweet-16 party or her grandmother’s birthday celebration—it is clear Miley’s beginning to forget why the Hannah Montana secret was created in the first place.
When Hannah Montana ends up in a paparazzi-captured fight with Tyra Banks over a pair of designer shoes, Miley’s father quietly takes control. Having attempted to reason with her to no avail, Robby Ray tricks Miley into thinking she’s going to New York as Hannah to perform when he’s really taking her from Los Angeles back home to Crowley Corners, Tennessee.
Miley’s double life becomes even more complicated when she returns to Crowley Corners. She discovers that a reporter (Peter Gunn) has somehow managed to track Hannah Montana to her hometown and is asking lots of questions of the locals. She also meets up with an old childhood friend, Travis Brody (Lucas Till), and soon finds herself in her first serious romance. When Miley tries to impress Travis by telling him about her friend Hannah Montana, she suddenly finds her alter ego enlisted in a concert fundraiser to help save her hometown’s pristine Crowley Meadows from developers. Once again, having taken on more than she can handle, Miley has to call on her best friend, Lilly, and ask her for help. When Lilly finally arrives in Crowley Corners pretending to be Hannah Montana, events really spin out of control.
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