And she is played by Vanessa Hudgens? the actors must feel a huge responsibilty to get this right for the individuals involved and the people of Alaska and their history.

John  Cusack has finished filming? wow, I hope he gets some chill out time now, his role must have been so harrowing to play. I know he, like Nic, is an accomplished professional actor, and the longer you are an actor the easier it must be to leave it on set, but still...what a challenging role! 

Do we have a date for this film yet? I think I read December 2012?

But on the other hand, releasing it in winter seems fitting!

I think that the 18th was the last day of shooting in Alaska. Maybe they are doing more at a studio somewhere. 

So 2012, is shaping up to be a great year for Nic flicks! Ghost Rider for beginners to heat things up and The Frozen Ground to..well..cool things off, I guess. And we will have Medallion too!

Lady Trueheart wrote:

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So 2012, is shaping up to be a great year for Nic flicks! Ghost Rider for beginners to heat things up and The Frozen Ground to..well..cool things off, I guess. And we will have Medallion too!

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 LOL! this made me chuckle Lady T Yep, so much better than the end of the world too!  and what an elclectNIC mix!

Nic continuing in the tradition of averaging 2 - 3 movies a year too! (though actually...has it been 4 this year?!) 

 

Gina wrote:

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What a great treat for all of the Alaskans who were able to be apart of the production, especiallly those who were able to work with Nic directly.  I mean, HOW FRICKIN' "COOL" IS THAT!!!

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 Haha! The community seemed genuinely excited and positive about the filming there too, NICe that local actors were involved!  

I had the fortune of being on set as an extra/vintage background car for 6 of the 26 days of shooting including the first day and the last day of Shooting.

I did have the opportunity to be an extra in a few scenes with Cusack on the first day of shooting in the bakery. I however did not get to talk with him or say hi or any of that since he's in the zone in character and being at "work" you don't talk to the actors unless you have to for some reason. Cusack didn't socialize between shots or scenes like some actors do.

I also was in 2 different days of extra work with cage with my job mainly walking down the sidewalk. In one scene I just walk past him on the side walk that is covered with a 100 extras depicting drunk people and hookers bar hopping. Those hooker extras were freezing in the short skirts and fishnets since it was 5 degrees, snowing and the wind was was blowing about 15 mph. It's real hard to walk down the sidewalk and not look over at him or the camera following him since he is 2 feet away when I walked past him.

I also had to walk past him in another scene, and he nearly ran me off into the snow bank one tank since the director changed my route and cage was obviously thinking about his scene about to take place at the end of the sidewalk and didn't notice I was now in a different route until he almost ran into me.

Then they moved into the courthouse and my job there was to walk in the doors say hi to some other extras in a group talking with a client (some of us were in ties some were in jeans so they are going for the courthouse lawyer client look in the lobby) and cross to the right behind Cage and go down a hall. The glamorous life of an extra...$8.65 an hour. I'm glad I have a day job.

The other 3 days I was on the set I was just there with my car, (I was there with my car on the three days as an extra as well) so they did stuff like line the cars up and down the street on outside scenes. Sometimes cars would be driving up and down the street as well so there would be traffic in the background of the scene.

I also did some car stuff with the splinter unit which I followed around a main character car and they would shoot shots of the cars driving around town, or parking in a parking lot etc...I also did a couple of hours of driving back and forth over and over and over and over again in from of the house they were using as Sgt. Jack Halcomb's house. They had the 72 LTD he was driving parked in the driveway and I was just driving in the front of the house. then they waited for 30 mins for it to get darker, they would move the car in the driveway and I would do it again and again until it was all the way dark. THen I followed around the Hansen truck for a while and was a set of opposing headlights or taillights driving down dark creepy streets.

On friday I was following the Pimp Clate car around doing the same kind of thing. They had doubles in the character cars, the double for cusack from 20 feet away looked exactly like cusack. The guy they got for 50 cent looked like him too once they put the wig on him. They used a stunt double for Hudgens in the pimp car stuff. The doubles are in the same clothes, jewelery etc so on a distance shot you never it's not the real guy. They did that pretty much with any car shot that didn't involve a close up or them getting in or out of the car.

