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(source: YouTube) First known posted fan discovery of ‘Jacob’s House’ location.
David Brisbin, a production designer for New Moon, has written a very interesting and informative article for jawbone.tv on the effects of us, the fans and fansites, on the production of New Moon and Eclipse. He describes, from the producer’s side, his story of the first fan finding Jacob’s house, as well as other times the fans got info out before the studio wanted. Fan involvement, Brisbin says, has pushed filming to something akin to a live performance on the stage. Fans stalking sets, leaked photos, you-tube and eager fansites have come together to make instant fan-made media.
During prep on The Twilight Saga: New Moon it hit me that movie design has crossed a line.
I was roaming back and forth on the road scoping out the paint department’s aging work on an idyllic house and barn set in a small meadow. It was a remote spot, so I was a bit surprised when a woman pushing a baby carriage trundled up and said hello. “That’s for a movie, isn’t it?” she asked.
I go out of my way to be gracious to anyone in the orbit of a location, but on this project the producers had asked for an extreme level of secrecy. As warmly as I could, I ducked; “Oh, you know, don’t you think someone could just get tired of green and decide to paint their place red?” She shot back, “Sure, but they wouldn’t keep painting over everything until it looked real old. It’s Jacob’s house isn’t it?” She actually seemed to be salivating at the idea of Jacob (one of the two male heartthrobs in our story). The location owner’s name was spelled out on the mailbox right next to us, so I told her the place belonged to him. She was unfazed. “I can see all the fishing stuff you brought in over there, and Jacob’s dad was a fisherman before his accident, so it’s pretty obvious… can you just tell me this; is Chris Weitz the director?” It was hard not to grin at how much she knew about Twilight — but I bowed out. “Sorry, can’t answer that.” And on I went about a normal day in movie prep.
Late that night everything changed. There was a shriek in the front of the art department followed by rumble of astonishment. Our art director, Catherine Ircha, had discovered that the woman with the baby carriage had recounted that afternoon conversation on one of the Twilight fan blogs. She contended that my evasiveness — in contradiction to the evidence in the meadow — made it very likely that she had discovered a major Vancouver location for New Moon. Jacob’s house was a key venue in Twilight Saga novels by Stephenie Meyer, but had not appeared in the first movie — so this was a big find. The fan sites were electrified. The next day another fan (credited as ‘YouTuber Sunnykins’) posted a drive-by video of the location with her voiceover explanation of why this was surely Jacob’s place. She saw the red paint as solid proof, but she did note that the “barn or shed thing” did not precisely match the garage of the books.
Read the rest of the article here.
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