As the sun broke over the Common on Wednesday morning for the first time in days, the town center seemed oddly empty. Gone were the trucks and lifts along Mass. Ave., along with the horse trailers and tent at Hildreth Elementary School. Gone were the “Road Closed” signs and idling police cars at key intersections throughout town. On normally quiet side streets and narrow, winding back roads that served as detour routes, some residents had a new appreciation for the simple pleasure of getting mail out of a mailbox without fear of being sideswiped by a steady stream of speeding cars and trucks. And the General Store was open once again, buzzing with morning commuters and Columbia Pictures workers in search of coffee and breakfast.
After an intense two days of filming scenes on Nov. 5 and 6 for a 21st-century telling of Louisa May Alcott’s “Little Women,” Columbia Pictures crews were finally packing up their gear and heading out of town.
“It’s a wrap, folks,” declared a townwide email blast from Town Hall, an announcement confirmed by Columbia Pictures Executive Producer Adam Merims and Assistant Town Manager Marie Sobalvarro.
“They’ve moved on to their next location,” said Sobalvarro. For the next five business days, she said, crews will be clearing equipment and props from the Common and the second floor of the General Store, returning the area to its original condition, though there was a question of how soon the faux shops between the General Store and Congregational Church will be taken down. Columbia’s contract with the town allows the company five days to remove them, but there were rumors that Sony Pictures executives might want to fly out from Culver City, California, to view the 1860s scene. Plans for restoring the land occupied by the set are yet to be decided by the Parks and Recreation Commission and Select Board.
Final two days
Columbia’s final two days in Harvard began Monday with scenes of “Little Women’s” March sisters walking four abreast outdoors through artificial snow that had been spread the night before for take after take. For spectators along Ayer Road, it was their clearest view yet of the Hollywood stars playing the parts of Alcott’s characters, with Emma Watson (Harry Potter movies) as elder sister Meg, Saoirse Ronan (“Lady Bird”) as Jo, Eliza Scanlen (“Sharp Objects”) as Beth, and Florence Pugh (“Lady Macbeth”) as Amy. A photo of the quartet snapped by a Lunenburg resident appeared in the Wednesday, Nov. 7, issue of The Boston Globe.
The filming came to an end Tuesday at 2:10 p.m. with the shooting of scenes on the second floor of the General Store, which had been transformed into an upscale Boston clothing shop, pointedly out of reach for the impoverished March sisters. A pair of lights mounted on giraffe-like cranes beamed light into the building, which was closed to the public.
The two days of filming “went as well as could be expected,” Harvard Police Chief Ed Denmark told the Press. Roads to town center were closed for much of Monday, leading the unwary on circular detours to nowhere. For a time Monday night, Ayer Road was closed to permit the filming of night scenes at the Unitarian Church and Town Hall. The stretch of Still River Road running past the Concord set at the General Store was closed intermittently on both days, covered with snow, then dirt, then snow again as the script demanded. On Election Day, Tuesday, Ayer Road and Mass. Ave. were open, with delays, to allow access to Harvard’s schools, library, and polls. Denmark told the Press that his department had deployed eight officers Monday and Tuesday who were specifically dedicated to the film shoot and traffic detours. “We had to enlist mutual aid from other departments to accomplish this,” he told the Press. “At all times we still had our regular staffing to respond to calls for service.”
Dirt, snow and rain
The traffic on heavily traveled Mass. Ave. and Ayer Road wasn’t the only problem faced by Columbia and Harvard. New England weather was also a factor, forcing the company to change a Friday film date when heavy rains moved into the area. With scenes calling for dirt for one scene and snow cover for another, crews had to deal with fluctuating temperatures and drizzle.
In a phone interview, producer Merims explained that Columbia’s film will depict the change of seasons in New England. Tracking those changes in Harvard was difficult, he said. Half of the production’s work was set in the fall and half in winter. Typically, snow is produced by chipping blocks of ice, but in Massachusetts, the fishing industry makes use of a huge amount of crushed ice to ship fish around the world. “Little Women” crews were able to transport loads of crushed ice to Harvard and then blow it or spread it where needed. “You can have warm temperatures, just as you can with packed fish,” Merims said, but the one thing you can’t have is rain, which melts the ice. “We did change our plans,” he acknowledged, and in coordination with the town administrator and chief of police, the crew was able to dodge the worst of the rain and proceed with filming.
Filming in a town is always more complex than doing the work on stage or in a warehouse, Merims said. When a company takes up residence in a neighborhood, he said, you have to talk to everyone. “The really great thing about Harvard is that the town seems to be really open to it.” While there are always issues with one resident wanting more than another, or one business being comfortable with the presence of a film company and others not, “You just try to be … even-handed and fair.” The goal is always to make sure the town doesn’t incur additional costs because of the production. “Some people think that movie companies can throw around a lot of money. The reality is that we’re always on a budget.” Filming in Massachusetts costs a lot more money, but is better for the film, which could have ended up being shot in Montreal, Canada, he said. While similar sites are available in Vermont, Merims added, the availability of tax credits and a growing base of film professionals helped tip the balance toward Massachusetts.
Again?
Would he do another project in Harvard? “Absolutely,” said Merims. So would Denmark. “From the police perspective, I wouldn’t mind the town doing it again. Now that it has happened once, and people got a taste for what it entails, I’m just curious to see if other sectors of the town feel the same,” he said. Sobalvarro, who with Town Administrator Tim Bragan and Select Board member Stu Sklar coordinated the town’s response, was less certain on Wednesday morning. “Probably not,” she said.
Columbia now has five business days to clean up. Merims says the remains of the project will be dealt with in one of three ways. “The main thing is—without injury or damage to the site—to bring down [the Concord set in town center].” The pieces that might be used in other shoots will either be warehoused in the Boston area or trucked back to warehouses in Los Angeles that Sony controls. Merims says that if a practical way could be found to do so, some pieces might be donated to local organizations for auction, but all set material is embargoed until the film is released in December 2019. Whatever is left over—lumber and fixtures, for example—will either be donated to community projects or scrapped.