I did get to meet and talk to Michael Mcgrady (cages partner playing a vice detective) for a long time since he had hours to kill between scenes he was in and he sat on the couch with the rest of us and just hung out rather than heading back to his RV outside. Hudgins also hung out inside with everyone else but I didn't get to talk to her, she wasn't idle long between scenes since she is the main focus of the movie,and she was there with her mom and sister anyway.

I had a great time on the movie even though most of the time you just sit there and wait. One day they called me for a 4:00 pm time and it was 9:30 before they actually needed any of us background cars to do anything. and the scene was 50 cent running between two parked cars. I think everyone felt sorry for the stunt double, he got tossed on the ground allot during that scene since Brad Henke (plays Galenski) missed the snow pile they shoveled there for the stunt double to get tossed on every time. I'm still trying to figure out why there is a bbq grill filled with snow and water outside the back door of a strip club when it's 5 degrees outside for the stunt double to get dunked in 30 times I guess....they did say the water was warm at least lol. I guess I'll have to wait and see how they assemble that scene on the big screen. there were about 5 different camera angles on that scene, you might even notice 50 cent isn't wet when he's laying on the ground....

I find it amazing that they can film these scenes in random order for 1-3 minutes at a time and somehow turn all those clips into a 2 hour movie that makes sense.

On the last night of shooting there were some outdoor scenes to shoot and it was the coldest night yet, it involved just about all the main actors (except Cusack he was wrapped at 4:30 am on Nov 4^thwith much fanfare that included a short speech from Cusack) at 4pm when they sent me out with the pimp clate car splinter unit it was already -6. by the time Cage, Hudgens and all those guys headed out side it was a bit colder.

Since this is a Cage forum I did also get a picture with Nick on another night when I was not working. The house they are using for Halcomb is about two blocks from my house, so I was invited to drop by and hang out since I now knew some people on the crew, and at the end of the night Cage actually did something he never does and came out and talked to the small crowd of neighborhood locals gathered up to stare at a house Cage was inside of. He thanked everyone for being there and wished us a good night, then he came out and signed autographs and posed for photos for about 5 mins. It was 5 degrees and he was still in costume and didn't have a coat. I was told by one crew member whogt said he's done three other Cage movies and he's never seen Cage do that after a day of shooting.

I unfortunately did not expect Cage to come out and take photos so I only had my Iphone which sucks for taking pictures in the really dark of night so I got a few blurry photos.

Cage coming out to thank us for being there:

Cage posing for photos (I'm not in this one)

I think this will be a good movie, and we will see if Hollywood does this story justice or not. It is defiantly focused on the Cindy character and what she went through to get someone to believe her, and then the search that cage does in order to find her and then the capture of Hansen. I know they depict a few of the girls being killed, and they filmed some scenes in the same general area where the crimes actually occurred. The house they used in the movie is even on the same block as the actual house he lived in. There is going to be some Hollywood license on some details I'm sure, but hopefully they keep it close to what actually happened.

This won't be a family movie at all, they do shoot scenes inside strip clubs (some of the ones they filmed in are clubs Hansen actually visited back in the day) and there is nudity and some sex with prostitutes depicted, which is probably necessary to depict to show the type of girls and lifestyle Hansen targeted.

Sorry for the long post, but I was trolling the web and saw this forum and thought it was interesting discussion about the movie.

Thank you soooo much Anonymous!! It's great to get insider scoop!!!!! Awesome!!!

I SAW IT.  I SAW IT.  I SAW IT.  I had to watch it on video on demand, but I saw it.  My favorite parts, when Nick was interogating John Cusack in the interogation room.  LOVE IT.  Nick was so brilliant, of course I would not think otherwise.  So when will the dvd come out so I can own it?  Not soon enough.

Royaltraveler